Will delight nostalgic Californians—and make all readers think differently about the monuments in their own towns.
A wacky, illuminating exploration of the political and cultural currents swirling around four public monuments.
Lurking behind even the most seemingly innocent object is a story of power and exploitation, avers self-styled “radical historian” Frank (History/Univ. of Calif., Santa Cruz; Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America, 2005, etc.). She opens with a dazzling consideration of the redwood trunk that has long attracted tourists to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. In the 1950s, someone added date markers connecting some of the redwood’s rings to great historical events—almost all of which, Frank notes, involved “conquest, invasions, or expansion.” The preservationists who campaigned to save the redwood trees from extinction “projected onto these innocent trees…the notion of human history as the rise and fall of civilizations.” Many of them were also eugenicists, urging Americans to practice “selective breeding” in order to create a fit race that could lead the world. Another fascinating chapter looks at Santa Cruz’s Cave Train Ride, a child’s amusement-park entertainment with an adult cult following. Built in 1961, the ride features cavemen and cavewomen playing cards and hanging out at the Laundromat. Frank sensitively examines the race and gender scripts on which these vignettes draw, shedding light along the way on such diverse cultural icons as The Flintstones, Li’l Abner and Clan of the Cave Bear. The final two sections are more predictable. Frank’s investigation of two giant stone cats along California’s Highway 17 quickly leads her into a saga of “the unequal politics of history” as embodied in the relationship between the wealthy couple that commissioned the sculptures and their domestic servants. Her discussion of the Pulgas Water Temple at the Crystal Springs Reservoir focuses unsurprisingly on its function as “a charming but powerful pawn in the grand scheme of California’s environmental politics.” Nonetheless, Frank’s personal engagement and punchy prose enliven even the slighter chapters.
Will delight nostalgic Californians—and make all readers think differently about the monuments in their own towns.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-931404-09-7
Page Count: 132
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
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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