A revealing cultural and medical history that demonstrates how eastern European Jews, already subject to a kind of social quarantine, became the scapegoats when typhus and cholera struck New York City in 1892. Markel, a clinicial historian who now directs the Historical Center for Health Sciences at the University of Michigan Medical School, documents the quarantine year through immigrant diaries and letters, Jewish social-agency reports, government files, and the press—both Yiddish and American. Liberal use of photographs, maps, cartoons, diagrams, and drawings add to the impact of Markel's powerful narrative. When an outbreak of typhus fever in January 1892 was traced to the SS Massilia, which carried 268 Russian Jewish immigrants, every single one, sick and healthy alike, along with several thousand healthy Jews with whom they had been in contact, were quarantined on North Brother Island in the East River. The focus was not on treatment of the ill but on isolation of the suspect group and protection of the native-born. Later that year, when cholera struck, Russian Jewish immigrants were again targeted. Whereas the typhus epidemic had been managed by the New York City Health Department, the cholera outbreak brought federal and state authorities into contentious play. Markel reveals how prejudice, fear, and anti-immigrant sentiment shaped both public reaction and official policy. He points out that the intertwining of immigration policy with fear of imported disease and social scapegoating that marked this episode in our history continues to the present day, and he notes that responses to future public health crises will be as much a measure of society's perceptions of health, disease, and individual rights as they are of medical and scientific understanding. A valuable contribution to the history of public health in America, to New York City history, and to American Jewish history.
Pub Date: June 5, 1997
ISBN: 0-8018-5512-8
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
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
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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