A fascinating look at German contributions to the study of cancer. Nazi doctors are known for the cruel human experiments they conducted on concentration camp inmates, their euthanasia program, and their willing participation in the selection process at the death camps. Proctor (History of Science/Pennsylvania State Univ.) detailed some of this hideous behavior a decade ago in Racial Hygiene (1988). Here, he makes a major contribution to our knowledge of the other side of Nazi medicine, the study of disease. Proctor’s account is well-researched and richly illustrated, and he delineates carefully documented facts in fluid prose. But the book is marred by an unclear argument exemplified by its deceiving title. Its actual subject is German research surrounding the cause, prevention, and cure of cancer, not just under the Nazis, but from the late 19th century through the early Cold War period. This includes the leading role German scientists played in diagnosing and fighting occupational hazards that caused cancer, in particular the proof they marshaled in the 1940s that smoking cigarettes caused lung cancer. Efforts to improve health through bans on smoking and alcohol were encouraged in the more racially and hygienically conscious circles of the Nazi hierarchy, especially the SS. Yet war shortages and stress led many Germans at home and at the front to booze it up and fill their lungs with smoke; Proctor never explains sufficiently why a health-obsessed totalitarian regime so seemingly effective in policing its citizenry allowed its Volk to indulge in liquor and cigarettes. He only vaguely touches on the complex nature of life under Nazism (explored by many scholars during the past two decades) and ventures onto shaky ground when discussing the relation of medical researchers to the greater society. Despite its shortcomings, an important, instructive book that expands our knowledge of the role medical researchers played in Hitler’s Germany. (39 b&w illustrations)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-691-00196-0
Page Count: 365
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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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