Shawcross, a London Sunday Times correspondent uses Kadar essentially as the basis for an anti-Communist treatise, although the book contains valuable material about the pre-World War II Hungarian Party. By 1948 Communism, Shawcross thinks, was worse than Fascism, going downhill since the Red Army arrived along with the Muscovites of whom a "fat vulgar Jew," Zoltan Vas, was the first. About Kadar himself, an "anonymous apparatchik, a gray man in a gray suit," a quite detestable type whom no one dared befriend, Shawcross seems ambivalent yet sympathetic, alibiing his most flagrant Stalin-period crimes and subsequent lesser nastinesses. There are bits about his humility (Kadar was the bastard son of a kulak and a chambermaid), his dislike of airplanes, his chess-playing, his knowledge of the national temperament — the image of a relatively decent fellow. Rakosi, "all things to all men" and Stalin's postwar head-of-state puppet, is the bad guy, along with "the fat vulgar Jew." However, Shawcross spares no details of Kadar's role in convincing his best friend Rajk to "confess" during the 1948 purges; Rajk was hanged, and Kadar continued to climb. He had spent the Depression infiltrating the Social Democrats, who themselves were collaborating with the local fascists. It's material like this — despite a "this would never happen in England" tone and a clutter of cafe stories — that makes this a useful and critical political biography.
Pub Date: April 1, 1974
ISBN: 0297767984
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
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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