Exploring the Land of Lincoln: The Essential Guide to Illinois Historic Sites By Charles Titus 3 Fields Books I asked my non-Illinoisan Twitter followers to tell me three things they knew about […]
The Chicago River, as many of us know, once flowed the other way, into Lake Michigan. It was reversed—a triumph of engineering, at the time—to move sewage and waste water away from […]
What do junior high school science, science fiction, string theory, the God equation, and Elvis Presley have in common? They all played a starring role in physicist Michio Kaku and actor LeVar […]
For the Love of Cod: A Father and Son’s Search for Norwegian Happiness Eric Dregni University of Minnesota Press Eric Dregni is only partly Norwegian but that hasn’t stopped him from writing […]
Spoon River America: Edgar Lee Masters and the Myth of the American Small Town By Jason Stacy University of Illinois Press It’s ironic that Spoon River Anthology—perhaps the most famous book about […]
A parade of artists and pop art, literary and music figures from mid-century America populate Louis Menand’s new book, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War. The book looks […]
The People’s Porn: A History of Handmade Pornography in America By Lisa Z Sigel Reaktion Books Masturbation is the only sex act that’s both universal and forbidden. Universal in that everyone does […]
Another Day’s Begun: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the 21st Century By Howard Sherman Metheun Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Like most theater critics and theater lovers, I’ve seen Thornton Wilder’s Our Town […]
Fifty years ago, Daniel Ellsberg, an economist and military analyst, created a national controversy that resulted in a landmark press freedom decision by the US Supreme Court. He did it by leaking […]
Move on Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power By Aaron Cohen University of Chicago Press One of the pleasures of reading Aaron Cohen’s 2019 Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music […]
Queer Legacies: Stories from Chicago’s LGBTQ Archives John D’Emilio University of Chicago Press Reviewed by Carr Harkrader Who doesn’t love a parade? It wouldn’t be completely wrong to describe Queer Legacies: Stories […]
Author, journalist, and academic Walter Isaacson and WBEZ’s chief content officer Steve Edwards were brought together virtually to speak to the Chicago Humanities Festival about Isaacson’s new biography The Code Breaker: Jennifer […]
