Not only do the aliens walk among us but, until recently, they were working tentacle-in-hand with the US military—or so British ufologist Good (Above Top Secret, 1988) implies in this erratically organized, incredible report. While Good's earlier book made a well-documented case for clandestine federal involvement in UFO research, this more anectodal study will convert few to the cause. Despite the tantalizing subtitle, much of what Good presents is familiar fare, beginning with his selection of reported run-ins between aircraft and UFOs. He focuses next on the provocative (and well-covered elsewhere) controversy about alleged UFO culpability in cattle mutilations. A close-up look at strange doings at a Colorado ranch plagued by mutilations sheds more mystery than light (``At about two a.m...a mechanical-sounding voice was heard coming from all the radio and TV speakers....`Attention. We have allowed you to remain. We have interfered with your lives very little. Do not cause us to take action which you will regret' ''), while Good's rapid-fire rundown of assorted purported human-alien contacts rehashes old cases like the Roswell incident (alien bodies recovered in 1947 in New Mexico). A gnarly discussion of intelligence community disinformation about UFOs follows, leading to Good's core case: the testimony of physicist Bob Lazar, who claims to have worked at an Air Force test site in Nevada where he tinkered with extraterrestrial craft and learned that aliens had been in ``liaison'' with the military until a 1979 ``incident'' resulted in the death of 66 humans and the flight of the ETs, who left their craft behind. Good does admit that Lazar's credibility has been shaken by a recent conviction for pimping. True believers will be interested to learn that Jesus may have been a ``genetically engineered'' alien; others will want to pass in favor of the more grounded work of Jacques Vallee (Revelations, 1991, etc.). (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: April 22, 1993
ISBN: 0-688-12223-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1993
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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