Lightweight, mostly amusing fare.
A busman’s holiday through the imagined, exaggerated playgrounds of the unconscionably rich.
The subjects of this gorgeously illustrated, drolly written satire are those who combine stratospheric wealth with zero social conscience. As the introduction puts it, “Because it takes more than money and privilege and cronies in all the right places to ransack Nature’s bounty for the private pleasure of the demanding few, a kind of sublime idiocy is needed to obliterate what always was and make out what never existed before.” Though the credits never specify who did what, the art that carries this project is plainly that of McCall, who has some 50 covers of the New Yorker to his credit. Taking second billing is TV host Letterman, whose previous books have generally sprung from bits or trivia on his program. Many of these short chapters could have worked even better as video shorts or as graphic narrative, since the writing generally supports the visuals rather than vice versa. The acknowledgements credit “Amanda McCall’s indispensable role” in coordinating the project; she is one co-author’s daughter and long worked for the other. What we have here is an entire globe turned into kind of a prefabricated Las Vegas for the superrich, with one famous landmark rechristened the “Taj Me-All,” while other diversions include bison paintball, nude golf and a pyromaniac’s construction of the world’s longest fireplace: “It’s the only domestic hearth in America with its own fire department, on alert 24/7 to monitor the more than sixty blazes simultaneously crackling away day and night.” There’s also a scam that “has…made billions overestimating the intelligence and underestimating the gullibility of the international art scene.” And the Godlandia theme park, where a top attraction “features a mechanical Peeping Tom caveman being shooed away from ogling a naked Eve in the Garden of Eden by a righteous mechanical Adam.”
Lightweight, mostly amusing fare.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-16368-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
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
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
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