Review: Chicago’s Lost Boys: Mother Chicago, by Martin Billheimer
Mother Chicago: Truant Dreams and Specters Over the Gilded Age By Martin Billheimer Feral House Chicago is a dark place. All cities are. The more humans you pack into a […]
Review: It Is What It Is: Guide to Chicago’s Twenty-First-Century Architecture
Guide to Chicago’s Twenty-First-Century Architecture Chicago Architecture Center and John Hill University of Illinois Press As packed with tacky tourist traps as any city, Chicago has one irreproachable draw: its […]
Review: Messy Cities, Monstrous and Full of Hope, Metropolis, by Ben Wilson
Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention By Ben Wilson Anchor Books In the 1850s, Swedish writer Fredricka Bremer visited Chicago and, to say the least, was not […]
Review: Ana Castillo Traverses Loss, Grief, and Politics in My Book of the Dead
My Book of the Dead By Ana Castillo University of New Mexico Press We are caught in a time of collective mourning, moving through yet another year of the ongoing […]
Review: Poetry Collection Darkness on the Face of the Deep Takes Risks with Emotional Depths
Darkness on the Face of the Deep by Patrick T. Reardon Kelsay Books Review by Renny Golden In Darkness on the Face of the Deep, Third Coast Review writer Patrick […]
Review: Literary Festivals, Salons, and Words Aloud in Ellen Wiles’s Live Literature
Live Literature: The Experience and Cultural Value of Literary Performance Events from Salons to Festivals Ellen Wiles Palgrave Macmillan With music, open mics, and more—live performance is slowly coming back […]
Review: Hope, Nature, and Racism, Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago, by Brian McCammack
Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago By Brian McCammack Harvard University Press For African Americans who took part in the Great Migration in the first half […]
Essay: True West
One Sunday afternoon a number of years ago I found a finger puppet lying outside Maclean House, the former dormitory (now apartments) named in honor of the late Norman Maclean, […]
Review: Lefse, Lutefisk, and Other Norwegian Things, For the Love of Cod, by Eric Dregni
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 […]
Review: Small-Town Ghosts, Spoon River America, by Jason Stacy
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 […]
Review: Looking Just Like Jesus, Imagine the Dog by Cecilia Pinto
Imagine the Dog By Cecilia Pinto Texas Review Press The red-haired cop looks at Ricky Rudolph and, with an angry edge to his voice, asks, “You think Jesus Christ is […]
Review: Flashes of Wry: Fast Funny Women, edited by Gina Barreca
Note: Gina Barreca, the editor of Fast Funny Women, and Chicagoan Nicole Hollander will read from the collection of 75 essays of flash nonfiction in a Zoom event at 7 […]