An informative, infectious introduction to the joys of electric vehicles.
Ditch your gas guzzler and rev up your electric car, urges this gung-ho manifesto.
Sydney, a technology trainer and editor of the Sustainable Transport Club Newsletter, sidesteps discussion of climate change from automotive greenhouse-gas emissions and instead bases his brief about electric vehicles on the prospect of rising gasoline prices. After a wide-ranging, cogent but somewhat disorganized look at the spiraling costs of oil production, he turns to electric vehicles as a surefire liberation from “the tyranny of the price at the pump.” His statistics make an eye-opening case for the cost advantages of electric cars; the high sticker price, he says, is balanced by superefficient electric motors with very low fuel costs. Much of the book is a love letter to the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid vehicle, which has the range of a conventional car, gets up to 1,700 miles on three gallons of gas, deploys the torque of a Camaro and holds its own in a drag race with a Porsche and a Mustang. Sydney acknowledges the pitfalls of EVs, which require a paradigm shift from an “ICE [internal combustion engine] mindset” to an “EV mindset” of constrained mobility that, he makes clear, represents a significant lifestyle commitment. EV drivers, he counsels, must be pervasively aware of weather, terrain, traffic and other factors that shorten range and may need to own or rent ICE vehicles for long hauls. He narrates several California road trips whose itineraries are strategically planned around access to still-rare—and slow—public charging stations. Overall, the book’s prose is rambling and occasionally awkward. However, Sydney’s technical explanations are lucid, and he brings a wealth of understanding and contagious enthusiasm to his subject that make the book an absorbing read for gearheads and novices alike.
An informative, infectious introduction to the joys of electric vehicles.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 225
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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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