Book review: “King’s Ransom” by Ed McBain
Steve Carella is the most gentlemanly of detectives, and, in the squad room of the 87th precinct, he is respected by his peers. But, after witnessing Douglas King refuse numerous [...]
Book review: “Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago’s Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent” by John William Nelson
The key moment in John William Nelson’s important, original and eye-opening history of the place that became the city of Chicago — Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the [...]
Book review: “Man’s Fate (The Human Condition)” by Andre Malraux
In his novel Man’s Fate, Andre Malraux tells the story of the Communist insurrectionists who took control of Shanghai in March, 1927, and then were massacred a month later by [...]
Book review: “Towards Zero” by Agatha Christie
Towards Zero, published by Agatha Christie in 1944, is a reminder of how creative she was as a mystery writer. Christie was the epitome of what’s called the Golden Age [...]
Book review: “The Beautifull Cassandra: A Novel in Twelve Chapters” by Jane Austen, with an afterword by Claudia L. Johnson and artwork by Leon Steinmetz
When Jane Austen wrote The Beautifull Cassandra at the age of 12 in 1788, she added the subtitle: A Novel in Twelve Chapters. That’s a big claim for a work [...]
Poem: “Like Us”
Like us By Patrick T. Reardon In daylight, the Ghiberti gold doors, behind a thick metal cell, turn out to be a 1990 copy, and the Thursday streets — [...]
Book review: “Some Tame Gazelle” by Barbara Pym
Barbara Pym wrote Some Tame Gazelle in the mid-1930s, shortly after she graduated from Oxford University, and it was rejected by several publishers. After World War II, she revised it, [...]
Poem: The lost tribes, part 7
The lost tribes, part 7 By Patrick T. Reardon You and I lose the race, straining or loafing, sinews ripping or flabbing. The clock. Each touch passes, [...]
Essay: The old man who was once a boy on the altar
The year is 1962, and a tall, drowsy boy opens the front door of his family’s crowded two-flat to the grey darkness of near dawn. The sidewalk along Leamington Avenue [...]
Poem: The birth of One-Cent
The birth of One-Cent By Patrick T. Reardon We named the baby One-Cent after Oak’s father, a short-hair railroad sweatback I never met but may have seen across the [...]