More than 30 years ago, two hundred trees—cottonwoods, mainly, with some horse chestnuts and hackberries—were cut down behind Lane Technical High School, and only arborist Robert Wulkowicz was there to […]
Two-thirds of the way through his history of the Democratic political machine in Chicago, Clout City, Dominic A. Pacyga gives a handful of examples of the requests for favors that […]
Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) is both mythic and intimate. So, too, are the woodcuts Barry Moser created for the centennial edition from the University of […]
Early on in Earth Shapers: How We Mapped and Mastered the World, From the Panama Canal to the Baltic Way, Maxim Samson writes, “Every landscape tells a story—the challenge is […]
In Jane Russell’s first movie role in 1943, her bra was the star, even though it barely seemed to be there. The publicity posters for The Outlaw, directed by Howard […]
Barbara H. Rosenwein’s Winter Dreams: A Historical Guide to Old Age is a deep dive into the feelings humanity has held towards older adults over the last two millennia—as seen through […]
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 […]
For eight months—September 1940 to May 1941—the German Luftwaffe conducted a ferocious bombing campaign over London and other British cities and towns. An estimated 40,000 civilians were killed and as […]
Everyone, I suppose, has a sense of the what-if of history. What if Abraham Lincoln hadn’t gone to Ford’s Theater that night and avoided assassination? What if I had taken a […]
Like many history books, Steven Conn’s The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America For What It Is—And Isn’t is a showcase of and argument for nuanced thinking. In his […]
A strikingly drawn and boldly colored map, attributed to the Jesuit priest and explorer Jean de Brebeuf, is the image used on the cover of Mirela Altic’s Encounters in the […]