Book review: “Windy City Sinners” by Melanie Villines
All religions are a little bit wacky, and that’s certainly true for a new church on Chicago’s Far Northwest Side. For one thing, there’s the name: Redemption Dry Cleaners. For [...]
Book review: “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World” by Jack Weatherford
I know that I should like Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. It is a detailed, well-documented, well-researched look at the rise of Genghis Khan [...]
Book review: “The Marne” by Edith Wharton
Nearly a century after World War I, the hopeful, innocent, sentimental ending of Edith Wharton’s novella The Marne is jarring. This was a war in which much of a generation [...]
THREE COCHINEAL BOOKS – 3 – “A Red Like No Other: How Cochineal Colored the World — an Epic Story of Art, Culture, Science, and Trade,” Edited by Carmella Padilla and Barbara Anderson
A Red Like No Other is several books in one, and that may be too many for some readers and, at the same time, not enough. I found it fascinating. [...]
THREE COCHINEAL BOOKS – 2 – “Cochineal Red: The Art History of a Color” by Elena Phipps
In 1776, a French spy went to Oaxaca in Spanish-held Mexico. He was there to steal a treasure — a tiny bug called cochineal. The female of this insect species [...]
THREE COCHINEAL BOOKS – 1 – “A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage and the Quest for the Color of Desire” by Amy Butler Greenfield
A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage and the Quest for the Color of Desire by Amy Butler Greenfield won wide praise from reviewers when it was published in 2005. Without question, [...]
Book review: “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth
Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America is a particularly scary book to read in the fall of 2015 when businessman Donald Trump and an array of other candidates for the [...]
Book review: “Red & White Quilts: Infinite Variety” by Elizabeth V. Warren with Maggi Gordon
What would it be like to have 653 red and white American quilts assembled and displayed together in the same place? That unusual question was at the heart of the [...]
Essay: Believing in Movies
Through much of the 20th century, American movies acted as if sex didn’t exist. Oh, they’d hint at it, but film-makers feared being slapped down by those custodians of mainstream [...]
Sister Aches and Brother Pains
When I wake in the morning, Sister Aches and Brother Pains are there to greet me. Brother Death, sitting on a chair in the corner, gives me a smile and [...]