A zesty lexicon of a book with a strangely connected text: "Afraid of Computers to Zenith: The Final Days of Man Before the Machines Take Over?" The artful Crichton wrote this primer/guide on his word processor, of course, instructing it to scan the text and, except in special cases, delete "software" (a word he despises). You learn many practical lessons: Buy a word processor if your needs are strictly word-processing—they're better than add-ons to computers. Always copy your disks; your back-up is your savior when you or the computer inadvertently destroy the data. Don't wait for the next-generation machine on the principle that it will be that much snazzier and cheaper; Crichton made that mistake and wasted a year. Some of the advice is funny: what to do with smart-ass kids who can instantly handle the machine you've bought, or what to do about "Widows, computer." (Crichton let his wife use his from the start, and ended up buying two.) The book does not tell you how computers work or how to fix them. That's a gain, because Crichton assures you that you shouldn't feel guilty over failure to understand machine codes or internal electronics. He also includes a beginner's guide to using an Apple II, a "Grouchy Glossary," and a couple of programs: "Mystery Writer" and "Soothsayer"—the latter, Crichton's version of how to get your computer to give you I Ching answers. That diversion is revealing of his philosophy. Computers are stupid machines, he states emphatically: they may get super-smart, but people and non-rational modes of contact and behavior (the surgeon's "touch") remain supreme. Comforting words for those who harbor computer fear—and a useful compendium altogether for those who are not the first on their block to succumb to computer wiles. . . but now, just might.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1983
ISBN: 0345317394
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1983
Essential for fans and the definitive celebration of a show that made history by knowing the rules and breaking every one of...
Everything you ever wanted to know about America’s favorite Mafia serial—and then some.
New York magazine TV critic Seitz (Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion, 2015, etc.) and Rolling Stone TV critic Sepinwall (Breaking Bad 101: The Complete Critical Companion, 2017, etc.) gather a decade’s worth of their smart, lively writing about New Jersey’s most infamous crime family. As they note, The Sopranos was first shot in 1997, helmed by master storyteller David Chase, of Northern Exposure and Rockford Files renown, who unveiled his creation at an odd time in which Robert De Niro had just appeared in a film about a Mafioso in therapy. The pilot was “a hybrid slapstick comedy, domestic sitcom, and crime thriller, with dabs of ’70s American New Wave grit. It is high and low art, vulgar and sophisticated.” It barely hinted at what was to come, a classic of darkness and cynicism starring James Gandolfini, an actor “obscure enough that, coupled with the titanic force of his performance, it was easy to view him as always having been Tony Soprano.” Put Gandolfini together with one of the best ensembles and writing crews ever assembled, and it’s small wonder that the show is still remembered, discussed, and considered a classic. Seitz and Sepinwall occasionally go too Freudian (“Tony is a human turd, shat out by a mother who treats her son like shit”), though sometimes to apposite effect: Readers aren’t likely to look at an egg the same way ever again. The authors’ interviews with Chase are endlessly illuminating, though we still won’t ever know what really happened to the Soprano family on that fateful evening in 2007. “It’s not something you just watch,” they write. “It’s something you grapple with, accept, resist, accept again, resist again, then resolve to live with”—which, they add, is “absolutely in character for this show.”
Essential for fans and the definitive celebration of a show that made history by knowing the rules and breaking every one of them.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3494-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This early reader is an excellent introduction to the March on Washington in 1963 and the important role in the march played by Martin Luther King Jr. Ruffin gives the book a good, dramatic start: “August 28, 1963. It is a hot summer day in Washington, D.C. More than 250,00 people are pouring into the city.” They have come to protest the treatment of African-Americans here in the US. With stirring original artwork mixed with photographs of the events (and the segregationist policies in the South, such as separate drinking fountains and entrances to public buildings), Ruffin writes of how an end to slavery didn’t mark true equality and that these rights had to be fought for—through marches and sit-ins and words, particularly those of Dr. King, and particularly on that fateful day in Washington. Within a year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been passed: “It does not change everything. But it is a beginning.” Lots of visual cues will help new readers through the fairly simple text, but it is the power of the story that will keep them turning the pages. (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-448-42421-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
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