Disraeli (1804-81) was an outsider who cultivated the art of letters as successfully as he practiced the craft of politics. Here, Weintraub (Arts and Humanities/Pennsylvania State University; Long Day's Journey into War, 1991, etc.) meticulously traces the British PM's life and personae. Son of a minor literary antiquarian, Disraeli—partly because, as a Jew, he was excluded from most other professions—began at age 21 to write social and political novels. Mysterious, prodigal, and theatrical, he cultivated a Byronic style as a womanizer and dandy, even undertaking a tour of the Mideast. His charm and charisma helped him overcome the many barriers to public office, and, in 1868, he became PM and confidant to the enfeebled Queen Victoria, permitting him, as he put it, to hold the ``top of the greasy pole'' as the leader of England during its imperial age. Unable to accomplish domestic reform in Parliament, he expressed his radicalism in his many influential novels, especially Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845), and Tancred (1847), evoking the horrid conditions of the poor, the ineffectualness of the law, the irrelevance of the aristocracy, and the spiritual poverty of the Church. In his unique aphoristic style, Disraeli claimed to ``live for Power and the Affections,'' finding love among many women; marrying, in order to escape debt, a 40-ish widow 12 years his senior; reputedly fathering two illegitimate children; and flirting with a whole series of women when, in his 60s, he was at the height of his political power. ``Somehow,'' Weintraub says, ``England survived Disraeli's separation from reality.'' With erudition and zest, Weintraub explains the byzantine nature of 19th-century politics, the significance of Disraeli's Jewishness, and the relation between the fiction and reality. But the inner life eludes him—just as it seems to have eluded Disraeli. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 7, 1993
ISBN: 0-525-93668-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
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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