Book review: “Everyman” by Philip Roth
When the operation began, the man “went under feeling far from felled, anything but doomed, eager yet again to be fulfilled.” But the reader knows he will not emerge alive. [...]
Book review: “The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution” by Eric Foner
Nearly four decades ago, historian Gary Wills explained how Abraham Lincoln used his Gettysburg Address to redefine — rededicate — the United States by enshrining the Declaration of Independence as [...]
Book review: “Venus on the Half-Shell” by Philip Jose Farmer
Philip Jose Farmer’s 1975 novel Venus on the Half-Shell was based on a gimmick, so it’s not surprising that it’s filled with gimmicks, most of which, to my mind, seem [...]
Book review: “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls before Swine” by Kurt Vonnegut
The Hebrew Bible is big on prophets and big on sin. There are four major prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. And a dozen minor prophets who wrote shorter books [...]
Book review: “The Little Black Dress” by Andre Leon Talley with photographs by Adam Kuehl
I’m a stranger here myself. The Little Black Dress by Andre Leon Talley with photographs by Adam Kuehl is the elegant and lavish catalogue of an exhibition at the Savannah [...]
Book review: “The Homesman” by Glendon Swarthout
Midway through Glendon Swarthout’s 1988 novel, The Homesman, Mary Bee Cuddy wakes up and, from her bedroll by the frame wagon, hears the good-for-nothing cull Briggs, the claim-jumper she saved [...]
Book review: “City of Lake and Prairie: Chicago’s Environmental History,” edited by Kathleen A. Brosnan, Ann Durkin Keating and William C. Barnett
A little more than a century ago, in one of the world’s largest cities, Chicagoans lived a lot closer to nature than we do today — as in closer to [...]
Book review: “City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit” by Elmore Leonard
I can’t think of another Elmore Leonard book that has a subtitle like his 1980 City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. That’s also a pretty portentous, if not to say [...]
Book review: “A Complicated Kindness” by Miriam Toews
Sixteen-year-old Nomi opens her story by telling the reader that she lives with her father, Ray Nickel, in “that low brick bungalow” out on Highway 12. Her audience is someone [...]
Book review: “Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue” by James Purdy
For a few days, I took an unexpected, disconcerting and enthrallingly odd voyage through an unusual life and a mythic Chicago. It began when I was reading a book about [...]