A highly critical, honest, and opinionated chronicle by a top United Nations official of the period that saw the UN’s transformation from peace-keeper to peace-enforcer. During the spring and summer of 1995, Corwin served as the UN’s chief political officer in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A firm believer in the UN’s historic mission as international peacekeeper, he strove for impartiality in his work and expected the same of his employer. But as peace finally appeared possible, Corwin witnessed the UN’s disturbing transition to the role of active combatant. His book, comprised of 1995 diaries and later commentaries, directly addresses this specific phase of the Bosnian war, which the author considers a turning point of lasting significance for the UN and international affairs. Corwin makes no attempt to disguise either his clear sympathy with the UN or his outright and direct criticism of—in fact, contempt for—other parties, foremost among them the international press (for their unobjective pro-Bosnian stance), the Bosnian government (for provoking NATO to enter the conflict and for rude treatment of the UN staff), and NATO (for fighting under the UN flag rather than its own and destroying “UNPROFOR’s integrity as a peacekeeping force”). Corwin does not mince words. “The leaders of all the various factions in Bosnia were merely gangsters wearing coats and ties,” he writes. Jocular and disdainful comments about the press are frequent: the UN staff dubbed the press the International Order of Reptiles; Corwin refers to CNN in his official faxes as Certainly Not Neutral; and reporter David Rohde, later held hostage by Bosnian Serbs, is described as an “ambitious, peripatetic opportunist.” Despite occasional descriptive excess, Corwin gives an honest account, clearly and succinctly explains his biases, and provides useful insight into key figures, episodes, and encounters during this pivotal phase. Trenchant observations on the Bosnian war of particular interest to those trying to make sense of the latest events in the Balkans.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8223-2126-2
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Duke Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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