Books | Thursday, November 10,2005

Abe's Molly

The story of Mary Todd Lincoln

Mary Todd Lincoln knew a lot of grief. Her mother died when she was 6. She lost three of her four children and was sitting beside her husband the night he was assassinated. When I picture he

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

Feature | Thursday, June 2,2005

Summer books

By Corrine Frisch

AloftBy Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead Trade, 384 pages, paperback edition, 2005, $14) At one point in his life Jerry Battle may have been a daring young man in his flying machine, but now he’s

Guest Opinion | Thursday, March 31,2005

Matters of life and death

By Corrine Frisch

“No one’s death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their

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

Poetry | Thursday, March 24,2005

people's poetry

By Corrine Frisch

Paul Muldoon teaches poetry at Princeton University, won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2003 for his collection Moy Sand and Gravel , and has been hailed by the Times Literary Supplemen

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

Feature | Thursday, February 10,2005

Sic semper tyrannis!

By Corrine Frisch

Remember writing your first college term paper? Depending on when you were in school, you browsed the library shelves or Googled the Internet. Your title was something profound, like “