‘Glory Days’: A Midwestern tale, raw and brutally beautiful
“Glory Days” by Melissa Fraterrigo is a raw piece of fiction about the scarred and wounded lives of people lost in the dying small town of Ingleside, Neb. It is...
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New book series seeks to define the Great Plains
For most Americans, the Great Plains, covering a million or so square miles in the center of the continent, are a place to fly over or, maybe, drive through. This...
Review: ‘The Ninth Hour’ by Alice McDermott
Sister St. Saviour, a no-nonsense Catholic nun with the networking prowess of Tammany Hall, stands in the near-dawn at the window of a burned-out apartment in her Brooklyn neighborhood in...
The Wall of Respect: The story of a South Side mural — and of Black Power
Fifty years ago, William Walker, a veteran muralist, proposed to a group of other black artists and photographers that they collaborate to produce a mural on the side of a...
A dive into the ‘inky waters’ of the Chicago River
Each year, through myriad government efforts, the Chicago River gets cleaner, although no one would call it "clean." Nonetheless, as polluted as its water remains, the river used to be...
The elevated Loop, a Chicago landmark in everything but name
The 1.8-mile-long elevated railroad Loop, which turns 120 years old on Oct. 3, is not an official Chicago landmark — but it should be. Over the past 40 years, Chicago...
How Chicago’s Loop came to be
Chicago's elevated Loop, completed 120 years ago on Oct. 3, 1897, was the product of the audacious resolve of financial manipulator extraordinaire Charles Yerkes. To get the Union Loop, as...
How do you translate the Quran? New book digs into history
For Muslims, the Quran is the word of God, given directly to Muhammad at the start of the 7th century by the Archangel Michael in oral messages in Arabic that...
The heartbreaking death of Johnny Lindquist brought better child abuse laws
For the last month of his short and tragic life, in the summer of 1972, he was known to Chicago simply as Johnny. He was the 6-year-old from the West...
‘Junk Type’: An oddly compelling American portrait
"Junk Type: Typography, Lettering, Badges, Logos" is an odd book that's oddly compelling. True, you might look at it and think that it is of absolutely no interest for you,...