A real treat for New Yorker fans and dog lovers alike.
A New Yorker anthology provides a classy tribute to man's best friend.
With a foreword by Malcolm Gladwell (What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures, 2009, etc.), who also authored a piece on Cesar Millan's methods of training out-of-control dogs, and new packaging for older pieces on dogs by great masters of the literary pen (James Thurber, Arthur Miller, Roald Dahl, John Updike and others), this beautiful volume is a winner. There are 18 reproduction covers on the subject of dogs spanning the period from 1933 to the present, a number of them standouts, ranging from the sentimental to the outright satirical. The essays are organized into sections on “Good Dogs,” “Bad Dogs,” “Top Dogs and “Underdogs,” and include a piece about Long Island's Buckram Beagles in the 1930s, a salute to Rin Tin Tin, an essay about dog racing in the U.K. in the 1950s, a profile of Leona Helmsley and her bequests, which have helped establish legal rights for dogs, and an article on the New Tabernacle Baptist Church Urban Hunting Club. These contributions are interleaved with poems about dogs (five of which contain different versions of their authors' drafts), editorial cartoons and nine full-page pictures of doggy subjects. The list is long and impressive, but other notable contributors include E.B. White, Ogden Nash, Donald Barthelme, A.J. Liebling, George W.S. Trow, Donald Hall, Roddy Doyle, Jerome Groopman, Ian Frazier, Jim Shepard, Adam Gopnik, Susan Orlean, Roger Angell, T.C. Boyle, Joan Acocella and Jonathan Lethem.
A real treat for New Yorker fans and dog lovers alike.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-679-64475-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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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