Patrick T. Reardon is a Chicago historian, essayist, poet and writer who was a Chicago Tribune reporter for 32 years. He is the author of nine books including The Loop: The ‘L’ Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago (SIU Press).
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 […]
One of the many fascinating things about a city like Chicago is how the lives of millions of strangers are unknowingly intertwined. Barry Pearce gets at this in a savvy […]
Simone Lerrante is 70 years old. It is the year 2000, and she is ruminating as she looks at the panes of a large Florida window near the bed of […]
The 8-year-old inside me perked up early in my reading of Leaf Town Forever when two friends are hired by Lucinda at the Treasure Shop to search for treasures, such […]
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 […]
As a 13-year-old, I left my family’s home on Chicago’s West Side to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood at a high school seminary about 50 miles away in Momence, […]
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 […]
Early in Making No Compromise, Holly A. Baggett asks how it was that two young Midwestern women from the late 19th-century American Midwest—uncloseted lesbians and lovers, at that—became the international […]
Growing up and living female in America is a perilous endeavor. There is the gropey swimming coach, the miscarriages, the catcalls as you ride your bike, the malicious male colleague, […]
General readers, beware! Tom Comitta’s new book Patchwork isn’t for you. Patchwork isn’t for someone who wants a novel that tells a story and has characters and settings and scenes. […]
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 […]