Not profoundly revelatory, but the intimate look into the way decisions were made brings Roosevelt very much into human...
Intelligent, informed thoughts on FDR’s presidency by a close associate: Solicitor General, Attorney General, and finally Supreme Court Justice Jackson (1892–1954).
Written in the early 1950s but only recently discovered by editor Barrett among Jackson’s personal papers, the manuscript considers FDR in separate chapters as a politician, lawyer, commander-in-chief, administrator, economist, leader, and friend. Although the text has a finished quality, it also has the brevity of quick notes jotted down with examples of Roosevelt’s strengths and weaknesses in each department. Jackson promises readers the “testimony of an interested witness” and takes seasoned measure of a man so often “the subject of undiscriminating idolatry or of unreasoning hate.” What the author saw was a self-confident gentleman, brimming with intellectual capital, informal but dignified, capable of being mercurial and of trespassing on legislative turf, as when he tried to remove policymakers outside executive agencies. Jackson unveils episodes of step-by-step policy formation, as when the administration exchanged destroyers for naval and air stations in the Atlantic, bypassing (with dubious constitutionality) Congressional approval. He also points out, again with examples, Roosevelt's shortcomings: FDR was “impatient of the slow and exacting judicial process”—impatient, indeed, with anything that was slow and exacting—and Jackson remarks that, for someone who effected radical changes on the economic landscape, his friend’s vision “did not impress me as being grounded in economic theory or practice.” Rather, FDR made his decisions based on political judgment and social philosophy, which he was able to communicate to the man on the street. Jackson writes smoothly and manages to compress many angles of complex material into a brief text.
Not profoundly revelatory, but the intimate look into the way decisions were made brings Roosevelt very much into human focus. (24 halftones, not seen)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-19-516826-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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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