Julia M. Klein

The Farnsworth House, in Plano, Illinois, is the subject of "Broken Glass" by Alex Beam, a new book recounting the drama that transpired between architect Mies van der Rohe and the woman who commissioned it, Dr. Edith Farnsworth.

Review: ‘Broken Glass’ by Alex Beam chronicles the drama surrounding Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House

March 18, 2020 at 5:41 a.m.

Architecture is a famously collaborative enterprise. But the profession's icons have often been difficult characters, and clashes with clients have shaped architectural history. When an architect's ideas and a client's...

Reflecting on the memoirs of 2019 and the elasticity of the genre

December 11, 2019 at 8:00 a.m.

NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2019: Through the end of the year, the Chicago Tribune is revisiting books worthy of further recognition. The memoir, at once literary and fact-based, js a shape-shifter,...

Elizabeth Strout conjures an older, softer Olive Kitteridge in ‘Olive, Again’

December 7, 2019 at 4:30 a.m.

Olive has gone (slightly) soft. In "Olive, Again," the engrossing but imperfect sequel to Elizabeth Strout's 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, "Olive Kitteridge," the crusty, dour, often hard-hearted math teacher has...

‘When I Was White’: Sarah Valentine’s memoir considers the meaning of racial identity

August 14, 2019 at 7:00 a.m.

"For a long time," Sarah Valentine writes, "I felt like a bundle of fragments, and I wanted to be whole. I wanted to be able to write a family history...

Philip Caputo hits his target in skillful new novel, ‘Hunter’s Moon’

August 12, 2019 at 8:55 p.m.

Hunting figures at least tangentially in each of Philip Caputo's seven linked short stories, set in Michigan's scenic Upper Peninsula. A tragic hunting accident turns out not to have been...

The Catherine Chung equation: math + identity = elegant novel

June 21, 2019 at 6:09 a.m.

Can a mathematician also be an accomplished storyteller? The answer is an emphatic yes, for both Catherine Chung, the Korean American author of "The Tenth Muse," and her narrator-protagonist, a...

Aleksandar Hemon returns with a memoir, divided

June 12, 2019 at 8:47 p.m.

Aleksandar Hemon has populated both his fiction ("Nowhere Man," "The Lazarus Project") and nonfiction ("The Book of My Lives") with stories and characters from his native Bosnia. His latest two-books-in-one...

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens — a Chicago native who's now 99 — has written a memoir of his first 94 years, called "The Making of a Justice."

A new memoir at age 99: Chicago native Justice John Paul Stevens is still writing

May 14, 2019 at 9:10 p.m.

To be 99 years old and still writing, in itself, merits acclaim. And a memoir by Justice John Paul Stevens, whose almost 35-year tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court helped...

Two new books — "Remembering Emmett Till" by Dave Tell and "Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till" by Elliott J. Gorn — consider the continuing reverberations of Emmett Till's murder as nation continues to reckon with racial terror.

The legacy of Emmett Till: Revisiting history as new facts emerge and memories fade

May 9, 2019 at 11:58 p.m.

When the seamstress Rosa Parks famously refused to relinquish her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, she was motivated not simply by fatigue or her commitment...

'Political Survivors' by Emma Kuby, a Northern Illinois University faculty member, considers the legacy of Nazi concentration camp survivors who sought to condemn inhumane incarceration around the world. Sachsenhausen, above, held political prisoners during World War II.

‘Political Survivors’ considers the legacy of a commission of Nazi concentration camp survivors

May 9, 2019 at 11:57 p.m.

Amid the vexed politics of the Cold War, a West European commission of Nazi concentration camp survivors — all political resisters — sought to use its moral authority to condemn...

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