Lively exposÇ of the construction of Rincon Center, a mixed- use complex (apartments, offices, shops, restaurants) in San Francisco. In 1984, the city made available a single square block for building, which Ron Verrue, a developer, thought might be the last chance in some years to erect a large tower in the city. He formed a partnership with a large contracting company and a structural engineer and submitted the winning bid for the site. Los Angeles Times correspondent Frantz (Selling Out, 1989, etc.) writes vividly of the multilayered, byzantine financing assembled by the developer, the bottom line of which is never to risk your own money. The most important instrument of the initial financing was raising cash by selling—to investors looking for tax write- offs—huge paper-losses on the early years of the construction loan. The greater part of Frantz's lively account concerns Scott Johnson—Harvard whiz-kid and protÇgÇ of architect Philip Johnson (no relation)—who became the chief architect of the project. Johnson considered himself primarily a visual artist, an ``aesthete'' in his words, although he also said that ``Architecture today must be responsive...to the community, to the clients.'' When Allan Temko, Pulitzer-winning architecture critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, called Johnson's twin towers design ``purloined'' from Philip Johnson and Cesar Pelli, Johnson turned all his interest to the atrium—where he could show off his stuff—and spent a year squabbling with the city over the color of its glass and searching for an artist who could design a dramatic ``water event'' (fountain). Johnson was unable to make the building livable from the walls in; another architect had to be hired to follow him around cleaning up the messes. After Johnson left the project, several million dollars were spent redesigning and rebuilding the apartments. There is so much money in big construction that the project survived the Tax Reform Act of 1986—which cut out its main financial base, a $25 million cost overrun—and still turned a profit. An absorbing and lucid account of this business. (Eight pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Sept. 10, 1991
ISBN: 0-8050-0996-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991
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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