Book review: “A Coyote’s in the House” by Elmore Leonard
What, no sociopaths? Well, A Coyote’s in the House is, after all, a book for children. But, above all, it is a novel by Elmore Leonard who specializes in stories [...]
Poem: La Japonaise
La Japonaise By Patrick T. Reardon She’s large for a small woman when you turn the corner at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and there she is, in [...]
Book review: “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017” by Rashid Khalidi
As someone who didn’t know many of the details of the battles and wars between Israel and the Palestinian people over the past century and more, I came to Rashid [...]
Book review: “The Book of Revelation: A Biography” by Timothy Beal
Yoga is devil-worship — that’s what some American Christian leaders say, such as Mark Driscoll, an evangelical pastor who, in a 2010 sermon, told his congregation: “Yoga is demonic. If [...]
Essay: An artist is a kind of saint
He hasn’t been canonized, but I think of Michelangelo as a sort of saint. William Shakespeare, too. And Emily Dickinson, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Frank Sinatra, Beethoven, Aretha Franklin and Chaucer. I [...]
Book review: “What Might Have Been: Leading Historians on Twelve ‘What Ifs’ of History,” edited by Andrew Roberts
What Might Have Been: Leading Historians on Twelve ‘What Ifs’ of History, published in 2004, is, as its subtitle suggests, a serious work of counterfactual speculation. Which isn’t to say [...]
Book review: “Chicago’s Modern Mayors: From Harold Washington to Lori Lightfoot,” edited by Dick Simpson and Betty O’Shaughnessy
Chicago's Modern Mayors, edited by Dick Simpson and Betty O'Shaughnessy, covers a forty-year period during which Chicago, its people and its region went through great changes under a [...]
Book review: “Shadows on the Rock” by Willa Cather
About halfway through Shadows on the Rock, Willa Cather’s 1931 novel, Cecile, the 12-year-old daughter of Quebec apothecary Euclide Auclair, hears the story of a miracle that has happened in [...]
Book review: “Killer’s Wedge” by Ed McBain
Ed McBain’s 1954 novel Killer’s Wedge, the eighth book in his 87th Precinct series, opens with a short poetic rhapsody to autumn in the city: Outside the grilled windows of [...]
Book review: “Necklace and Calabash” by Robert van Gulik
In the opening scene of Robert van Gulik’s 1967 Judge Dee mystery Necklace and Calabash, the judge is on his way to a quick fishing vacation in Rivertown but has [...]