An absorbing and comprehensive study of a sea captain and place largely forgotten by history.
An old seafaring world comes to life in this examination of the coastal trade of the mid-1800s.
Capt. Asa Eldridge gazes phlegmatically from the frontispiece of this debut biography by Miles (Boys of the Cloth, 2012). Before the author began researching Eldridge’s career, the old seafarer’s name existed only as a morsel of trivia. In 1854, Eldridge crossed the Atlantic by sail, leaving from New York and arriving in Liverpool 13 days later, establishing a speed record that’s yet to be broken. It would be sufficient if Miles contented himself with telling the story of that single feat, but he’s done far more than that in this thorough yarn. Eldridge was born at the dawn of the 19th century in the town of Yarmouth, Massachusetts, to a family that had been on Cape Cod for 200 years, quite a few of them spent seafaring. Coastal trade among Colonies (and, later, states) proved to be an occupation both profitable and adventuresome. It also taught seamen how to sail very fast: “Customers may not have cared too much about an hour either way on the voyage time, but rival captains most certainly did—especially on those frequent occasions when they decided to turn the coastal run into a race.” Eldridge learned to rig a sail and make seconds count under the tutelage of his uncle and, later, as a captain in his own right, helming ships all the way to India, Russia, and, in pre–Panama Canal days, San Francisco. Miles expertly describes the life of a sea captain in Eldridge’s day, calling his subject a thoughtful and spirited leader “capable of cajoling the thuggish deckhands into giving of their best.” Later, Eldridge became a steamship entrepreneur, redesigning the provisions on his vessels out of “humanitarian interest in improving the lot of those emigrants who could only afford passage in the steerage” and at one point helming a ship for Cornelius Vanderbilt. Readers already curious about the trans-Atlantic trade, the early days of steam shipping, and all that rigging and hauling should learn a lot from this deeply researched book.
An absorbing and comprehensive study of a sea captain and place largely forgotten by history.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9625068-8-8
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Historical Society of Old Yarmouth
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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