Review: No Names by Greg Hewett Is Just Plain Lazy
Some debut novels confidently announce a fresh, fully realized voice. Others are a little uneven and wear their amateurishness obviously. I’m afraid Greg Hewett’s debut No Names belongs to the […]
Review: Scream of Protest, Cry from the Heart, For Gaza’s Children: Black, Brown and Jewish Writers and Poets Speak Out, edited by Marc Lamont Hill, Haki Madhubuti, and Keith Gilyard
For Gaza’s Children is a scream of protest against the oppression of Palestinians by those who have suffered oppression themselves. It is a cry from the heart against the destruction, […]
Review: A Spirit of Discord, Reform and Unorthodoxy, The English Soul: Faith of a Nation, by Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd’s The English Soul: Faith of a Nation, is a rich and odd book. Rich because of the author’s storytelling skill and odd because it doesn’t tell the story […]
Review: The How, When, and Why of Rail Lines, A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps, by Jeremy Black
The 1897 image on pages 110 through11 of Jeremy Black’s A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps is a striking bird’s-eye view of Chicago, looking across downtown to the […]
Interview: Author Tod Lending Talks About Finding Hope Amid Nazi Horrors in The Umbrella Maker’s Son
Chicago author Tod Lending’s debut novel The Umbrella Maker’s Son is a cinematic page-turner of a book. Set against the Nazi rise to power before World War II, this heartfelt […]
Review: Learning to Love the Feel of Words in The Braille Encyclopedia
“I grew up in a nest feathered with words, texts, and books,” Naomi Cohn writes in the first essay of her lyrical debut memoir, The Braille Encyclopedia: Brief Essays on […]
Review: The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir, by Neko Case
Before a full house at the Fine Arts Building’s Studebaker Theater, singer-songwriter Neko Case appeared on stage in conversation with Lior Phillips, a Chicago-based South African music journalist. Case received […]
Book Smarts: The Armadillo’s Pillow in Rogers Park
Welcome (back) to Book Smarts, a semi-regular series profiling Chicago’s bookstores and their owners. We began the series way back in 2020…then the pandemic happened. As bookstores closed, the series […]
Chicago Is Lit: A Literary Pub Crawl & More February Events
Authors are frequently asked, “When is your book coming out?” I heard this question when I finished the first draft of my novel, and while I was editing the sixth […]
Review: An Elegant Tour of Great Buildings, The Story of Architecture, by Witold Rybczynski
The 1902 plan to revamp and expand the National Mall in Washington, DC, was the product of a commission of prominent Americans. Three of them worked closely together to produce […]
Interview: “Body Horror at Every Turn”: Peter O’Keefe and Counted with the Dead
Born in Detroit, writer Peter O’Keefe now lives in one of Chicago’s neighbors to the north, Racine. Through the years he’s written for everything from “word processing temp jobs” to […]
Channeling Book Fair Nostalgia: Call & Response Books’ Grown Up Book Fair
Many adult readers remember, with a good dose of nostalgia, the excitement and awe they felt at the annual Scholastic Book Fair. Books were trundled into the school and displayed, […]