Book review: “Men at Arms” by Terry Pratchett
Among Terry Pratchett’s 41 Discworld novels, Men at Arms, published in 1993, is one of the best. That’s saying a lot. Pratchett’s books are always great fun, filled with wit, [...]
Book review: “Chicago Catolico: Making Catholic Parishes Mexican” by Deborah E. Kanter
Friends called Johnny Hernandez “Slugger,” he was such a good baseball player. In the fall of 1946, the thirteen-year-old, a recent graduate of St. Francis of Assisi elementary school on [...]
Book review: “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” by Stephen Greenblatt
To be precise, it was the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries that was the major “swerve” of European history — away from the church-dominated, faith-dominated, feudal Middle Ages [...]
Poem: Communion of saints
Communion of saints By Patrick T. Reardon Under the red Christmas tree, she arranges a communion of saints. In the DMV line, a communion of [...]
Book review: “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer, retold by Geraldine McCaughrean
Maybe I should have a disclaimer at the start of this review. I’m afraid this may be unfair to Geraldine McCaughrean and her re-telling of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. [...]
Poem: “I was born in the desert”
I was born in the desert By Patrick T. Reardon (1) In the desert, I was thrice tempted. I was offered two stones to eat and five [...]
Book review: “Cities and Civilizations” by Christopher Hibbert
Christopher Hibbert writes in a note at the start of his 1986 book Cities and Civilizations that, in contrast to more scholarly and comprehensive works, he aims simply “to give [...]
Book review: “Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side” by Lee Bey
When Lee Bey writes about Pride Cleaners, he expresses a palpably warm affection for the other worldly structure which has stood on the northwest corner of 79th Street and [...]
Book review: “Binga: The Rise and Fall of Chicago’s First Black Banker” by Don Hayner
A hallmark of the black nationalism movement in the 1960s was the idea of African-Americans patronizing African-American businesses. This approach with its pull-ourselves-up-by-the-bootstraps subtext has been a prominent tenet [...]
Book review: “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain
Reader: This review is going to deal with Mark Twain’s 1885 novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and, because of that, it will include a particular term that, today, is [...]