Book Smarts is a semi-regular feature in which Third Coast Review writers share their favorite Chicago-area bookstores. This month, Holly Smith explores Hyde Park’s 57th Street Books. Down the Stairs […]
Abraham Lincoln’s friend and courtroom colleague Henry Clay Whitney remembered him as a man with an agile and restless mind, as “a versatile genius, whether as a man or boy. […]
Two nights ago I finished reading the marvelous and peculiar 2001 novel—Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish—by Australian author Richard Flanagan. In his pages of colorful prose, […]
We mostly remember movements through supernaturally charismatic entities who said the right thing at the right time, sparking action, winning souls, and rewriting history. In reality, every movement is made […]
Bookstore cookbook aisles are lined with images reflecting our very online, very visible lives. Curated photos of perfect dishes and happy, beautiful chefs and cooks and influencers spooning sauces or […]
“The house is a house, but it is also a metaphor; it has been described as a quantity of air trapped between floor and roof, … as a glass cage, […]
Throughout human history, children grew up watching plants grow and become food. They helped plant seeds. They helped tend the field or orchard. They helped harvest the rice or the […]
For “Lakeview Day 2025,” the Chicago Humanities Festival featured two tyranny experts, each for an hour-long interview followed by a brief Q&A, on April 27 at the Athenaeum Theatre. The […]
The title of Jake Johnson’s latest book—Unstaged Grief: Musicals and Mourning in Midcentury America—is more than a bit jarring. It’s that part about “Musicals and Mourning” that seems so odd. […]
Walk the goofy walk of the Galilee clown, laughing at denarii or spilling the coins in anger amid the pigeons and lambs, music of the heavens, lyrics by sacred hoboes […]
For regular readers of this column, Saturday’s Independent Bookstore Day is likely as highly anticipated as the Super Bowl (if not more so). If you haven’t made your game day […]
Capitalism abhors a creative gathering place—otherwise auto dealerships would put on poetry slams and hardware stores would host book clubs, wouldn’t they? While coffeehouses and restaurants often step up to […]