Robinson—who's established himself as the literary equivalent of a .270 hitter with a string of solid but unmemorable baseball books (Iron Horse, 1990, etc.)—maintains his average with this bio of pitching great Christy Mathewson (1880-1925). ``Big Six,'' the sportswriters called him, for reasons lost in time—perhaps the only mysterious thing about Mathewson. Otherwise, he was the epitome of American openness, charm, and ingenuity, ``the first authentic sports hero,'' the incarnation of pulp- fiction ideal Frank Merriwell. Before Mathewson, baseball fans cheered the likes of the ``paranoid'' Ty Cobb or Cap Anson, a loudmouthed bigot. Then came Mathewson, handsome, blue-eyed, college-educated, generous—and America found an icon to worship. The pitcher hailed from a family of farming Baptists and, for a while, weighed pulpit against diamond as a career. Baseball won, to everyone's satisfaction. Soon he blitzed the Majors with his notorious ``fadeaway'' pitch (a primitive screwball); a no-hitter in his rookie year; four years of 30-plus wins; 373 total victories; and perhaps the best control of any pitcher in history. Mathewson joined forces with manager John McGraw (``an aggrieved bantam cock'') to revitalize the New York Giants and snare a World Series, during which Mathewson threw three shutouts in six days. Other triumphs followed, placed by Robinson within the context of a nation enjoying the new century with its social liberality and economic clout. Mathewson, however, remains singularly uninteresting here, apart from his amazing feats in uniform. Robinson tries to add color (``there were times when Matty spoke harshly about his teammates''), but it's like noticing the freckles on Shirley Temple. Disaster struck only after retirement, when Mathewson inhaled poison gas during a WW I training exercise and later contracted TB, leading to his death at age 45. A salutary but dull story, in these days of I-me-mine players, about a time of golden boys and Golden Years.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-19-507629-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993
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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