Patrick T. Reardon

Passion Pick: 1969’s ‘Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis’ still among best bios of Chicago

May 9, 2019 at 10:55 p.m.

Back in the mid-1970s, when I was a newly minted reporter, I covered Chicago's City Hall for a while. I remember that, at news conferences, Mayor Richard J. Daley, the...

After a brother’s death, a last day and a first day

May 11, 2019 at 7:53 a.m.

My brother David Michael died suddenly a few days before Thanksgiving, and I'm thinking a lot about him as this year comes to an end. The last day, Dec. 31,...

Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump gestures at a regional police union meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015.

Republicans should dump Trump now

August 21, 2019 at 11:04 p.m.

Enough is enough. It is time — right now — for the Republican Party to expel Donald Trump. If the GOP acts now, it will not only do the right...

"A House of My Own," a collection of essays, charts author Sandra Cisneros' journey from her childhood home of Chicago back to her motherland of Mexico.

Review: ‘A House of My Own’ by Sandra Cisneros

May 9, 2019 at 10:43 p.m.

With a phrasing and bravado echoing Saul Bellow's Augie March, Sandra Cisneros writes, "I was north-of-the-border born and bred, an American-Mexican from 'Chicano, Illinois,' street tough and city smart, wise...

Review: ‘A Red Like No Other’ edited by Carmella Padilla and Barbara Anderson

May 9, 2019 at 10:41 p.m.

"A Red Like No Other" is several books in one, and that may be too many for some readers and, at the same time, not enough. I found it fascinating....

Tribune Co. CEO Stanton Cook, left, and Editor Clayton Kirkpatrick speak at an April 30, 1974, news conference on the Tribune's publication of Oval Office transcripts in the Watergate scandal. Cook, who was the newspaper's publisher, later backed an editorial that called for President Richard Nixon to resign. Cook died Sept. 3, 2015; he was 90.

Former Tribune Co. CEO Stanton Cook dies at 90

August 19, 2019 at 1:25 a.m.

Former Tribune Co. CEO Stanton R. Cook inherited an underperforming company and transformed it into a modern, diversified media corporation that broke with its conservative past, endured a lengthy union...

Writer Patrick Reardon rounds up 10 of his favorite fiction and nonfiction titles dealing with the inevitability of death.

Books on death provide path to more fulfilling existence

May 9, 2019 at 10:33 p.m.

Let's talk about death. OK, I know you've got to get to your tennis match. Or cook dinner, or check Twitter, or wash your hair. But, really, let's talk about...

Review: ‘The Millionaire and the Bard’ by Andrea E. Mays

May 9, 2019 at 10:26 p.m.

A photo in "The Millionaire and the Bard" by Andrea E. Mays shows 82 copies of the First Folio — the first full collection of Shakespeare's plays, printed in 1623...

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was born in 1809 in present-day LaRue County, Ky.

Lincoln’s violent death and his legacy

May 11, 2019 at 7:18 a.m.

Abraham Lincoln was laughing at a punch line at a stage play when he was shot once in the back of the head. He never regained consciousness and died nine...

Review: ‘The Photographer and the President’ by Richard S. Lowry

May 9, 2019 at 10:20 p.m.

Near the end of his prose and poetry collection "Memoranda During the War," Walt Whitman contemplated the scope of carnage across the national landscape — "the dead, the dead, the...

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