Another straightforward, solid hard rock bio from Wall.
A raucous biography of the legendary heavy metal band infamous for their offstage behavior.
Now recognized as one of the most influential and notorious rock bands in history, it was never easy for the four principal members of Black Sabbath. Growing up within a short distance of each other in the bleak Birmingham suburb Aston, the band formed in unlikely, albeit coincidental circumstances when former boyhood adversaries Ozzy Osbourne and Tony Iommi reconnected and brought together friends and fellow musicians Geezer Butler and Bill Ward to round out the core lineup of the group. The band toiled endlessly through name and lineup changes, honing their dark and sludgy sound in clubs (often getting tossed out after a few songs), and they built a devoted following on the back of their frenetic live shows. Suddenly, as quickly as it was improbable, Black Sabbath had landed a record deal and was being courted by established impresario/gangster Don Arden. The band refused Arden's advances, at first, but their fate was sealed when Osbourne was introduced to his daughter, Sharon, whom he would marry. Arden would later help the band recover from being ripped off by their managers. Veteran music journalist and biographer Wall (AC/DC: Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be, 2013, etc.) writes with conversational verve and wit, matching the lifestyles of his subjects, as he chronicles their unexpected rise to international fame and catastrophic downfall. The archetypal hallmarks of Black Sabbath’s career were epitomized after their sophomore album, “Paranoid,” went to No. 1 in the U.K.: “The next three years flew by in a blizzard of dope, cocaine, booze, sex, and the best music anybody in Black Sabbath would ever make.” Osbourne was ultimately expelled, and Sabbath reimagined itself with Ronnie James Dio as their new frontman and a host of other stand-ins before the original lineup reunited 35 years later.
Another straightforward, solid hard rock bio from Wall.Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05134-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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