New leaf
To understand why the hiring of Brian Bannon as Chicago's public library commissioner caused a more-than-ordinary stir, let us quote a learned cultural authority. That authority is not Socrates. It...
All Stories
New leaf
To understand why the hiring of Brian Bannon as Chicago's public library commissioner caused a more-than-ordinary stir, let us quote a learned cultural authority. That authority is not Socrates. It...
Wild Thing: Maurice Sendak made incomparable art from childhood’s monsters
For every kid with a scraped knee, a skinned elbow, a bumped head and a torn shirt — the inevitable result of being very determined not to learn from one's...
In the tall timber
In one of those career-defining moments that pops up by accident and never quite seems to exit the public consciousness, Barbara Walters asked Katharine Hepburn during a notorious 1981 TV...
In the tall timber
In one of those career-defining moments that pops up by accident and never quite seems to exit the public consciousness, Barbara Walters asked Katharine Hepburn during a notorious 1981 TV...
Dueling views of Aaron Burr
Heroes may inspire — but it's the scalawags, the rogues, the blackguards and the mountebanks who captivate. In an aphorism that I've taken to quoting almost hourly, because it so...
Dueling views of Aaron Burr
Heroes may inspire — but it's the scalawags, the rogues, the blackguards and the mountebanks who captivate. In an aphorism that I've taken to quoting almost hourly, because it so...
Pilot-author balances flying jets with fiction
"Down at the Golden Coin" (Pink Castle) is Chicago native Kim Strickland's second novel, and it's about a woman who has an epiphany in a laundromat. While almost all writers...
Franco-American alphabet goop
If "American Idol" dumped the music and concentrated instead on the glorious quirks and diverting wonders of words, the show might resemble — in some tiny, fleeting, hopelessly inadequate but...
Franco-American alphabet goop
If "American Idol" dumped the music and concentrated instead on the glorious quirks and diverting wonders of words, the show might resemble — in some tiny, fleeting, hopelessly inadequate but...