Activists of all descriptions will find encouragement in these uplifting, albeit brief, success stories filled with...
This compilation of interviews by debut editors Burke and Caso comes from The Women’s Eye, a radio show and website celebrating the accomplishments of women working for change.
“Our subjects’ goals are sometimes daunting and certainly wide-ranging,” say the editors. “They build schools where there were none, promote global women’s issues in treacherous places and uncover ingenious new ways to feed the hungry, rescue children and more.” Each entry is an excerpt from a website or radio interview and furthers the editors’ efforts “to spread stories of optimism, triumph, mission and purpose.” We learn about Maggie Doyne, who, on a gap year after high school, was moved by the desperate poverty she saw in Nepal. She wired home for her $5,000 in savings, used it to buy land in Surkhet, and built the Kopila Valley Children’s Home School, which she still runs today. Retired teacher and guidance counselor Estella Pyfrom also invested personal savings—roughly $1 million, though not all at once—buying a bus to bring computers and the internet to underprivileged Florida kids. Tina Hovsepian invented an inexpensive portable cardboard shelter for the homeless; it provides more than just a refuge from some of the elements. “In addition to providing a safe space, there is a psychological aspect,” she says. “Cardborigami provides…privacy, which you and I take for granted.” Other women have similarly inspiring accounts and are given space to tell those stories in their own words. Question prompts follow the journalistic “who, what, when, where, how” convention, but sometimes the interviews feel like press releases, and more in-depth discussions about how these experiences have changed the subjects would be welcome. The editors boast an enviable international network linking them to ordinary, often unheralded women who are “searching for solutions and new arenas of opportunity, and who [are] reaching out to improve the world in spite of the challenging circumstances.” The optimistic tone and diversity of the projects demonstrate that there are countless ways for those with vision to generate positive change.
Activists of all descriptions will find encouragement in these uplifting, albeit brief, success stories filled with recommendations and ideas.Pub Date: July 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9977054-5-4
Page Count: 282
Publisher: The Women's Eye
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
IN THE NEWS
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
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