Book review: “Unknown Man No. 89” by Elmore Leonard
Unknown Man No. 89, published in 1977, is certainly an Elmore Leonard novel. It has all the elements. It’s built around Jack Ryan, a basically good guy, like all of [...]
Book review: “The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood” by Sam Wasson
For a week or so after I finished reading The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood by Sam Wasson, the name of Roman Pulanski kept popping into [...]
Book review: “Divine Conception: The Art of the Annunciation” by Sarah Drummond
It’s the awkward ones that touch me most — the images of an agitated Mary responding to the arrival of the angel Gabriel with the message that, if she consents, [...]
Book review: “Feet of Clay” by Terry Pratchett
Eight of Terry Pratchett’s 41 Discworld novels center on the City Watch of Anhk-Morpork. The first was Guards! Guards! (1989), followed by Men at Arms (1993) and, then, by Feet [...]
Book review: “Men at Arms” by Terry Pratchett
Among Terry Pratchett’s 41 Discworld novels, Men at Arms, published in 1993, is one of the best. That’s saying a lot. Pratchett’s books are always great fun, filled with wit, [...]
Book review: “Chicago Catolico: Making Catholic Parishes Mexican” by Deborah E. Kanter
Friends called Johnny Hernandez “Slugger,” he was such a good baseball player. In the fall of 1946, the thirteen-year-old, a recent graduate of St. Francis of Assisi elementary school on [...]
Book review: “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” by Stephen Greenblatt
To be precise, it was the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries that was the major “swerve” of European history — away from the church-dominated, faith-dominated, feudal Middle Ages [...]
Book review: “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer, retold by Geraldine McCaughrean
Maybe I should have a disclaimer at the start of this review. I’m afraid this may be unfair to Geraldine McCaughrean and her re-telling of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. [...]
Book review: “Cities and Civilizations” by Christopher Hibbert
Christopher Hibbert writes in a note at the start of his 1986 book Cities and Civilizations that, in contrast to more scholarly and comprehensive works, he aims simply “to give [...]
Book review: “Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side” by Lee Bey
When Lee Bey writes about Pride Cleaners, he expresses a palpably warm affection for the other worldly structure which has stood on the northwest corner of 79th Street and [...]