A eulogy by Patrick T. Reardon St. Thomas More Church December 9, 1995 Audrey Joanne Thomas……Audrey Thomas Reardon……69……the mother of 14 children……died Tuesday in her Oak Lawn home. Mrs. Reardon, [...]
I suspect that Charles Dickens was in a pretty foul mood when he wrote "Hard Times" in 1854. He draws stark differences between the "good" people and the "bad" people [...]
Hey, NATO diplomats! I'm know you're being flooded with lots of official and commercial stuff about Chicago: Where views of the city are most beautiful. Where dinners are most tasty. [...]
The subtitle of Robert K. Massie's "Catherine the Great" is "Portrait of a Woman." But that's too limiting. This 574-page biography is the portrait of a person --- one who [...]
It seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess. I mean, my two-year-old daughter’s decision to grab a long, exceedingly sharp butcher’s knife from the dishwasher and run [...]
As spy novels go, "The Berlin Ending" by E. Howard Hunt, published 38 years ago, is okay. For readers looking for an addictive page-turner, it will probably be on the [...]
"Stories We Keep" is a small book, only 64 pages. And it's even shorter if you're a reader like me who isn't very hip to yoga or interested in recipes [...]
Well, Thomas Mallon's "Watergate" is certainly a readable novel. It's an amazement, really, that he's been able to take the tottering heap of jagged historical events, involving scores of politicians [...]
Historical fiction is dangerous territory for a writer. It's all too easy to make actual people, say, Abraham Lincoln or John Wilkes Booth, into stick figures, and actual events, say, [...]
The new baseball season is upon us, and hope springs eternal across the major leagues as 30 teams and more than 700 players vie for a chance at the World [...]