Exploring the Land of Lincoln: The Essential Guide to Illinois Historic Sites By Charles Titus 3 Fields Books I asked my non-Illinoisan Twitter followers to tell me three things they knew about […]
The Chicago River, as many of us know, once flowed the other way, into Lake Michigan. It was reversed—a triumph of engineering, at the time—to move sewage and waste water away from […]
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 book about […]
Even via Zoom, Don Evans is passionate about Chicago’s relationship with the written word. A writer, editor, and teacher, Evans is also the executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame […]
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 pm on […]
Patrick T. Reardon, a regular contributor to Third Coast Review, recently released his new book, The Loop: The “L” Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago (SIU Press). More than a history of […]
Sidekicks, comic foils, and other stock and background characters: cinephile and essayist David Lazar loves watching old movie character actors more than the leads. In his latest book, Celeste Holm Syndrome: On […]
Midwest Futures By Phil Christman Belt Publishing The Midwest is a deeply mysterious place to the coastal essayists, pundits, and politicians. Rarely visiting, save to write clunky closed factory and “Whither Main […]
Chicago Apartments: A Century and Beyond of Lakefront Luxury By Neil Harris with Teri J. Edelstein University of Chicago Press, 364 pages, $85 Reading Neil Harris’s Chicago Apartments: A Century and Beyond […]
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, […]
Too many books, not enough time—it’s the eternal struggle of the book lover. Unfortunately, nature and society have conspired to ensure we all shelter in place, self-quarantine, isolate, and otherwise hunker down […]
It’s pretty clear now that my wife Cathy and I—both over that red-alarm age of 60—are going to be spending basically all our time in our home for what could easily be […]
