Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Osgood is known as a winning, whimsical humorist of the airwaves, and if these 100-odd commentaries (often culminating in verse) recorded for CBS Radio over the past eight years are any indication, that reputation is well deserved. The mini-essays touch on such topics as the "Lightning Strike Convention," attended by people struck by lightning whose lives have been changed in ways undetectable by science, the Wash Your Hands effort by Massachusetts doctors to get people to save lives and stop the spread of diseases by lathering up on a regular basis, and a 7-Eleven manager who was fired for catching a thief in his store, a violation of company policy. Osgood generally works from a small wire story--usually one that exhibits what he calls HPF, or Human Perversity Factor--or a scientific/medical study that proves the glaringly obvious. Sometimes, though, he weighs in lightly but sensitively on current events, such as when he meditates on the difficulties involved in deciding what should be put into the history books, or when he laments the ways political correctness can distort the English language. Written as they are for the ear rather than the eye, some of these pieces are slight on the page, without Osgood's delivery to add flavor. But those that contain verse remain Osgood's best and most memorable work. Discussing angry drivers, for example, he posits: "There's a name unscientific for those who act this way./ I will not tell you what it is, but it starts with an A." You can almost see it on the radio. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
These 60 short nuggets from eight years of Osgood's radio broadcasts include true stories, like the man cornered by alligators and a beauty contest that became a slugfest. Amusing oddities crop up, like a snoring lawsuit, the Lightening Strike Victims' Convention, and several bungled robberies and prison escapes. Osgood explains out-of-favor words like Indian-giver, welsh, and niggardly. He even dispenses health advice on aging and warns against licking golf balls, which may have picked up weed killer. Some facts are sad statistics: U.S. prison costs exceed those of public schooling; the leading cause of death among our children age ten to 19 is auto accidents--the second is gunfire. A fine reader, Osgood (The Osgood Files) projects expressively, without monotony, even during occasional descents into doggerel. This set is fine audio, which can merit the author's praise of radio as "theater of the mind." It is a worthy addition to popular collections of humor and human interest.--Gordon Blackwell, Eastchester, NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\
— Sandra Knowles, University of South Carolina Library, Columbia, SC
— Sandra Knowles, University of South Carolina Library, Columbia, SC
American Way
For twenty-five years, Charles Osgood has been a steadying voice, wry and funny. His sage observations and offbeat stories are a sort of national storehouse of common sense. He is a miniaturist, specializing in the sometime absurdities of the law, examples of bureaucracy run amok. At times the quirky and absurd even inspire him to flights of doggerel poetry. Surely he is the only writer to ever find, or even search for, a rhyme for sysnyntenoctadecanoamide (a sleeping-inducing chemical). No sysnyntenoctadecanoamide here.
Kirkus Reviews
A collection of the radio and television pundit's best work, from the past eight years. Charles Osgood, like Art Buchwald or Erma Bombeck, possesses the sort of wry wit that seems quintessentially American, the ability to gently mock this country and its citizens with plain old common sense. Most of the pieces in the book, which are taken from Osgood's CBS radio broadcasts, concern people and the very strange things they do or say, and the book is divided into suitable sections, such as "HPF (The Human Perversity Factor)," which includes an essay on a convention held by and for lightning strike victims, or "Money Draws Flies," in which Osgood discourses on, among other topics, the hazards of winning the lottery. The author runs the gamut of topics from political correctness to patriotism, and while reading too many in one sitting is somewhat cloying, there's something to chuckle at in almost every piece. Osgood is particularly good at pointing up the foibles of both people and institutions, and finds particular pleasure in taking inflated government agencies or their minions to task, as, for instance, in a piece on the modernization of the IRS. "Yesterday the IRS brass appeared before a House appropriations subcommittee. This is the subcommittee that oversees the people who are overseeing the people who are modernizing the modernization program." Several of the essays are accompanied by doggerel that ranges from groaningly bad to delightful (such as when he includes the name of the drug sysnyntenoctadecanoamide in verse). This is the sort of collection that Osgood's fans will adore—and it may even win him some new ones.
From the Publisher
Charles Osgood’s gentle, bemused style of brief human interest stories and doggerel poetry remains a favorite, not only of the public, but of his colleagues, who never tire of interviewing or spotlighting him on their own news shows. Those who haven’t heard Osgood’s show should pick this up to discover what they’ve been missing.
—AudioFile
FEB/MAR 00 - AudioFile
[EDITOR'S NOTE: This 1999 recording was reviewed in a slightly abridged version as shown]-- Those who enjoy "The Osgood Files" on CBS radio will find familiar stuff in this brief collection from that popular feature. Charles Osgood's gentle, bemused style of brief human interest stories and doggerel poetry remains a favorite, not only of the public, but of his colleagues, who never tire of interviewing or spotlighting him on their own news shows. Those who haven't heard Osgood's show should pick this up to discover what they've been missing. Y.R. © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
