Poor Abraham Lincoln. Even in his 200th birthday year, the guy is still being sliced and diced, his every action scrutinized in an estimated 100 new books that have hit the shelves since the Lincoln Bicentennial festivities kicked off two years ago.

Close your eyes and think of Illinois. Take your time. Free associate. I’m not a mind reader but I guess you see fields of corn and red barns against blue skies. Now think architecture. Of course, Frank Lloyd Wright. History — who else but honest Abe? Politics — no not our ex-governor. I’ll give you a hint. Think bow tie and it can only be Senator Simon.

Photographer Larry Kanfer is known for his elegant, beautifully composed prairie scenes in Illinois. Many are like portraits of the landscape.The University of Illinois Press has just published Kanfer

A Springfield native, from a long line of Springfield natives, Sarah Hathaway Thomas takes a spate of years away from her hometown when she marries an educational materials promoter/farmer living on t

Carl Volkmann, historian and retired director of Springfield’s Lincoln (public) Library, has meticulously researched and written a welcome book to add to our shelf of Lincolniana. Or let’s

There was a time in this town when Second Street was today’s Koke Mill Road, at the western edge of the city. Back then the Industrial Age, nurtured for decades on the east coast, wa

Who among us would have thought of the little east central Illinois town of Paris as a major location for drug dealing and criminal activity? It is hard to believe Paris, Ill., is the site of the na

November 8, 1994, the day George Ryan was reelected secretary of state, Ricardo Guzman, a Mexican native, was driving a truck on I-94 near Milwaukee. A bracket over a mud flap assembly dangled from

It is hard to imagine a single person who has exerted more influence on the literary life of Springfield in the past calendar year than Joanna Beth Tweedy, founder and co-editor of Quiddity, thelite

The bitter cold subsided and we finally got a nice snow. I went walking under the streetlights with four-year-old Xavier. We caught snowflakes on our tongues, found sticks to scratch our names in th