Nearly 10 years ago Rosemary Thornton drove to Springfield from Alton to give a talk at Lincoln Library about Sears homes. As the library’s program director, I remember her coming early in the d]]> One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach and a Magical Baseball Season, by Chris Ballard. Hyperion, 234 pages.Here in central Illinois we love our high school sports. Granted we also pay a]]> 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]]> 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 ]]> I thought I knew the story of Wenguang Huang, who will be the commencement speaker at the University of Illinois Springfield May 12. After all, I’ve known Wen for 21 years, first as my student a]]> During and immediately after Reconstruction in the South, the same entrepreneurs and bankers who had built the Confederacy's munitions and armament plants during the Civil War ]]> Rarely in publishing is there such a perfect collaboration of writer, photographer and publisher as in the new book, Abraham Lincoln Traveled This Way. The lovely landscape photographs by Illinois pho]]> Fans of fanciful, history-inspired books like Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter will surely find Lincoln and Darwin – Shared Visions of Race, Science and Religion a tough slog through the mid-19th]]> She’s done it again! Martha Miller, our local crime-fiction author whose two previous Springfield detective books are so stellar, has a newcomer. It’s the best yet. It’s titled Retir]]> 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]]> Scott Turow is one of the foremost courtroom fiction writers in America. Millions have read his books or viewed adaptations of his works. But Turow does more than write about fictional courtrooms. He ]]> Untitled Document The subtitle of David LaVere’s Looting Spiro Mounds is a footnote to perhaps the greatest public grave robbery in history: Howard Carter’s 1924 disc]]> 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]]> During the Prohibition Era of speakeasies, swanky gangsters and machine gun massacres, Illinois was home to some of the most powerful and respected figures in the underworld. When it comes to Illinois]]> As the 19th century prepared to turn into the 20th, a cataclysmic confrontation between labor and management occurred in the steelmaking town of Homestead, Pa., pitting the wealthy Carnegie Steel Co. ]]> Job Conger's Strange Gold is a recent effort to encapsulate the life of Springfield's most famous poetic son, Vachel Lindsay. Conger wisely does not attempt to outdo previous authors. Lacking the cred]]> 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]]> Over the past 13 years, Springfield author Joseph Flynn has written 12 page-turning novels, most of them thrillers. He has been called a “master of high octane plotting” by the Chicago Tri]]> The last poem in Springfield poet Siobhan Pitchford's new book, Through the Longing Daze, employs a pun in its title: "At Daze End." The poems preceding it are much concerned with the comings a]]> Untitled Document The Lincoln-Douglas Debates are like the Magna Carta or the Gadsden Purchase: You kind of know that they’re important and maybe even have a rough notion o]]>