Books | Thursday, November 13,2003

What the Dickens! A site devoted to his public readings

Charles Dickens would have loved the Internet. To the boy who worked in the boot-blacking factory, the digital highway would have been an endless piece of paper and a bottomless pot of ink. Dickens ne

Books | Thursday, October 23,2003

UIS prof traces modern war propaganda to World War I

By Corrine Frisch

Even the casual observer knows that wars we fight now come with ready-made PR themes. But they may not realize Operation Desert Storm and Operation Enduring Freedom have tapped roots of advertising pr

Books | Thursday, June 19,2003

Lenny Bruce isn’t funny

The real legacy of the foul-mouthed comic

By Nick Gillespie

As its title makes plain, the interesting new book The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon (Sourcebooks), by Ronald K.L. Collins and David M. Skover, traces the myriad legal t

Books | Thursday, May 22,2003

Live Poet’s Society

By Ted Keylon

In the mid-1980 a Chicago construction worker named Marc Smith was organizing an open-mic poetry night at the Green Mill, an Uptown jazz club once famous for its association with Al Capone. Smith had

Books | Tuesday, May 6,2003

The big story

Former newsman finally tells his favorite tale

By Cindy Ladage

Sometimes real-life stories are so big they seem to be fiction. That's what strikes you while reading Taylor Pensoneau's latest book, Brother's Notorious, The Sheltons: Southern Illinois' Ledendary Ga

Books | Thursday, May 1,2003

The Case of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon

Maddening mystery finally solved, says local science teacher

By Cinda Klickna

For several weeks in September 1944, people in the town of Mattoon, Illinois, showed the symptoms of exposure to poison gas--nausea, vomiting, weakness leading to near paralysis, light headedness, eve