It’s no easy task to write a readable history of the WWII years leaving out all battles and concentrating on how the bill...
Final volume in the definitive biography (following The Economist as Savior, 1920–1937, 1994, etc.) of the brilliant British economist.
Keynes (1883–1946) may or may not have been the greatest economist of the last century, but he was certainly the most influential. Moving easily in academic, literary, business, and political circles, he was merely an unpaid advisor to the Treasury (albeit with his own office) during the 1930s and ’40s, yet no British politician could ignore him. Rejecting Marxism and socialism, he also dismissed much of classical economics. Many of his ideas outraged traditional economists. He taught that efforts at a balanced budget made no sense. He advocated generous government spending during slumps but frugality in boom times. Skidelsky (Political Economy/Warwick Univ.) begins the present volume with Keynes at the peak of his influence in 1937. This was partly due to the power of his ideas but also because he advocated programs politicians were eager to follow for other reasons (it was, after all, the Depression). Almost immediately he was caught up in the preparations and financing of WWII. Keynes’s advice ensured that Britain’s enormous war budget did not produce the damaging inflation that occurred during WWI. In addition, he advocated a postwar monetary system that avoided the chaotic currency swings that stifled trade and aggravated economic cycles between the wars. Negotiating with the US, he was forced to compromise, but the successful Bretton Woods agreement contained many of his ideas. His greatest failure was America’s 1945 refusal of a massive grant to revive England’s crippled economy. Readers accustomed to the History Channel view of the two allies as blood brothers will be surprised to learn how aggressively US leaders strove to eliminate Britain’s empire and economic influence.
It’s no easy task to write a readable history of the WWII years leaving out all battles and concentrating on how the bill was paid, but Skidelsky succeeds superbly.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-03022-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
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
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