Somewhat arid, as medical policy works tend to be, but of considerable use to readers with an interest in public health...
Adaption of a lecture series at the Collège de France by Piot (No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses, 2012, etc.), the founding executive director of the Joint U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS.
Though that series dates back five years, the author’s findings, updated to 2012, should give anyone pause who thinks that AIDS is a thing of the past. New antiretrovirals exist, but these are mostly available to consumers in developed nations. As Piot notes, in 2012, more than 1.6 million people died of AIDS, most “in sub-Saharan Africa, where AIDS is the first cause of death in about half the countries.” Those figures alone make AIDS the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu of 1918-1921, but international agencies have much to be proud of, since the epidemic did indeed bring about unprecedented global cooperation—and especially global funding, which amounted to $15 billion in 2012. Even so, serious challenges remain. The epidemiology, writes the author, is difficult, since the highest risk populations in much of sub-Saharan Africa are “men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and mobile populations,” people who for various reasons are difficult to monitor, with the result that “efforts to control an epidemic will be inadequate.” Efforts at doing just that have had some success, however. The spread of AIDS in Southeast Asia mostly happened in the realm of commercial sex, but campaigns for universal condom use have yielded a near-complete end to that source of transmittal. Unexpectedly, Piot adds, in some parts of the world, the epidemic has helped give voice to the voiceless, including marginalized populations, sex workers among them.
Somewhat arid, as medical policy works tend to be, but of considerable use to readers with an interest in public health issues.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-231-16626-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
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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