Former Reagan speechwriter Noonan (What I Saw at the Revolution, 1990) reflects on life outside the Beltway with charm and wit—and a privileged insider's view. Noonan moved to New York to raise her son and make a living as a journalist. Although she has been called back to Washington from time to time—notably on emergency speechwriting chores for George Bush during his 1992 campaign—this is her story of ``real life'' in the Big Apple. First, it should be made clear that Noonan lives on the ritzy Upper East Side and takes a lot of cabs, that her son goes to private school, and that the parties she attends are social events reported in the New York Times. That said, it is easy to enjoy, if not always agree with, her commentary on life as a single mother in the '90s. ``There's no such thing as quality time,'' she says. ``There's only time,'' just being there ``in the daily boringness.'' She cites a friend who launched a career out of ambition and maintains it now because she must help pay the mortgage. Why, wonders Noonan, must everyone own a home and have a mortgage? Because of the tax deductions, she flashes. Which proves that our tax burdens are too heavy. Calling current American culture ``coarse,'' she observes that romance has faded and marriage has become a ``deal.'' She offers astute perceptions about President Clinton, politics, and politicians. ``Old Republicans come from guilty Greenwich; young Republicans have less gelt and so less guilt.'' Young Republicans, she says, favor think tanks and Rush Limbaugh over Jay Leno and Gridiron dinners. She is at home— if not always happy—with the Republican Party, but ideology does not override observation in this book. Fun to read, skillfully written with guess-who-this-is anecdotes, but still inside a beltway of the mind. (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-40160-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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