A resolute, heart-rending story of real change and possibility in the Palestinian-Israeli impasse.
Musicians who play together break down the barriers separating them.
Veteran journalist Tolan (Communication and Journalism/Univ. of Southern California; The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, 2006, etc.) finds in the determined career of a Palestinian musician a chance for enduring harmony between Palestinians and Israelis. The poster boy for the First Intifada (1987-1993)—literally; a 1987 photograph of him as a young boy hurling stones at Israeli soldiers from his refugee camp became an iconic international image—Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan was a “child of the stones” growing up near Ramallah, West Bank, under the thumb of Israeli occupation. His mother abandoned him when he was 5, and Palestinian gangs murdered his father in 1990 due to his suspected collaboration with the Israelis. Raised by his grandfather, Ramzi absorbed the collective hatred and despair harbored by the Palestinians against their Israeli enforcers. After the Oslo Accord of 1993, many long-exiled Palestinians were allowed to return to the West Bank and Gaza, including a violinist trained in musical therapy, Mohammad Fadel, who started the Palestine National Conservatory of Music as part of an effort to infuse new life into Palestinian cultural institutions. Ramzi was chosen to play the viola, and he won a “playing for peace” scholarship to study in America and France. Eventually, he was swept into a grand friendship project between Palestinian-American literary scholar Edward Said and Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim in the form of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, based in Seville, Spain, that would promote peace through an Arab-Jewish musical partnership. Ramzi also started his own association in the West Bank, finding ways to support young Palestinian musicians while also making a political stand against Israeli occupation.
A resolute, heart-rending story of real change and possibility in the Palestinian-Israeli impasse.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4088-5304-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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