Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign tackles an important subject in American history — the strike by Memphis sanitation workers in early 1967, the support given to the workers by civil rights and...
It’ll get you there By Patrick T. Reardon Follow 12 steps. Chew sugarless gum. Show up for counsel. Lines to stay within Enjoy breathing. Enjoy Diet Coke. Take medicine on time. Answer when asked. No need to understand. Check off boxes. Listen to...
Frederick Buechner’s 1997 novel On the Road with the Archangel is a wry, tender and knowing look at humans being humans. Which is to say, at the quirkiness at the center of what human beings say, do and think. It is a re-telling of the Book of...
Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel Song of Solomon is one of those great works of literature that demands re-reading. Once through isn’t enough. There is just too much going on for a reader to absorb. It’s like a complex piece of music — like a...
“Long John” Wentworth, Chicago’s 6 foot-6-inch mayor, wanted to be Abraham Lincoln’s political boss. But Lincoln wasn’t biting. In late April, 1860, the Illinois Republican wrote to a political colleague, “The taste is in my mouth a little.” ...
Angels are out tonight By Patrick T. Reardon Tonight, the typewriter keys slam rhythm to ease coarse electricity under the skin. The Sister of the Sacred Heart pleads alms and sweats under her habit as angels stride thickly east and west on her...
Like Odysseus, the Ift warrior Ayyar spends much of Victory on Janus in long, eventful journeying. For 48 pages — nearly 20 percent — of Andre Norton’s 1966 science fiction novel, Ayyar is probing deeper and deeper into the stronghold of the...
Naill Renfro has the Green Sick and has been exiled into the great, dark forest. He awakens from a fever dream and drags himself to a nearby pool for a drink. Instead, he makes a shocking discovery when he looks in the water. ...
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