Nonfiction Review: “The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times and Legacy of Joe...
RECOMMENDED By Hugh Iglarsh How does one write a biography of a figure like radical minstrel Joe Hill? By all rights, he should have been an invisible man, and in some ways was just that. Born into the...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Kicking Ass and Saving Souls: A True Story of a Life over...
RECOMMENDED Stefan Templeton doesn’t just think outside the box; he lives outside it, an American hero for the age of Obama—a boundary-breaking, biracial, one-man-NGO paratrooper who drops into and...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Lincoln in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His...
RECOMMENDED Harold K. Bush, Jr.’s “Lincoln in His Own Time” is a graceful, worthy addition to the already-massive wealth of Lincolniana. It brings a valuable perspective and literary flavor to a table...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Chicago Portraits” by June Skinner Sawyers
RECOMMENDED Chicago is a relative whippersnapper among the great cities of the world, but its persisting roll-up-the-sleeves attitude toward life and work may be why it has produced so many high...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Butterfly in the Typewriter” by Cory MacLauchlin
RECOMMENDED It was the publishing event of 1980: the release of the only known novel by a brilliant but unknown, previously unpublished New Orleans writer, dead by his own hand more than a decade...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr” by H.W. Brands
RECOMMENDED Although Aaron Burr was not convicted in his supposed military conspiracy to acquire territory in the Southwest in the early nineteenth century, his reputation has passed down to us as...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction” by Michael Moorcock
RECOMMENDED Michael Moorcock is a difficult fellow to pigeonhole. He’s won practically every award given to writers in the genres of fantasy and science fiction (or speculative fiction, if you prefer),...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster...
RECOMMENDED A few weeks after I finished “Infinite Jest,” David Foster Wallace’s thousand-page novel, a friend asked me if it was really worth the time. It took some two months of reading and...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock ‘n’ Roll” by...
RECOMMENDED For almost forty years now, Bruce Springsteen has been the voice of blue-collar America, the poet laureate of the working class. Starting in 1973 with his debut, “Greetings from Asbury...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “John Quincy Adams” by Harlow Giles Unger
RECOMMENDED Perhaps no man was better prepared by upbringing and education to serve as President of the United States than John Quincy Adams. Yet, the Harvard-educated only son of Founding Father and...
View ArticleThe Oddest of Couples: Nancy Horan on Robert Louis and Fanny Stevenson
By June Sawyers Gypsy, vagabond, nomad, bohemian dandy, consummate storyteller. Robert Louis Stevenson was all of these, and more. He is both familiar and yet strangely unfamiliar. We may recognize the...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Kicking Ass and Saving Souls: A True Story of a Life over...
RECOMMENDED Stefan Templeton doesn’t just think outside the box; he lives outside it, an American hero for the age of Obama—a boundary-breaking, biracial, one-man-NGO paratrooper who drops into and...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Lincoln in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His...
RECOMMENDED Harold K. Bush, Jr.’s “Lincoln in His Own Time” is a graceful, worthy addition to the already-massive wealth of Lincolniana. It brings a valuable perspective and literary flavor to a table...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Chicago Portraits” by June Skinner Sawyers
RECOMMENDED Chicago is a relative whippersnapper among the great cities of the world, but its persisting roll-up-the-sleeves attitude toward life and work may be why it has produced so many high...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Butterfly in the Typewriter” by Cory MacLauchlin
RECOMMENDED It was the publishing event of 1980: the release of the only known novel by a brilliant but unknown, previously unpublished New Orleans writer, dead by his own hand more than a decade...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr” by H.W. Brands
RECOMMENDED Although Aaron Burr was not convicted in his supposed military conspiracy to acquire territory in the Southwest in the early nineteenth century, his reputation has passed down to us as...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction” by Michael Moorcock
RECOMMENDED Michael Moorcock is a difficult fellow to pigeonhole. He’s won practically every award given to writers in the genres of fantasy and science fiction (or speculative fiction, if you prefer),...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster...
RECOMMENDED A few weeks after I finished “Infinite Jest,” David Foster Wallace’s thousand-page novel, a friend asked me if it was really worth the time. It took some two months of reading and...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock ‘n’ Roll” by...
RECOMMENDED For almost forty years now, Bruce Springsteen has been the voice of blue-collar America, the poet laureate of the working class. Starting in 1973 with his debut, “Greetings from Asbury...
View ArticleNonfiction Review: “John Quincy Adams” by Harlow Giles Unger
RECOMMENDED Perhaps no man was better prepared by upbringing and education to serve as President of the United States than John Quincy Adams. Yet, the Harvard-educated only son of Founding Father and...
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