Rodham: A Novel By Curtis Sittenfield Random House We think we should all know her by now. After decades in the limelight, Hillary Rodham Clinton remains, for many, an enigma. Now author […]
Book Review: The Problem of Being Female—Rodham: A Novel
Essay/Book Review: The Vast Chicago Street Grid, Cities of the American West, Part 1
Cities of the American West A History of Frontier Urban Planning By John W. Reps Princeton University Press, 827 pages, available on the internet starting at $40 Part One of Two Parts […]
Book Review: Radical of Radicals, Formed in Chicago, Dorothy Day by John Loughery and Blythe Randolph
Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century By John Loughery and Blythe Randolph Simon and Schuster Dorothy Day—that radical of 20th century radicals, that voice of conscience in the face of a self-centered, self-indulgent, […]
Book Review: Banned Book Club—By Kim Hyun Sook, et alia
Banned Book Club By Kim Hyun Sook, Ko Hyun-Ju, and Ryan Estrada Iron Circus Comics Alongside guns, flags, and cats, few things spark people’s passions more than books. And why not? Books […]
Book Review: “The Best Color for Everything Anyway”—Stateway’s Garden by Jasmon Drain
Stateway’s Garden By Jasmon Drain Penguin Random House There are many reasons to read Stateway’s Garden, Jasmon Drain’s debut story collection, but perhaps the most unexpected is the case it makes for […]
Book Review: Fighting Racism with a Teacup, Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance, edited by Richard A. Courage and Christopher Robert Reed
Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance: New Negro Writers, Artists and Intellectuals 1893–1930 Edited by Richard A. Courage and Christopher Robert Reed University of Illinois Press, 296 pages, $28 In November 1904, […]
Poem for a Pandemic: Blessed
Blessed Blessed are the dead and the dying. Blessed, the mourn-filled good-byes to loves behind glass, behind walls. Blessed, neighborhoods of pain, grief communities, lightning-struck homes, annunciations of the […]
More Than a Golf Course—Author Susan L. Kelsey on Billy Caldwell/Chief Sauganash
Like many Chicagoans, Susan Kelsey was likely familiar with Caldwell Woods and the Billy Caldwell Golf Course on the northwest side, but her first introduction to the historical figure behind the name […]
Book Review: Gritty, Oppressive, but Not Ugly Enough, “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair Gets the Graphic Novel Treatment
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, adapted and illustrated by Kristina Gehrmann, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger Ten Speed Press, 384 pages, $24.99 Kristina Gehrmann’s graphic novel version of Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The […]
Beauty, Horror, and Waraq Dawali: Sahar Mustafah Reinvents the American Dream, Chicago-style, in Debut The Beauty of Your Face
After Afaf’s older sister disappears one night, their family is never the same. As her mother succumbs to mental illness and her father to alcoholism, Afaf struggles to come of age as […]
Long Reads Are Lonnnnnnnnnnnnng—Extra-Long Books for the Serious Social Isolationist
Third Coast Review writer Patrick T. Reardon recently published a fine piece in praise of tackling extra-long reads during the social isolation era. For those who’ve completed all the popular great big […]
Bored in Quarantine?: Eight Great Comics and the Local Comic Stores That Sell Them
As people across Chicago quarantine themselves to curb the spread of COVID-19, they realize there are only so many episodes of Tiger King to binge on. For those seeking other ways to […]
