Nonfiction Review: “Verdi’s Shakespeare” by Garry Wills
RECOMMENDED “If music be the food of love, play on.” So the lovesick Duke Orsino declaims at the top of Twelfth Night. He is speaking of his unrequited feelings for Olivia. But he could as easily have...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Chicago Portraits” by June Skinner Sawyers
RECOMMENDED Chicago is a relative whippersnapper among the great cities of the world, but its persisting roll-up-the-sleeves attitude toward life and work may be why it has produced so many high...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave...
As Nelson Algren taught us, since its founding Chicago has been a city of hustlers and squares. Such a straightforward dichotomy between inhabitants makes the generation of narrative easy: conflict is...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: The Edible Series
Behind every great meal is an epic history of conquest, revolution and scandal. It’s easy to forget in the age of refrigerators, supermarkets and GrubHub that the spice trade once rivaled the modern...
View ArticleBalm for Gilead: Novelist Marilynne Robinson essays America
By John Freeman Iowa City, Iowa—Marilynne Robinson’s teaching and writing—including the novels “Housekeeping,” “Gilead” and “Home”—have been crucial to a generation of writers. Now she has a few...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Writings From the Sand, Volume 1: Collected Works of...
RECOMMENDED In the 1960s, writers like Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson started what became known as the Gonzo style of journalism, in which writers used a combination of writing techniques and...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Sincerity” by R. Jay Magill, Jr.
RECOMMENDED After Wikipedia and its endless garden of forking hyperlinked paths, through which we can create our own DIY knowledge webs, why bother reading longform nonfiction at all? The usual answer...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Ghost Milk: Recent Adventures Among the Future Ruins of...
When the decision came down that Chicago would not play host to the 2016 Olympics, the city was divided between relief and regret. Four years earlier, when London was announced as the chosen city for...
View ArticleFiction Review: “The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln” by Stephen L. Carter
Instead of an East Room shrouded in black lace, instead of flocks of mourners lining the railroads, instead of imperishable verse from Walt Whitman, the novelist Stephen L. Carter presents Illinois’...
View ArticleThis Is Not For You: James VanOsdol Documents Radio’s Q101 Era
Much has changed in Chicago radio in the past few years, especially with longtime alternative rock station Q101. Those who grew up listening to “Chicago’s New Rock Alternative” are no doubt familiar...
View ArticleTransition Game: Longtime Reader Editor Michael Lenehan on Race, Basketball...
By Brian Hieggelke I’ve known Michael Lenehan for more than twenty years, in that distant friendly way you know your competitors. He was the top editor of the Chicago Reader from the time we started...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream” by...
“After Hiroshima, after the death of Roosevelt, and after the [House Un-American Activities Committee] investigations, only then did one begin to see the complete unreality of the American dream.” So...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” by Reza...
RECOMMENDED Atop the nonfiction bestseller list is not a celebrity drug or divorce memoir, but a biography of Jesus Christ written by Californian Reza Aslan. “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at...
RECOMMENDED Book publishing ain’t what it used to be. In another era, before mergers and takeovers, before Kindles and e-books, publishing was known as the gentlemen’s profession. It was an industry...
View ArticleCity Time Capsule: “Chicago by Day and Night” is a Lively Guide to 1890s Chicago
Chicago welcomed the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition almost twenty years after the Great Fire, inviting thousands to flood the Second City. “Chicago by Day and Night: the Pleasure Seeker’s Guide to...
View ArticleThe Last Frontier: On Ben Tarnoff’s “The Bohemians”
By June Sawyers When Mark Twain arrived during the waning days of the Gold Rush, San Francisco may have been a frontier city on the rough edge of American life, but it was also fast becoming a literary...
View ArticleThe Right to Control Our Bodies: Jonathan Eig discusses “The Birth of The Pill”
By Toni Nealie When you’ve had reliable contraception all your life, it’s easy to take it for granted. Now that politicians and religious groups are contesting women’s access to reproductive health...
View ArticleReformer on Reformer: Leigh Buchanan Bienen Documents the Legacy of Crusader...
By Amy Friedman “After a few months in Chicago, Florence Kelley’s soft-voiced but electric style of public speaking, as well as her magnetic personality and her demonstrated commitment, made her...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter...
RECOMMENDED The reason I know a smidgen about comics: I hang out with a lot of geeks. Feminist, sex-positive, queer-friendly geeks. They told me the backstory of Wonder Woman’s creator, William...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “A City Called Heaven, Chicago and the Birth of Gospel...
RECOMMENDED “A City Called Heaven, Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music,” is a thoroughly researched, dynamic account of gospel music’s history in Chicago over five decades, from the 1920s through the...
View Article
