Essays | Patrick T Reardon | Writer, Essayist, Poet, Chicago Historian

Essay: A Pre-Obit for the Physical Book

EssaysOctober 30, 20230Comments

Make no mistake about it. I love physical books. I love the weighty feel of a book in my hands. I love the aroma of a book when you open it whether a hardback, new from the publisher, or a musty old paperback that has simmered on some obscure shelf for decades. I love the…

Essay: Defending “unregulated” little free libraries

Chicago History, EssaysOctober 17, 20230Comments

Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) thinks the little free libraries along many Chicago sidewalks are bad — very bad. They are “unregulated”! And they’re “popular”! And many of them are planted in city soil! (Collective gasp.) That’s what he told Quinn Myers of Block Club Chicago recently, making these tiny book repositories sound like the height…

Essay: Printers Row – A Celebration of Community

Articles, Chicago History, Essays, The Loop --- bookSeptember 12, 20230Comments

Near the end of last Saturday at this year’s Printers Row Lit Fest, an 80-year-old Italian painter from the North Shore told me she’s going to have a huge party if she’s able — as she hopes — to sell one of her paintings in Venice in the next couple weeks. And she’s going to…

Essay: Labor Day and a walk with everyone else

EssaysSeptember 1, 20230Comments

The American culture celebrates the rich and powerful. Just look at the news and notice how much is about entertainers and politicians and millionaires and billionaires. On Labor Day, though, we celebrate the un-rich and the un-powerful — you and me and everyone who works or has worked or will work. It’s a countercultural holiday.…

Essay: God Hides like Two-year-old Emma

Essays, National Catholic ReporterAugust 22, 20230Comments

When I used to come to the door at my granddaughter Emma’s house, she’d hide, usually behind the legs of her mother or father, peeping out on one side or the other. Soon, she’d be over her shyness and getting down to the business of playing, whether with her stuffed Purple Bear or with letters…

Essay: Jesus with Eyes Wide Open

Essays, National Catholic ReporterJune 13, 20231Comment

Abraham Lincoln and my granddaughter Emma have gotten me curious about Jesus. I mean, about Jesus’s curiosity. It started when I was reading the review of a new biography which noted that Lincoln’s closest friends and associates “recalled him as a man of boundless curiosity for whom ‘life was a school.’ ” That reminded…

Essay: Reporting History —How to look at Chicago and, well, at all of humanity as a reporter, historian and poet.

EssaysDecember 13, 20220Comments

I was asked by the Chicago Literary Club, a very old social organization in the city — now in its 149th season — to give the Arthur Baer Fellowship Address on December 12. When Dan Pyne, the immediate past president, invited me, I was honored but a bit unsure what to talk about. Dan said…

Essay: Rick Kogan and Chicago — Perfectly Matched

EssaysOctober 19, 20222Comments

In late 1999, Rick Kogan and I were walking north on Astor Street through the Gold Coast, and, if memory serves, Rick was telling me about long ago summers when, as a boy, he would stroll down this street and listen to the Cubs game on the radio from the succession of open windows. I…

Chicago history: Rediscovering the art of the much-demonized Chicago wheeler-dealer Charles Tyson Yerkes

Articles, Chicago History, Essays, Journal of the Illinois State Historical SocietySeptember 9, 20220Comments

In the fall of 2003, Sebastian Smee, the art critic of the Daily Telegraph in London, described a mid-19th century painting by British artist J. M. W. Turner as “an almost unbelievable vision of swirling blue, orange and white light thrusting through fog.” His colleague, Rachel Campbell-Johnston of The Times of London, wrote that the…

Essay: A Tribute for Marty Kirk, C.M.F.

EssaysAugust 27, 20224Comments

After Howie Harrington asked me if I would make this tribute to Marty Kirk — of course, I said “yes” — I read Ted Cirone’s short biography of his friend. (That's Marty to the left in the banner image with Ted. ) And I rummaged around in my memory, and I did some searching…