For much of Chicago’s history, its strident boosters with their overblown assertions of the city’s present and, even more, its future greatness have been a subject of ridicule. In 1952, […]
Ernie Banks and Minnie Minoso are the headliners in Don Zminda’s book Justice Batted Last: Ernie Banks, Minnie Minoso and the Unheralded Players Who Integrated Chicago’s Major League Teams. But […]
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. […]
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 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. […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
“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 […]
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 […]
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 […]