A perceptive briefing on the remarkable career of Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnam's ranking soldier-statesman and, arguably, one of military history's greatest captains; by a British brigadier who gained direct access to his subject. Drawing on interviews with Giap, comrades in arms, adversaries, and such archival sources as exist in Vietnam, Macdonald offers a balanced, tellingly detailed rundown on how his protagonist played the leading role in an impoverished, industrially backward nation's defeat of two Western powers by force of arms. An activist member of the Communist Party long before he became (at Ho Chi Minh's behest) a world-class warrior, Giap (now 81) can look back on some signal accomplishments as commander of his country's guerrilla, militia, and regular forces over a 30-year span. Having conducted effective insurgencies during the late 1940's, for example, he routed the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Subsequently, Giap organized grass-roots resistance in South Vietnam, created resilient supply-lines, and masterminded campaigns that made continuation of America's Indochinese commitments politically untenable after the Tet offensive of 1968. In his evenhanded narrative (which doubles as a chronicle of war in Vietnam from the pre-WW II colonial era through 1975), Macdonald does not shy from assessing Giap's shortcomings. He faults Giap, for example, for his willingness to sustain severe casualties and for involvement in Politburo pogroms. Nor does Macdonald fully understand how a man of Giap's intellect could have clung to Marxism's discredited dogmas ``like a medieval Christian who dreaded the frightful consequences of uttering the slightest heresy....'' But Macdonald gives Giap full marks for strategic vision, geopolitical savvy, tactical finesse, and grasp of logistics (more an art than a science in a land where all resources, save manpower, were thin on the ground). As authoritative an account of Giap and his considerable achievements as is likely to be available any time soon. (Photographs and maps—not seen.)
Pub Date: Jan. 11, 1993
ISBN: 0-393-03401-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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