An easy-to-digest, somewhat pat overview of the media's influence on American history and politics. Streitmatter wrote this book from materials used in one of his classes on the media at American University in Washington, D.C. He has succeeded in producing a fine introductory textbook for a journalism class, but those wishing for a deep consideration of the press's impact will be disappointed. Fourteen key issues in American history and the media's influence on each are examined. Chapters end by emphasizing the media's important role in shaping events, usually for the good of society. Sometimes the praise is overwrought: Edward R. Murrow's newscasts were a ``valiant savior of the democratic way of life'' when they brought down Senator Joe McCarthy, a ``putrid presence.'' There is, admittedly, a certain satisfaction in stories of the press fighting evil, such as the manner in which Thomas Nast braved numerous threats as his biting cartoons in Harper's Weekly contributed to the downfall of Tammany Hall's infamously corrupt ``Boss'' Tweed. Similarly, there is a vindicating pleasure in reviewing Woodward and Bernstein's toppling of President Richard Nixon. But there are no great surprises here as Streitmatter reviews how Thomas Paine's Common Sense motivated colonists to rebel against England, or how Rush Limbaugh attempts to tip votes toward Republicans and create the ``Limbaugh Congress.'' Two chapters offer case studies of negative media influence. The first is the extremely popular, anti-Semitic radio broadcasts of Father Coughlin, and second is the early resistance to the women's rights movement. Left mostly unexplored is the way the media influence events while feigning objectivity, and what happens to the issues the media choose to ignore. For a deeper, more subtle analysis, readers will need to turn to scholars less enamored of the beneficent power of the press. (27 illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8133-3210-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
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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