A refreshing and inspiring look into the lives of six successful African-Americans. Lawrence-Lightfoot (Sociology/Harvard; Balm in Gilead, 1988, etc.) is perturbed by some sociologists' portrayal of the black middle class as ``materialistic bourgeois assimilationists.'' To counter that perception, she richly portrays six African-Americans. In extended conversations with her, they detail their experiences: the often riveting events that have molded their feelings about race, their attempts to negotiate the crossing between black and white society; the lives they have created for themselves, both personally and professionally. Among these exemplary people are: Toni Schiesler, a female candidate for the Episcopal priesthood; Charles Ogletree, a criminal defense lawyer and professor at Harvard Law School; Felton Earls, an epidemiologist and psychiatrist at Harvard's School of Public Health; and Cheryle Wills, entrepreneur and owner of radio and television stations. While all have achieved great success in their fields, their backgrounds differ widely. Schiesler was the illegitimate daughter of a rape victim. Earls, on the other hand, was born into a solidly middle-class family that had deep roots in New Orleans. Yet a few themes do recur. One is the cultural obsession with skin color among middle-class blacks, and a caste system favoring lighter complexions. Another theme is their intense empathy for less fortunate African-Americans. All six claim to understand the rage that surfaced in L.A. in 1992—seeing the riots as symptomatic of racism in American society. ``It wasn't senseless...it was the decades of brutalization,'' says Wills. The book doesn't present a full picture of the black middle class, with its diverse approaches to politics and debates about assimilation—but it doesn't claim to. Lawrence-Lightfoot presents successful people determined to remember where they—individually and as a people—came from, and she brings her formidable storytelling gifts to their lives. (Book- of-the-Month Club main selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 6, 1994
ISBN: 0-201-58120-5
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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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