In an attempt to rectify Zionist history, Simon Schama has re-examined the role of Baron Edmond de Rothschild and his son James in the Jewish settlement of Palestine—and, inseparably, the record of the two agencies they set up to channel their philanthropic contributions into specific projects. Author of the well-received Patriots and Liberators (1977), Schama was invited to examine the archives by the Rothschild family. He refutes Herzl's charge that the colonies were a "rich man's pastime to while away what would otherwise have been idle hours" by illustrating how Baron Edmond's immediate concern in 1882 for the sanctuary of Eastern European pogrom victims was, by the turn of the century, translated into a total commitment to the development of a self-supporting Jewish homeland and finally a state. These stages paralleled his own concrete contributions: purchasing land and equipping colonies (when colonies were not ditty words), developing cash crops and industry, and finally in 1957 simultaneously dismantling the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association while underwriting the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) building as a testament both to the existence of the Jewish state and the Rothschilds' role in building it. Along the way, Schama maneuvers skillfully through the cluttered detail of budgets, expenditures, equipment, crop experimentation (with wine, tobacco, and perfume), border disputes, and administrative problems, providing occasional vignettes of local Palestinian conditions under Ottoman rule, Baronial outrage at colonists' ingratitude toward his centralized regime, agents' ineptness, and encounters with Herzl, Balfour, and Weizmann. Meanwhile the Baron evolves from a "benevolent onlooker" to an "active accomplice"; and, with Schama's thoroughly documented, incisively written account, he and his family take theft significant places in Israeli history.
Pub Date: May 1, 1978
ISBN: 0394501373
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1978
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
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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