Mostly engaging, diverse tales of offbeat travel adventures.
The latest intriguing batch of travel writing from the venerable series.
With series editor Wilson, National Book Award winner Vollman (Imperial, 2009, etc.) pulls together a wide range of pieces, including Monte Reel's look at how to explore the world like a Victorian gentleman and Elliott D. Woods’ essay on the zabaleen, or garbage pickers, in the Garbage City of Cairo. “There are real-life garbage kings in the village with informal businesses worth millions of dollars,” writes Woods, “but most of the 60,000 in the Garbage City live modest lives defined by hard labor and strong family obligations.” Indeed, many of the pieces will not make readers hurry to follow the narrator's footsteps—e.g., Henry Shukman's visit to Chernobyl, where a strange lushness permeates the region, or J. Malcolm Garcia's haunting and brutal piece on a murder where everyone knows what happened, but no one is willing to talk for fear of reprisal. Other narratives may entice fellow travelers, however—e.g., Paul Theroux's short piece on the Maine coast and, for those with a religious bent, Kimberly Meyer's essay on the elaborate Passion play performed each year in the Holy City of the Wichitas. From crossing the border in Tijuana in search of the Tijuana Sports Hall of Fame, to walking the border fence between the United States and Mexico, these stories, from such publications as National Geographic, Outside, Esquire and the Atlantic, undoubtedly bring a taste of adventure to readers. Though not filled with glamor and glitz, they open a window onto the strange, seedy and beautiful in the world, offering readers glimpses into places that many will never see or experience except through the eyes and words of these writers.
Mostly engaging, diverse tales of offbeat travel adventures.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-80897-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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