Book Review: The Odyssey by Homer, translated by T. E. Lawrence
When my daughter saw me reading "The Odyssey," she made a face. Back in high school, I think it was, she had to read it, and hated it. Truth be [...]
Hallowed ground
Which is this nation's most hallowed ground? The phrase has been used to describe the Gettysburg battlefield, Arlington National Cemetery and Ground Zero. I write about this question in an [...]
Book review: The Return of Little Big Man by Thomas Berger
Thomas Berger was born in 1924. He was 40 in 1964 when he published his best-known novel, "Little Big Man," chronicling the early life of Jack Crabb, a white who, [...]
The man who envisioned Chicago: Daniel Burnham’s “plan” for the Windy City celebrates a century
Published in Illinois Heritage magazine in September, 2009 Daniel Burnham was depressed. The man known as “Uncle Dan” to his fellow architects and urban planners was someone who, through force [...]
The Demons in “The Devil in the White City”
An address at the Chicago History Museum, December 14, 2006 When Erik Larson introduces Sol Bloom in his best-selling book “The Devil in the White City,” Bloom is a young [...]
Book review: Little Big Man by Thomas Berger
A half century after its publication, Thomas Berger's novel "Little Big Man" is still a fine read, interesting and entertaining. But it doesn't pack the wallop it did back in [...]
Book review: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
There is so much that is wonderful — and scary — in Richard Rhodes' 1986 history of the creation of nuclear weapons, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." For me, [...]
You can make history
Remarks at the January 21, 2010 meeting of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning If you look at a satellite view of this part of the globe, you can see [...]
Then I became a writer
It seems now, looking back, that I sleep-walked through much of my time at St. Thomas Aquinas Grade School in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s Far West Side. I know [...]
The lowly alley — shaper of Chicago
All, hail the lowly alley! Shaper of Chicago, home of garbage and gardens, danger and Dumpsters, the arena of kickball, hoops and gossip, of scavengers and shortcuts, of neighbors and [...]