A somewhat dry yet comprehensive report on Japanese women— from a professor of psychology (at Tokyo's Keio Univ.) and adviser on women's issues. Iwao reports that, not surprisingly, Japanese women—who have long been recognized as the dominant force in the home—have developed a different perspective from their US counterparts on equality, marriage, and a woman's role and identity. The author details the growing differences between the generations born between 1935-59, and those born in the 1960's or later—differences that predictably demonstrate a moving away from traditional deference to the husband, from working only in the home, and from the importance of marriage. Younger women enjoy a more egalitarian relationship with men, expect more from marriage, and anticipate having careers. But even these women are affected by the traditional tendency to value pragmatism over principle (Japanese women have legal equality but are reluctant to test it) and to be realistic about what is possible (they do not expect their husbands to be a best friend, nor themselves to be great successes). Less goal-oriented than her American counterpart, the contemporary Japanese woman values personal fulfillment, finds men's lives impossibly regimented, and ``believes that if one can achieve a workable balance among one's various roles, that is sufficient.'' Today, young women are entering corporations—but even this, Iwao contends, will not provoke confrontation. Instead, the old ``autonomy and separation of activity between the sexes will weaken, and, in Japan, where realism and pragmatism are highly prized and where evaluations are based on a long-term perspective, interdependence will be viewed affirmatively.'' An informative and useful contribution to mutual understanding—but marred by less than scintillating prose.
Pub Date: Dec. 28, 1992
ISBN: 0-02-932315-0
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
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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