Patrick Reardon

For much of Chicago’s history, its strident boosters with their overblown assertions of the city’s present and, even more, its future greatness have been a subject of ridicule. In 1952, [...]

Kevin Barry’s 2019 novel Night Boat to Tangier is the story of Maurice Hearne and Charles Redmond, two morose, self-absorbed and emotionally fragile Irish gangsters of the small-bore variety. As [...]

Handel’s Messiah: An Oratorio is such a glorious jewel in the treasury of Western music that its story should be grand enough to fill an entire book. But think about [...]

Wesley Gannley and Miss Finchley are bit players in Ed McBain’s The Heckler, published in 1960 as the twelfth novel in his series of police procedurals focusing on the 87th [...]

It’s one of those wonderfully goofy moments that happen in an Elmore Leonard novel. Jack Ryan is in the middle of what he thinks is a breezy, spontaneous spot of [...]

One of the many things I liked about Annie Dillard’s 1989 nonfiction book The Writing Life is her discussion of how writers choose what they write, how they should choose.  [...]

Throughout most of human history, children grew up watching plants grow and become food. They helped plant seeds. They helped tend the field or orchard. They helped harvest the rice [...]