The human side of research medicine is the focus of this account of three patients participating in clinical trials of new drugs for the treatment of AIDS and cancer. In 1995 and 1996 science writer Kelly (co-author with Thomas Verny of The Secret Life of the Unborn Child, not reviewed) spent some 200 hours with Edward Sandisfield, Romy Hochman, and Julie Conte as they faced life-threatening diseases. Sandisfield, a middle-age gay man knowledgeable about AIDS and its treatment, was so desperate to win a place in the clinical trial at Bellevue of a new protease inhibitor, indivir, in combination with AZT and 3TC, that he was prepared to lie his way into the program if necessary. The Hochmans put their 14-year-old daughter with osteosarcoma (a form of bone cancer that frequently metastasizes to the lungs) into a clinical trial at NYU Medical Center to boost her chances of survival; however, Romy was randomized into the control group, receiving only standard treatment. Conte, a 34-year-old woman with breast cancer, was leery of joining a clinical trial testing a high-dose combination-drug therapy, but having already lost her mother and one sister to the disease, she entered the program at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Pennsylvania. Kelly stayed with his three subjects during exams, interviews, and treatment, observing them and talking to them about their experiences, their hopes, and their fears, and interviewing their families, friends, and doctors. Some conversations seem to be reported verbatim, at times giving the stories an up-close and personal feel. In each, Kelly inserts an essay on the disease and the treatment being tested. While the stories end with all three patients alive, an afterword reveals that by 1997 one had succumbed. Kelly’s discussion of the medicine is thorough, but the portraits of his subjects are uneven. Sandisfield’s story is the most complete and his character and his world the best delineated; by comparison, Conte’s story seems sketchy, and the teenager Hochman remains opaque.
Pub Date: Jan. 12, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-10113-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1998
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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