A fine train of architectural thought that needs airing and a bit more sunlight in order to gain a wide audience. (112...
A dry historical survey of the forces and influences that have shaped what we call home.
Gardiner (Epstein, 1993, etc.) manages to draw a fairly straight line from the cave to Le Corbusier, looking for the common threads that insured shelter and warmth but that also found local expression by way of geography, religion, and custom: the “cosmic orientation” of Chinese homes being a good example. Privacy, some form of order, and protection of possessions are needs as obvious as walls in early dwellings, with builder/designers then starting to play with space—as in the asymmetrical homes of the Japanese—and different materials and appearances. Gardiner discerns conscious efforts early on to relate humans to architecture, a trait certainly well established by the time the pyramids were built and the people of the Indus designed “the plan of the town to the rhythm of living.” Most interesting to Gardiner is the to-and-from of architectural references, the extraction of embryonic ideas and their infusion with new or customary twists: the Renaissance looking back to the Classical, or Palladio taking the fundamentals but not the bulk from classic Greek architecture. The common referents—and how they were put to such wildly disparate use—of Wright and Le Corbusier are also testimony to this looking back to see more clearly ahead. The great structural weakness here is the very lack of enthusiasm and awe (the adoption of timbered framework, thousands of years ago, by the Anatolians was “the obvious solution”) and a certain sniffiness, which is discouraging because when Gardiner loosens the corset strings—as in his discussion of the work of contemporaries like Charles Correa, Jorn Utzon, and Derek Walker—he betrays a real sense of excitement.
A fine train of architectural thought that needs airing and a bit more sunlight in order to gain a wide audience. (112 photographs and drawings)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2002
ISBN: 1-56663-480-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ivan Dee/Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
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
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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