Book review: “One Summer: America, 1927” by Bill Bryson
This review originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune on October 13, 2013 You probably had no idea that Al Jolson, the star of the first talkie movie, “The Jazz Singer,” [...]
Small gestures
This essay originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune on October 25, 2013 A couple years ago, when my sister Mary Beth was working a part-time job at a local health [...]
Creaking up and down the court
This essay originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune on October 2, 2013 I started playing basketball when I was 11-years-old. That’s more than half a century ago. I still play, [...]
No expert, just a do-gooder
This essay original appeared in the Chicago Tribune on August 25, 2013 Edward Paul Brennan was one of us. A nobody. Born in 1866, he made deliveries for his father’s [...]
Hope, baseball and A-Rod
This essay was originally published in the Chicago Tribune on August 7, 2013 I took my first baseman’s mitt to U.S. Cellular Field Monday night for the opening game of [...]
Book review: “Burglars Can’t Be Choosers” by Lawrence Block
I’m not exactly sure why I liked Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr crime novel Burglars Can’t Be Choosers. […]
Book review: “Memento Mori” by Muriel Spark
Guy Leet, aged 75, stooped with various ailments, picks up the phone and hears a schoolboy say: Remember, you must die. He tells the boy to go to hell. Some [...]
Book review: “Bitter River” by Julia Keller
Bell Elkins has just left Joyce’s Diner in the town of Aker’s Gap in Raythune County, West Virginia. She is the prosecuting attorney for the county and has a lot [...]
Book review: “Pudd’nhead Wilson” by Mark Twain
Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson is a wonderful mess. Or, maybe better put, a messy wonder. As Twain explains elsewhere, the 1894 novel started life as a much different story, focused [...]
Book review: “The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler” by Thomas Hager
Grumpy Pat: I just finished Thomas Hager’s The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of [...]