Book review: “Saving Ruby King” by Catherine Adel West
In the closing pages of Catherine Adel West’s Saving Ruby King, two men and two women can hear police sirens approaching, drawn by reports of a gunshot in the house [...]
Essay: The After
I’ve started to think of it as The After. I mean that time when it will be safe for me and the rest of the world to do [...]
Book review: “House Numbers: Pictures of a Forgotten History” by Anton Tantner
The advertisement in the Vienna newspaper on February 2, 1771, was the sort of plea that has been repeated in one medium or another since earliest human times. Three [...]
Poem: “Allelulia steeples”
Alleluia steeples By Patrick T. Reardon Give me two mule-loads of mud flooded with the Lord God, the water in which I washed, plunged seven times, gagged, [...]
Book review: “The Hussar” by David R. Slavitt
David Slavitt’s novel The Hussar is the story of Lieutenant Stefan F———, a young Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer in 1866, new to his regiment and to military life, who, in [...]
A new look for my website — The Loop!
The top of the homepage at my website — patricktreardon.com — now has a link to pre-order my upcoming book The Loop: The “L” Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago [...]
Book review: “The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire” by William Dalrymple
The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple is a richly researched, engagingly told and brutally direct indictment of the [...]
Book review: “Cities of the American West: A History of Frontier Urban Planning” by John William Reps
If you want to know Chicago, you gotta know the grid. If I tell you I live at 6220 North Paulina Street, you know that my two-flat is 62 [...]
Essay: George R. Stewart: Unrestrained by literary borders
A conversation with a writer is, almost always, interesting and insightful. During a long career as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, I was paid to talk with many, [...]
Book review: “Maskerade” by Terry Pratchett
In his more than four dozen novels, Terry Pratchett was often silly, witty, wacky and goofy. But he was also, always, serious. Pratchett’s delightfully humorous and endlessly readable books weren’t [...]