Nature writing at its best.
A short, lovely chronicle of a long hike, during which McKibben (Enough, 2003, etc.) meditatively reflects on the relationship between nature and humanity.
He takes as his jumping-off point a stroll from Vermont to the Adirondacks, traversing land on both sides of Lake Champlain that he knows well. “I’ve not been able to drag myself away from this small corner of the planet,” McKibben notes, wondering whether the no-name region should be called “Adimont” or, perhaps, “the Verandacks.” As he chronicles his walk, he reflects on writing, on the place of agriculture in the curricula of liberal arts colleges, on Theodore Roosevelt’s summer in the Adirondacks (where Vice-President Roosevelt was hiking when President McKinley was shot, ushering in “the greatest environmental presidency of our history,” in McKibben’s view). Some of the most wonderful scenes occur when the author meets up with friends, who all seem to lead lives found most often in Wendell Berry novels. McKibben slips in lessons about environmental policy and science, explaining, for example, the rationales and consequences of conservationists’ decision in the last decade to work with people who have traditionally used the land they are hoping to conserve. His prose is so seductive, however, that readers will barely notice they are being instructed. In some ways, this is the most personal of McKibben’s books thus far. He has invited readers into the place that has inspired his life’s work of writing, politicking, and environmental activism—not the Amazon rain forest or a melting Arctic glacier, but the Adirondacks, which “even the New York State constitution” can’t protect from acid rain or global warming. Yet Wandering Home is intimate without being confined: McKibben roams far, far beyond the Verandacks, beyond even the topic of the environmentalism, to touch on community, local economy, simplicity.
Nature writing at its best.Pub Date: April 19, 2005
ISBN: 0-609-61073-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown Journeys
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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
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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