Twice in her 2010 book The Christ of the Miracle Stories, Wendy Cotter tells this story about the Roman emperor Hadrian: He was on a journey, and a woman on the roadside asked him to speak to him. “I haven’t time,” he said, brushing her...
The Mouse that Roared, a comic, satirical, even silly novel by Leonard Wibberley, was published in 1955, a decade after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II. As one character notes, however, the end of the war...
Much of Agatha Christie 1923 mystery Murder on the Links seems, nearly a century after its publication, pretty hokey. There is a drawing-room, stage-set feel to its scenes, and Christie’s characters always seem to be over-acting: the loveable...
Over the years, I’ve read a fair number of books about death, but I found Sallie Tisdale’s Advice for Future Corpses so rich and powerful that, by the time I got through the first couple chapters, I’d ordered a copy for my wife. I wanted...
Samuel Johnson, that great English expert on words, once wrote: “Hope is itself a species of happiness, and perhaps the chief happiness which this word affords.” Sherwin B. Nuland highlights that quote in his 1994 book How We Die: Reflections on...
Throughout this major league baseball season, I’ve been cheering on one particular player — Austin Romine. Never heard of him? Not surprising. He’s the backup catcher of the New York Yankees and rarely gets featured in a television...
How puzzle the prayer Walking seminary fields, silent-hour recollection days, calloused caress of color and blaze, sharp tender bright air slicing wet morning grass. Filled with wide light. How steel my legs?...
Since the age of 12 when I had my first byline on a Father’s Day essay in the neighborhood newspaper, I’ve been addicted to writing. Over the years, I’ve loved seeing my byline on literally thousands of Chicago Tribune stories, and on...
I’m a card-carrying nerd and a guy who, during a long career at the Chicago Tribune and later in other forums, has written much about cities and demographics. And I just love reading reports, statistics and plans. There are two reasons...
As usual, Christopher Moore is goofy and silly in Island of the Sequined Love Nun, his fourth novel, published in 1997. Consider the back story of his central character Tucker Case who, Moore tells us, grew up in Elsinore, California, the...
Barchester Towers, like the other five novels in Anthony Trollope’s Chronicles of Barset, is characterized by psychological nuance and an affection for humanity in all its waywardness. There are novels written by authors who don’t like...
So, it’s nearly the final page of Terry Pratchett’s 1989 Discworld novel Pyramids, and his recurring character, called Death (because he is), suddenly finds himself with a problem: THIS IS MOST IRREGULAR. We’re sorry. It’s not our...
Okay, I recognize that — as Ross King writes in Brunelleschi’s Dome: The Story of the Great Cathedral in Florence — building the dome over the long-undomed Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral had become, by the early 15th century...
It’s a daunting task to write the story of the creation of a work of art and, even more, for one that comprises a multiplicity of art works. After all, the work — Shakespeare’s King Lear or Emily Dickinson’s “I taste a liquor never brewed” or...
Most accounts of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, also called the Battle of Quebec — a turning point in the history of North America, when Canada became British — focus on the two commanders, both of whom died in the fighting. However...
I was flabbergasted by Quebec: Historic Seaport, ostensibly a history of the Canadian city, published in 1944 by novelist Mazo de la Roche. And my flabbergastation only grew greater the more I read the book until it evolved, near the end...
Patrick T. Reardon...
The death penalty is wrong in all cases. That’s what Pope Francis proclaimed in early August, and that’s what the Church’s Catechism will be revised to say. It’s an important statement about faith and human rights. And its impact extends...
This is an expanded version of an article that appeared 8.29.18 in the Chicago Reader. Don L. Lee was ten years old when his mother Maxine took him and his younger sister to visit the minister of one of the largest black churches in...
Julia Keller’s latest novel Bone on Bone is a story of misery and love. It is the story of people whose lives are full of misery. Sometimes, for them, love ameliorates the pain. At other times, it feeds the pain. Like Keller’s six...
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