Freelance writer Burnham takes on precious American myths in this look at America's historically disinherited. Burnham doesn't see conspiracies lurking in all of America's hallowed corners, but he does see small cover-ups and big omissions that miscast the way we view our national heritageone dominated by propertied white males. Among other ills, Burnham sees the confused conception of the American Indian; the reluctance to confront slavery at restored estates of the antebellum South; the overlooked majority of women; and the unremembered working classes. With the intention of exploring and correcting these oversights and misconceptions, Burnham visited numerous historical sites, and what he discovered was fascinating. Noting all the memorials dedicated to victims of Indian massacres, he writes, ``almost anyone would conclude that it was not the native population that virtually disappeared by the turn of the twentieth century, but the white one instead.'' He found that the slave quarters at Arlington House in Virginia now function as a bookstore while those at Jefferson's Monticello have been turned into rest rooms; that, from Puritan Hannah Duston, who slew her Indian captors, to laborers in the textile mills, we have been ``more likely to put women on metaphorical pedestals than marble ones''; and that hundreds of workers who never achieved John Henry's legendary status lived and died without a plaque to mark their achievements. Burnham does see the dilemma in finding a suitable balance between historical authenticity, current and period sensibilities, and, yes, commercial successand he rightly points out that the various philanthropic and government institutions responsible for the sites are neither unbiased nor omniscient, however much visitors tend to assume they are. Acute and elegantly written social commentaryessential reading for peripatetic and armchair tourists alike. (25 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-571-19862-7
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
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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