A useful, even timely collection, even though some of the pieces are 10 years old.
A collection of smart essays and lectures by accomplished professionals in the magazine world.
Navasky (A Matter of Opinion, 2005, etc.) is the former editor of the Nation and now a professor of magazine journalism at Columbia University. Cornog (The Power and the Story: How the Crafted Presidential Narrative Has Determined Political Success from George Washington to George W. Bush, 2004, etc.) is the former publisher of the magazine Columbia Journalism Review and now dean of the school of communication at Hofstra University. Their insightful introduction explains that they have compiled something other than a how-to book. Perhaps it is best to consider it a how-to-think-about-it book. Ruth Reichl, who as editor made Gourmet magazine a must-read for foodies, compares the way magazines operated before the advent of the Internet with the new digital-inspired reality. Other high-profile editors sharing their philosophies include Roberta Myers (Elle), Tina Brown (Talk, the New Yorker, Newsweek) and the late Michael Kelly (the Atlantic and the National Journal). Peter Canby, fact-checker at the New Yorker, and Barbara Walraff, copy editor at the Atlantic, explain why the rush of online magazine publishers should never lead print periodicals to lower standards concerning facts, grammar, spelling and the like. Without rigorous standards, confusion reigns and quality is compromised. John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper's, and Felix Dennis, publisher of Maxim and others, offer divergent views on how those controlling the budget should think about the editorial content as a way to attract and retain readers. Robert Gottlieb, former New Yorker and Simon & Schuster editor, discusses why, at a book publisher, the job of the editor is to make authors happy, but at a magazine the writer's happiness is secondary to the editor's vision of what readers will consume.
A useful, even timely collection, even though some of the pieces are 10 years old.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-231-13136-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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