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Mythic Beacons: A Review of Jazmina Barrera’s On Lighthouses
"On Lighthouses" presents a brief nonfiction foray into Barrera's fascination with the lighthouse, a beacon that many people rarely notice or see only in movies.
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Wells Rings Resonant Over One Hundred Years Later: A Review of the New...
With the recent naming of Ida B. Wells Street in Chicago, it is a welcome time to see a second edition of Wells' autobiography.
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Churchill’s Darling Clementine: A Review of Marie Benedict’s Lady Clementine
The old saying that behind every great man stands a woman should be modified to say a determined, clever, ingenious woman.
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True Crime Stories: A Review of Harold Schechter’s Ripped From the Headlines!
Before the internet and cable television became popular, movies fed the public’s voyeuristic desire for true crime's inside information and judicial resolution.
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The Players and the Played: A Review of Miles Harvey’s The King of Confidence
Harvey’s book accepts no such popular, mythical understanding of con men, but rather builds more nuanced portraits of the players and the played.
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Homemade Citizenship: A Review of Koritha Mitchell’s “From Slave Cabins to...
Since the beginning of slavery in the United States, African Americans have been withheld from participating in society as autonomous beings. Despite many barriers, African Americans have succeeded in...
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The Mother of the Brooklyn Bridge: A Review of Tracey Enerson Wood’s The...
Historical fiction is a love/hate affair. Purists dislike the expansion of facts by the imagination of the author. Tracey Enerson Wood uses her life experiences to fill in the blanks with her novel...
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A World Without War: An Interview with Kathleen Rooney
Kathleen Rooney’s most recent historical fiction novel “Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey” looks into the forgotten lives of individuals who endured the tortuous fighting. Writing from the perspectives of...
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The Power of Buttons: An Interview with Christen Carter
Carter partnered with fellow button collector Ted Hake to share a visual history of the pin-back button that explores how buttons can shape and document politics and history.
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A Treasure Trove: A Review of “Bullets For Dead Hoods: An Encyclopedia of...
“Bullets For Dead Hoods: An Encyclopedia of Chicago Mobsters, c. 1933” is a curious title for a large format book showing only a yellowed page with pencil scribbling above the title.
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Unspooling History: A Review of Jotham Burrello’s “Spindle City”
Throughout Jotham Burrello’s debut novel “Spindle City,” Joseph Bartlett, perhaps Fall River, Massachusetts’ most influential person, suffers from a toothache.
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The Mystery of a Dark Past: A Review of Victoria Gosling’s Before the Ruins
In Victoria Gosling’s "Before the Ruins," five teenagers hung around a crumbling, abandoned manor house near Avebury, England, where a less famous stone henge stands. The two girls and three boys...
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An Ida B. Wells Biography for All Ages: A Review of Michelle Duster’s Ida B....
The significance of Ida B. Wells to Chicago was too great to not be celebrated in a children’s book. Luckily, Michelle Duster has penned "Ida B. the Queen" to share with young readers.
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An International Crossroads: Bill Savage Discusses “Chicago: A Literary History”
The Chicago literary tradition is really central to how European American studies programs look at the United States. So scholars in Europe, Asia and the UK and around the world read the Chicago...
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Community Pride: A Review of A House For the Struggle: The Black Press & the...
Chicago’s Black press and vision from 1905 to 1977
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Redefining Fangirls: A Review of Kaitlyn Tiffany’s “Everything I Need I Get...
Tiffany upends our biases about fangirls and shows them as the creative, tongue-in-cheek, freethinking individuals that they are.
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A Life to Live: A Review of Graceland Cemetery: Chicago Stories, Symbols, and...
This might be the book to get you hooked on learning more about the history of Graceland cemetery or other historic sites.
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The City’s Story: A Review of Neil Steinberg’s “Every Goddamn Day”
In his new, odd Chicago history, Steinberg creates a kind of animated flipbook, putting together many pictures, one for each day of the year. By filling each story with startling detail, he creates a...
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Always A Sunrise: A Review of Nature’s Mountain Mansion
A book about the area we now call Yosemite National Park as seen primarily through the eyes of the nineteenth century.
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