Books | Wednesday, October 5,2005

The joys of community

Lola Lucas has been chronicling the ups and downs of Enos Park since the early '90s

It took a broken leg to get Lola Lucas moving on her book A Home in the Park: Loving a Neighborhood Back to Life, a collection of columns originally published in the Banner, the newslet

Books | Thursday, September 15,2005

Whole lotta shakin' going' on

Springfield poet takes us to another time and space

By Corrine Frisch

I once caught a whiff of a wet woolen overcoat. Before you could say “Sister Mary Magdalene,” I was transported to the winter of 1956 and a grade-school

Books | Thursday, September 1,2005

Especially people who care about strangers

How to search for "the soul of kindness"

By Corrine Frisch

Call me cantankerous, but I didn’t want to like Field Notes on the Compassionate Life. Sure that in the background I was hearing strains from the ’60s musical Hair, I wondere

Books | Thursday, August 11,2005

Exposing Chicago’s underbelly

Noir is a travelogue with a twisted sense of humor

By Corrine Frisch

Chicago Noir isn’t about a newspaper, although after reading it I kept thinking of the old riddle “What’s black and white and red all over?” The stage sets in th

Books | Thursday, March 31,2005

books 3-31-05

By Corrine Frisch

Though it has been more than 10 years since my husband moved to the Midwest from Boston, his amazement at the prairie remains fresh. Driving to Chicago, he’ll point out the window and

Books | Thursday, March 3,2005

books 3-3-05

By Corrine Frisch

Number 9, number 9, number 9 . . . No, John Lennon hasn’t booked a return engagement, but wordsmiths are singing the praises of something almost as good. More than 30

Books | Thursday, January 20,2005

Striking a balance between liberty and security

By Stuart Shiffman

In the 1960 movie version of the H.G. Wells novella The Time Machine, the Time Traveler returns from 19th-century England to the futuristic society he has rescued from evil. Before leaving, he

Books | Wednesday, November 24,2004

Which side are you on?

By Roland Klose

During the height of the Depression, central Illinois was convulsed by a vicious coal-mining war that pitted worker against worker, changed an industry, and altered the course of organized labo

Books | Thursday, November 18,2004

Winged messenger: Going postal with Terry Pratchett

By Corrine Frisch

Please allow me to introduce Mr. Moist von Lipwig, hero of Going Postal, Terry Pratchett's latest novel in his Discworld series. But before we go any further, a confession: I am a Pratchett lat

Books | Thursday, November 4,2004

The first George W.

By Corrine Frisch

First initial, last name. More than six feet tall. In his early 20s he made a name for himself in battle, but accounts of his heroism would later be questioned. Well-born, he nevertheless incre