Chicago history, Chicago history, Lit, Nonfiction, Suburbs and exurbs

Review: Maps and Martyrs, Encounters in the New World: Jesuit Cartography of the Americas, by Mirela Altic

A strikingly drawn and boldly colored map, attributed to the Jesuit priest and explorer Jean de Brebeuf, is the image used on the cover of Mirela Altic’s Encounters in the […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Chicago history, Comics and Graphic Novels, Lit, Nonfiction, Reviews

Review: “A Repugnant Purity”: Al Capone, by Pierre-Francois Radice and Swann Meralli

Chicago is best known for its transplants. Our biggest celebrities come to a pocketful of names—most from elsewhere, but now synonymous with the Windy City. Much like Oprah, Michael, Ditka, […]

Dan Kelly /
Fiction, Lit, Reviews

Review: Searching for Meaning in the Absurd World of Rajkamal Chaudhary’s Traces of Boots on Tongue and Other Stories

The late Indian writer Rajkamal Chaudhary (1929–1967) came to prominence in the first two decades of independent India in the 1950s and ’60s, producing a prolific number of works in […]

Elizabeth Niarchos Neukirch /
Fiction, Lit, Reviews

Review: Cravings: An Inventory of Human Life, by Garnett Kilberg Cohen

Reviewed by Guest Author Arieon Whittsey Cravings, by Chicago author Garnett Kilberg Cohen, offers an exploration of life and the moments that define it through an unlikely group of characters […]

Guest Author /
Fiction, Lit, Reviews

Review: A Feel-Good Novel about Coping Together, Everybody Here Is Kin, by BettyJoyce Nash

BettyJoyce Nash will be at The Book Cellar at 4736 N Lincoln Ave. in Chicago at 7pm on Thursday, October 26, to discuss her new novel Everybody Here is Kin […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Chicago history, Chicago history, Fiction, Lit

Review: A Sparkling, Gritty, and Compassionate Collection, Dona Cleanwell Leaves Home: Stories, by Ana Castillo

The seven stories in Ana Castillo’s sparkling and new, yet gritty and compassionate collection Dona Cleanwell Leaves Home, share several common themes. Ghosts, for one, including a beautiful naked woman […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Chicago history, Events, Food, Lit, Live lit events, Nonfiction, Recipes

Review: Consuming My Religion: Holy Food, by Christina Ward

No matter how busy they were creating the universe, some gods always found time to lay down the law on what their worshippers should eat. Diets and deities have a […]

Dan Kelly /
Fiction, Lit, Reviews

Review: Bewitching Hollywood Flappers and Fairies in Kathleen Rooney’s From Dust to Stardust

At one point in Kathleen Rooney’s bewitching new novel From Dust to Stardust, the iconic Hollywood flapper Doreen O’Dare says to an interviewer, “What I’ve figured out is that the […]

Elizabeth Niarchos Neukirch /
Lit, Nonfiction

Review: A Riveting Account of a Nation of Fear, I Surrender: A Memoir of Chile’s Dictatorship, 1975, by Kathleen Osberger

Kathleen Osberger’s account of her three harrowing months as a religious volunteer with a community of Catholic nuns in Chile a half century ago brings the reader deep into the […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Children's books, Fiction, Lit

Review: Wonder and Joy and Questions, The Happy Prince & Other Tales, by Oscar Wilde

It’s something of a surprise to be reminded that Oscar Wilde—the author of The Picture of Dorian Gray and the subject of a scandalous 1895 trial over consensual homosexual acts—wrote […]

Patrick T. Reardon /
Fiction, Lit, Reviews

Review: Julia Fine Weaves an Alluring Gothic Fairy Tale in Maddalena and the Dark

Vividly set amongst the winding cobblestone streets and shadowy canals of 18th century Venice, Chicago writer Julia Fine’s Maddalena and the Dark is a wonderfully moody, gothic fairy tale about […]

Elizabeth Niarchos Neukirch /
Art & Museums, Chicago history, Lit, Music, Nonfiction, Photography

Review: You Weren’t There, but He Was: Kill a Punk for Rock and Roll, by Marty Perez

According to the foreword of Kill a Punk for Rock and Roll, music photographer Marty Perez is a very likable guy. The fact that providing a bio in the book […]

Dan Kelly /