In this illuminating chronicle of the progress of medicine in understanding and battling infectious diseases, Glasser links the work of today's immunologists, microbiologists, and virologists with the struggles of earlier medical pioneers. Glasser (The Greatest Battle, 1976, etc.) honors the clear-thinking men—Jenner, Semmelweis, Pasteur, and Koch, among others—whose observations challenged the accepted medical dogma of their day and finds telling parallels in more recent events. As he sees it, the refusal in the 1980s of blood-bank officials to consider that their plasma supplies might be contaminated with HIV echoes the refusal of hospital physicians in Semmelweis's day to believe their unwashed hands were causing childbed-fever deaths. Medicine has never done well, Glasser says, when ``dismissing focused observations or ignoring scientific fact . . . and nowhere has this been more obvious than in the study of infections and the relationship of infectious disease to the world of cells, cellular function, and DNA.'' Glasser takes the reader into that world by going back to the very beginnings of life on this planet. The idea that the fundamental unit of life was the cell, is, he says, a prejudice that still exists today. What he focuses on are viruses, minute crystal-like structures, less than one ten-thousandth the diameter of a cell, that evolved along with cellular life, may even have shaped the way cells evolved, and are today recognized as the causes of devastating diseases. More recently, a new kind of infectious disease was discovered when ``mad cow'' disease was found to be transmitted not by a virus but by special proteins called prions. It was, for Glasser, yet another demonstration of observation beating dogma and authority. A well-conducted tour for those curious about genes, viruses, DNA, and our mysterious immune system. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 24, 1997
ISBN: 0-571-19916-X
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1997
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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