The departure of a feisty think tank
As of Saturday, May 31, Metropolis Strategies, formerly Metropolis 2020, closes its doors. I’m sorry to see the feisty think tank depart although, when it was founded in 1999 by [...]
As of Saturday, May 31, Metropolis Strategies, formerly Metropolis 2020, closes its doors. I’m sorry to see the feisty think tank depart although, when it was founded in 1999 by [...]
This essay originally appeared in the May issue of Reality, a Catholic magazine in Ireland. Norman Mailer called writing “the spooky art.” And anyone who’s been a writer, amateur [...]
If you’re one of the millions of young people who are graduating from high school or college this season, I have one word of advice for you: Believe. Believe in [...]
Some of the enthusiasms of youth travel well. Others don’t. When it comes to books, I can point to some I read in my teens and early twenties that still [...]
Five years ago today, I was laid off by the Chicago Tribune. I had company. More than 50 other editorial employees were let go the same week I was shown [...]
Terry Pratchett’s 40th Discworld novel Raising Steam, a wonderfully witty and thoughtful book, seems to have been a very personal novel for him to write. For one thing, Pratchett seems [...]
No question, the guy on the cover of Umberto Eco’s 2007 book On Ugliness is truly ugly. And, in this sixteenth-century painting by Quentin Matsys, Ill-Matched Lovers, his ugliness is [...]
This review initially appeared in the Printers Row section of the Chicago Tribune. on March 8, 2014. Storms at sea play a key role in the tale of John Jacob [...]
Until now, I had never read Ray Bradbury’s 1953 science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. But, of course, I had read dozens of other books and seen scores of movies that were [...]
On March 20 — just as I was finishing Still Dreaming, the surprisingly readable memoir that U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez wrote with the help of Doug Scofield — the Chicago [...]