Heartbreaking sadness leads to words of courage, perseverance, and enduring strength likely to inspire others on the path...
A journey of grief and healing for an elementary school principal who lost her husband and two young sons in a plane crash.
At first glance, Saltzman’s book may seem like a cathartic recap of her life, a reminder to herself, an homage to her family, and love letter to her husband. While it does contain elements of all those things—this is a memoir, after all—the book goes beyond truelove lost and delves much deeper into the effects and outcome of monumental loss and grief. While Saltzman doesn’t necessarily set out to teach people how to deal with their grief after losing a loved one or the sadness of divorce or even the fear of having cancer—which she experienced twice—she can’t help but transfer her strength and perseverance onto the page with her introspective words and honest portrayal of her emotions resulting from her experience with all three topics. The pages are peppered with transcriptions of a handful of the thousands of condolence cards and letters Saltzman received over the years from friends, family, and even strangers. Many feature the same question and assumptive statement: “How did you do it? I could not have endured the loss of my family.” To which Saltzman responds: “‘What choice did I have?’ I could end my life or I could choose to live. I made a conscious decision to live.” She cites her parents’ high expectations as a main source of strength, along with tough life lessons that revealed how sad endings can make way for new beginnings. Even cancer taught her the patience of not rushing the process, which was just as relevant for enduring difficult medical treatment as it was for soul-crushing grief. Saltzman’s experience illustrated the inevitability—maybe even the necessity—of falling apart in order to rebuild, which for Saltzman was emotional as well as physical, from coming to terms emotionally by listening to the wonderful stories about her husband and sons to the eventual reconstruction of her breasts a decade later. Perhaps an unforeseen, bittersweet result of Saltzman’s tragedies—the crash and the cancer—was her ability to serve as a major source of comfort and support for others in similar situations. In some cases, she became an unwitting role model from whom others drew strength while in the shadows of their own tragedies.
Heartbreaking sadness leads to words of courage, perseverance, and enduring strength likely to inspire others on the path toward healing.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-615-65819-3
Page Count: 242
Publisher: WoWo Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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