A dry-as-dust look at the hardware that fought the cold war, by the author of more than 25 works of military history and a veteran of more than 36 years of military service. Miller, who is credited as the author of Jane’s Major Warships, is in dire need of an editor who can whip his senseless listing of weapon system after weapon system into something approaching interesting reading. Though few will argue that the cold war was won by anything other than massive defense spending, there certainly was more to the conflict than weaponry. The Cold War is billed as “A Military History,” but there is almost nothing of the historical details that would illuminate such theaters of action as Korea and Vietnam, almost nothing of the countless espionage cases or the other conflicts that brought the United States and the Soviet Union face to face, whether in actual battle or by proxy, and nothing at all of the millions who actually fought the war. Miller concentrates instead in looking at the submarines, aircraft carriers, missiles, fighter planes, bombers, tanks, and virtually every other tool in the modern major general’s arsenal. Although he describes these weapons in numbing detail, he does little to place them in the broader context of cold-war strategy, as he might have done by looking at how missile ranges affected the superpowers’ relationship with their satellites, or how submarine developments affected the brinksmanship under the seas. Despite his overwrought infatuation with technological details, Miller does offer interesting coverage of the military relationship between the superpowers and their allies, such as NATO’s division of naval duties according to traditional strengths and weaknesses. Most readers, however, will have to supply their own rationales for why, rather than how, the cold war was fought. Not a military history, a hardware history. (16 pages b&w photos)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-24183-6
Page Count: 498
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
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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