Over PBS on May 8, the 40th anniversary of V-E Day, Americans accustomed to seeing WW II in black-and-white will have their first look at "virtually the only color films of the war in Western Europe": taken by Hollywood director George Stevens, head of a special Signal Corps unit, for his own, unofficial record. In this album, along with stills from those films—not so much scenes of combat as shots of soldiers and civilians—is a succinct and expert chronicle of events, from D-Day through the German surrender and its aftermath, by British military historian Hastings (Bomber Command. Overlord). The two elements don't fuse: we see General Leclerc and his French troops entering Paris, for instance, ten pages or so before Eisenhower makes the decision to let Leclerc take the city—probably because Stevens took a lot of footage of that dramatic event. It's a fair guess, in any case, that most readers will first look at the pictures, and only then (if ever) take in the text, with its focus on salient engagements—Normandy, the bridge at Arnhem, the Ardennes—and its battle maps. The stills are bound to mean more, too, after the PBS film showing. With a few exceptions, these are not powerful images on a par with the WW II photos of Capa and Mydans and Bourke-White and many an anonymous, black-and-white still photographer: there are lots of grinning German prisoners, cheerful French civilians, and "friendly" looking Russian soldiers (though, says the caption, they "inflicted a terrible revenge upon the German people"). Did Stevens' little movie camera perhaps elicit smiles? There is something to seeing Eisenhower and Bradley and Montgomery in living color, and the rubble of Caen and Aachen in monochrome. But visually the book has no tenor or direction, no intrinsic message: too much of it, indeed, is like souvenir photos of victory. Nonetheless the text is authoritative, and the program will be an event.
Pub Date: May 6, 1985
ISBN: 1566196086
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1985
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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