A baseball lover’s guide to Chicago’s streets — from Banks to Pierce to Anson
I live a half-block south of Thome Avenue in Chicago. It’s pronounced as a single syllable with a long “o” by us locals (“thom”), but a White Sox fan might...
All Stories
And another thing! Americans have become a big bunch of complainers
I want to complain about complaining. Wait, let me rephrase that. I’d like to make some observations about the tendency of modern Americans to find fault with just about anything....
‘As a City on a Hill’: Excavating the cultural history behind a defining American phrase
The United States is an exceptional country, and it stands as a shining city upon a hill as a model of freedom to the rest of the world. That’s the...
Northwestern professor offers a ‘biography’ of the Talmud
In 1997, near the end of the long-running television comedy “Seinfeld,” Larry Charles said that when he and the other writers would sit down to produce a script, it was...
The home we own that doesn’t belong to us
My wife, Cathy, and I have been in our two-flat on Paulina Street since 1984, and even though the bank has always had its portion, we think of ourselves as...
‘The Art of the Wasted Day’: Finding a rich life by looking out the window
Patricia Hampl laughs and says, "I have a list." We're talking over the phone about that bane of modern life, the to-do list, she in the kitchen of her St....
Christopher Moore’s latest novel may be moody, but it’s as daffy as ever
Christopher Moore, the author of 15 wacky novels, explains in an afterword that he had planned for his latest book, "Noir," to be about a "poor working mug" who got...
Who needs another Lincoln biography? We do — and here’s why.
The other day, in passing, a friend of mine asked me, “Why would someone write yet another biography of Abraham Lincoln? Aren’t there enough already?” I was dumbfounded and mumbled...
Ben the barber’s light touch of love
We live in a corrosive age, characterized by bitterness, rancor and fury. Loud voices of rage drown out the quiet virtues of calm and broad-mindedness. My friend Ben wasn’t rageful,...
‘The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve’ by Stephen Greenblatt: An age-old story, still powerfully relevant
At the end of the 19th century, Mark Twain had fun with the story of Adam and Eve, writing in “Extracts From Adam’s Diary” about the first man’s confusion over...