A thorough, timely, tautly written, and credible volume certain to be assigned by scores of journalism professors and a...
A fresh biography of a significant period in the life of Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005).
It was inevitable that Thompson’s canon would eventually reach the level of scholarly seriousness it had always merited. While many of his fans are still inspired to blaze off on desert road trips, spun on intoxicants and armed with copies of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his other important work beckons re-evaluation, even renaissance. In his second book, Literary Hub nonfiction editor Denevi (MFA Program/George Mason Univ.; Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD, 2014) carves out a decade of prime terrain, chronicling Thompson’s career from his first big break with Hells Angels through publication of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, when he grew into a prized misfit American journalist. Beginning with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the author stresses its impact on Thompson, whose already broad political worldview was quickly morphing into a personal mission: war against anything that threatened bedrock American principles. Whether chronicling Thompson’s coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, his running for sheriff as a “Freak Party” candidate, his time embedded with George McGovern’s 1972 press entourage, or the eventual resignation of Richard Nixon, Denevi hits all the key events, underscoring that Thompson was a serious journalist, driven by passion and motivated by injustice. The author clearly conducted significant research; a full quarter of the book is endnotes and source citations. Fleshing out the narrative with minutiae like what Thompson was listening to with the Hells Angels on first meeting (“The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”) or what he drank with right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan when they met (whiskey), the impressive details anchor the story with the kind of texture and scope that Thompson always appreciated.
A thorough, timely, tautly written, and credible volume certain to be assigned by scores of journalism professors and a great new book for fans ready to move past Thompson’s alter ego, Raoul Duke, to the next level.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5417-6794-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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