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).
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. […]
Throughout human history, children grew up watching plants grow and become food. They helped plant seeds. They helped tend the field or orchard. They helped harvest the rice or the […]
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. […]
Walk the goofy walk of the Galilee clown, laughing at denarii or spilling the coins in anger amid the pigeons and lambs, music of the heavens, lyrics by sacred hoboes […]
Each morning, I wake up to two stories. One is loud and distressing, shrilly demanding attention. The other is quiet, gentle and calm. One is like being caught in a […]
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 […]
The 1902 plan to revamp and expand the National Mall in Washington, DC, was the product of a commission of prominent Americans. Three of them worked closely together to produce […]
Some time ago, a priest drove a bunch of us teenagers somewhere. As we headed down the Dan Ryan just past the turnoff for the Stevenson, he said, “Look out […]
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 […]
In 1944, at the age of 13, Brooke Randel’s grandmother Golda Indig was with her older sister in the German death camp of Auschwitz. They had been separated from the rest […]