Book review: “No Night Without Stars” by Andre Norton
Andre Norton's "No Night Without Stars" landed in bookstores in 1975. That was 23 years after her book "Star Man's Son," better known as "Daybreak — 2250 A.D.," appeared in [...]
Book review: “Tinkers” by Paul Harding
As "Tinkers" opens, George is dying. Paul Harding makes this clear with his first sentence: "George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died." By the end of [...]
Honoring veterans — of all sorts
Striding purposely around a bend of a park path recently in Washington, D.C., Jim Chianakas suddenly saw before him the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. "There it is," he said. "Wow!" Beside [...]
Book review: “Clarence Darrow: Atttorney for the Damned” by John A. Farrell
Finishing "Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned" by John A. Farrell, I was surprised to find myself underwhelmed by the book. No question, it's a good solid effort. Farrell has [...]
Fully American: The election of JFK and the place of Catholics in the U.S.
When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, I thought he would be canonized. St. JFK? It seems silly now. Now that all the stories of Kennedy's womanizing have [...]
Book review: “The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution” by Mark Roseman
About midway through "The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution" by Mark Roseman, I got to wondering how writers like Roseman do it. I mean, writers who spend a good [...]
Book review: “Snuff” by Terry Pratchett
On Discworld, goblins live on — are beat up on, are exploited on, are starved on, die on — the edges. They stink. They steal chickens. They eat their young. [...]
Erasing Comiskey Park from the Face of the Earth
This essay will be a chapter in a book about Comiskey Park, edited by Floyd Sullivan, to be published probably in 2013 It's a frigid weekend in March, and I've [...]
Book review: “Frank Lloyd Wright” by Ada Louise Huxtable
Sometime, apparently in the mid-1890s, Daniel Burnham set up a meeting with Frank Lloyd Wright to present him with an extraordinary offer. At the time, Burnham was basking in acclaim [...]
Thinking the thinkable
Recently, I sat down and wrote out a plan for my funeral service. A couple days later, I wrote about it in the Chicago Tribune. You can find it here: [...]