English astrophysicist Gribbin (Timewarps, White Holes, etc.) proves once again that he is a lucid and fluent expositor to lay readers. But there is some sleight-of-hand here. In this volume, says Gribbin, he wants to dwell on the anomalies of space in an Einsteinian universe: matter disturbs the smooth flatness of the terrain, producing the gravity wells or warps predicted by general relativity theory. However, these are but foils that allow Gribbin to introduce those major distortions of space—wells that close in upon themselves: the black holes. Once they are encountered and possible candidates detailed, they provide a springboard by which to describe white dwarfs and other assemblages of compacted matter, along with the evolution of stars. The material covered, in the end, is much the standard fare we meet in other contemporary surveys of cosmology/astrophysics—including Gribbin's. A new wrinkle, possibly, is his idea that the present universe may be a black hole turned inside out. Whether or not the universe will continue to expand ad infinitum, or contract back to the ultimate singularity that was the Big Bang, becomes food for thought on the amount of mass in the universe. Some calculations suggest that perhaps 90 percent of the mass may be undetectable—black holes not near enough to perturb visible masses. Some authorities, Gribbin admits, find this an off-putting thought: astronomers, after all, like to think that their domain is investigatable. Apparently such conjectural invisibility does not daunt Gribbin (a theorist), nor one of his most admired contemporaries, Stephen Hawkins, who has spawned a theory of miniblack holes. As a variation on Gribbin's and other recent popularizations, the book is fine—just remember you may have read it elsewhere already.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1983
ISBN: 0385293666
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983
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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