A definitive guide and then some to what seems to be every mile of the more than 5,000 traveled by Blocksma (Naming Nature, not reviewed) along the US side of the Great Lakes. The author's comprehensive narration of her three-month solo expedition is not in the least restricted to one unifying theme. Camping enthusiasts will discover which state parks have open sites and which are wooded (mosquitoes are ubiquitous at all of them); geology buffs can read about sand dunes, rip currents, glaciers, and the five types of wetlands; the reader learns that the lakes saw some 50 shipwrecks a day in the late 19th century and that Sandusky, Ohio, once had the largest roller coaster in the Midwest. The indefatigably curious Blocksma tours a sewage treatment plant on Lake Erie and a nuclear power facility on Lake Michigan; is warned away by guards at the gate of an exclusive resort in Harbor Springs, Mich.; visits the birthplace of the dune buggy; and parasails over Grand Traverse Bay. At a lunch counter near Green Bay, Wis., she discovers that more than 12,000 people are on the Packers season-ticket waiting list. At times, Blocksma's encyclopedic prose threatens to overwhelm the casual reader. She is fond of nautical measurements and a compulsive maker of lists, noting everything from fish species to park fees. Yet there is something agreeable about her wide-eyed excitement over this abundance of minutiae and arcane detail; her attention to statistics and description at times echoes John McPhee. Even more praiseworthy is her tenacity, as she camps alone and interviews a dizzying number of park rangers, fishermen, sailors, historians, nuclear-plant workers, hoteliers, and seemingly anyone else within reach—though some of the conversations are amazingly mundane. Blocksma contributes mightily to our understanding of a vital section of the continent.
Pub Date: March 14, 1995
ISBN: 0-14-017881-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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