Chicago’s Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City by Carl Smith Atlantic Monthly Press Devastation is devastation, whether brought about by fire or pandemic. The Great […]
Chicago writer Kathleen Rooney recently released her latest novel, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. A fictional retelling of the true story of World War I’s “Lost Battalion” (though mostly regarding […]
Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt have a new book. It’s a beautiful city field guide with almost 400 pages of stories, history and illustrations on the “hidden world of everyday […]
Reported by C.E. Archer-Helke In a Chicago Humanities Festival panel moderated by Chicago journalist Natalie Moore, economist William Darity, legal scholar Matthew L.M. Fletcher, and historian Rebecca K. Marchiel brought […]
In 1842, Edgar Allan Poe published one of his most famous stories, which turns out to be a parable for 2020. The Masque of the Red Death concerns a prince […]
Dr. Herbert West & Astounding Tales of Medical Malpractice By Bruce Brown and Thomas Boatwright Arcana Comics Howard Phillips Lovecraft was once a rare beast. Following a personal literary philosophy […]
Ayad Akhtar’s new novel, Homeland Elegies, begins like a memoir. Written in the first person, it’s about the narrator’s Pakistani immigrant father who believes in the American dream. Father was […]
Taught by Women: Poems as Resistance Language, New and Selected by Haki R. Madhubuti Third World Press One of my favorite poems in Haki R. Madhubuti’s new, career-spanning collection Taught […]
The Sword and the Shield by Peniel Joseph Basic Books Reviewed by Carr Harkrader When Martin Luther King Jr. came to Chicago in 1966 to promote integrated housing, his marches […]
Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know by Samira Ahmed Penguin Random House Reviewed by C.E. Archer-Helke I don’t often find a book that simultaneously transports me to the best parts […]
She was the queen of Brooklyn although she wore no gold crown except in the public’s imagination and on t-shirts. Instead her apparel of choice was a white frilly lace […]
The last time we saw the gang from VGA Gallery, things were a lot different. It was January 2020 and we were crowding the VGA Gallery’s small space on Bloomingdale […]