An unabashedly sentimental and affecting portrait of a modern-day animal-loving hero.
One man’s dedicated mission to rescue death-row dogs across the country.
Freelance journalist Zheutlin began saving dogs after finally giving in, in his late 50s, to adopting a yellow Lab for his family, a pet with whom to “grow old together.” This decision spurred interest in the global rescue dog movement, bringing him face to face with seasoned veteran puppy savior Greg Mahle, whose “Rescue Road Trips” organization transports dogs via trailer from barbaric kill shelters in the rural South (an area particularly indifferent to spaying and neutering animals) to points north. Early on, he even accepted stray “throwaways” right from roadways and dumpsters. In 2014, Mahle’s efforts garnered national attention on the Today Show, which exploded his group’s popularity. Energized to participate, Zheutlin began shadowing Mahle, gaining insight into his motivations and how he began the revelatory rescue work after the last of his family’s five restaurants closed in 2005. The biography paints him as a traditional man, married to longtime companion Adella, a stepdad to her son, Connor, and still driving the same old white panel van used in his very first rescue transport missions. The author accompanied Mahle on three of his fee-based rescue missions inside the gargantuan, kennel-filled tractor trailer typically filled with upward of 80 dogs collected and diligently transported to “forever homes” with adoptive families in the Northeast. The exhaustive gathering process and continuous care of the dogs and the tender, unavoidable human-animal bonding experience that transpired ground the book with heart and immense compassion. Written with straightforward clarity, much of the book’s spirit is generated from chronicling Mahle’s honorable and humanitarian work with severely at-risk animals and the emotional investment of the movement’s many contributors. Zheutlin’s closing chapter offers useful advice to readers eager to adopt their own rescued pet.
An unabashedly sentimental and affecting portrait of a modern-day animal-loving hero.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4926-1407-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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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