Christopher Sorrentino plots a new path in ‘Fugitives’
You don't generally read fiction writer Christopher Sorrentino for his plots. You read his novels — including "Trance" (2005), a sprawling meditation on the life of Patty Hearst that was...
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Ian Buruma on ‘Their Promised Land’
It's hard to think of a more peripatetic life than the one lived thus far by Ian Buruma. He grew up in a bilingual household in the Netherlands as the...
Ethan Michaeli chronicles the storied history, influence of the Chicago Defender
In 1990, when a friend told Ethan Michaeli, a recent University of Chicago graduate, about the Chicago Defender, he'd never heard of it. "My friend had probably mentioned that it...
Sunil Yapa on ‘Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist,’ 1999 WTO protests
The protests at the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in late 1999 are a blur in the national consciousness. If we remember anything about the event, it's its sheer...
Keith Lee Morris maps unsettling corridors in ‘Travelers Rest’
You miss so much, driving on the interstates. "You just drive and drive and pass right by interesting places like this one," as Julia Addison, a character from Keith Lee...
‘City of Thorns,’ ‘The Lightless Sky’ highlight plight of war-zone refugees
One of the biggest challenges of the refugee crisis facing the international community today is its abstractness to those in power — and many of those who seek power, including...
‘Richard Nickel: Dangerous Years’ and ‘Gotta Go Gotta Flow’ capture Chicago’s past
As a concept, "documentary photography" has always been a bit slippery. In its heyday, the 1930s, '40s and '50s, the genre purported to convey the truth — the whole truth,...
Jon Meacham discusses his biography of George H.W. Bush ‘Destiny and Power’
In the ranks of top biographers of American presidents, Jon Meacham has earned a reputation as one of the fairest, most measured and most sensitive to our chief executives' accomplishments...
Top fiction, nonfiction titles for gift giving
For a variety of reasons, books are the perfect gift. They're of manageable size; a mass-market paperback fits nicely into a stocking hung by the fire. They're affordable, costing less...
6 art books for holiday giving
Coffee-table books are a proud but lonely breed. They're big, heavy and important-looking — which earns them pride of place, especially when company comes, but they're actually read only rarely....