In the jagged, inscrutable ways of families, Eunice Lipton’s A Distant Heartbeat is a love story. It is a love story that encompasses affection, loss, flight, innocence, competition, anger, sex, [...]
Back when I was a Chicago Tribune reporter, I had a five-minute telephone interview with Donald Trump about his new Chicago hotel, and he made a point to mention twice [...]
She wasn’t his wife, but Henry Marten loved Mary Ward, the mother of their three young daughters whom he called endearingly his “pretty brats,” his “biddies” and, after a bout [...]
Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin is a monumental, heavily detailed, ground-breaking and deeply humane look at the political murder of 14 million people by the Soviet Union [...]
Mayor Richard J. Daley 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 [...]
Manhole covers are beautiful. There, I’ve said it. Just give them a look. I mean, really look at them. You’ll agree. Take these six from Manhole Covers, the 1994 book [...]
In the eighth chapter of the Book of Nehemiah in the Bible, the Jewish people are celebrating a feast in which they are re-accepting God’s law and covenant. It is, they are [...]
In Methuselah’s Children, Robert A. Heinlein is all over the map — the celestial map. The novel starts on Earth, approaches the sun. hightails it to one Earth-like world with [...]
This essay originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune on December 31, 2015 My brother David Michael died suddenly a few days before Thanksgiving, and I’m thinking a lot about him [...]
In late April, 1885, Chicago’s small, tight, deeply committed group of anarchists marched to protest the opening of the new Board of Trade Building. Turned away by police, the group [...]
