Perceptive reprise of what strong-willed Margaret Thatcher did and did not accomplish during her 11-year tenure as Great Britain's first woman prime minister. Before assessing how the Iron Lady fared in office, Dellheim (History/Arizona State Univ.) offers an informative briefing on the sociopolitical forces that sapped the UK's economic strength and helped shape the future PM after WW II. Influenced by her roots (Lincolnshire), class (lower-middle), religion (Methodism), gender, and upbringing as the favorite daughter of a self-reliant tradesman, Thatcher became what the author calls ``a conviction politician, a righteous leader who loathed compromise.'' Having snatched control of the Conservative Party from enervated Tory aristocrats, she led it to victory against Labour at age 54 in the general election of 1979. Once in power, the new premier moved at flank speed to replace Britain's welfare state with what she perceived as the blessings of an enterprise culture. As an awesomely self-assured head of government, Thatcher unleashed a convulsive counterrevolution that wrested control of the national agenda from entrenched guardians of the progressive consensus. With a solid majority in Parliament, she oversaw the privatization of state-owned industrial concerns, brought fractious trade unions to book, made business a respectable profession, and otherwise pushed Britain to make its own way; in the process, however, her abrasive, obdurate style antagonized small but important constituencies, in particular the Oxbridge-educated intelligentsia (a.k.a. the chattering classes). Ironically, it was fellow conservatives, not socialist diehards, who ousted Thatcher in hopes of fostering a kinder, gentler version of her Darwinian faith in capitalism and sovereignty. A savvy scholar's vivid and informative account of a consequential figure who indeed made a difference in an island nation ripe for change.
Pub Date: July 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-393-03812-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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