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]]> Untitled Document Looking for emotion, struggle, determination, and accomplishment? They’re all there in Megan Marshall’s The Peabody Sisters, a fascinating look at t]]> Abraham Lincoln said goodbye to Springfield in a succinct, emotion-filled speech on Feb. 11, 1861. “To this place, and the kindness of these people,” Lincoln said, “I owe every thing]]> Judging from his new book of poetry From Delancey West (forthcoming by BlazeVOX [books]), Springfield poet Brian Jackson will not be poetry slamming any time soon. This is no insult. This is just to s]]> Untitled Document William Russell Arrington — best known as Russ — was a familiar face and factor in the Illinois General Assembly from 1945 to 1973. Moreover, he was]]> In the summer of 1989, a 19-year-old Waverly woman, Melissa Koontz, disappeared late at night after leaving work on the far west-side of Springfield. What followed was a series of events in ]]> 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 ]]> 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 ]]> 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]]> 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read Before They Die, by Ron Kaplan. University of Nebraska Press, $24.95. “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by lik]]> The Innocence Game, by Michael Harvey.Knopf. 256 pages.Mystery writers often set their stories in their hometowns. For Michael Connelly it is Los Angeles, for Sara Paretsky, Chicago. The late Stuart K]]> Stan Musial: An American Life, by George Vecsey. Ballantine Books, 2011. 397 pages. $26.If you are disturbed by multimillion-dollar athletes who seem less than grateful for their status, listen to thi]]> The Beloit University Press has just released Volume One of Springfield writer Jacqueline Dougan Jackson’s planned three-volume opus The Round Barn – The Biography of an American Farm. It ]]> Angel of Death Row: My Life as a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer. Andrea D. Lyon. Kaplan Publishing, 2010. Hardcover. $24.95. Kindle edition $9.99, contains only “A Mother Accused,” a single ]]> 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]]> Reading Golden: How Rod Blagojevich Talked Himself out of the Governor’s Office and Into Prison, is an excruciatingly painful experience. But the pain does not come from the work of Jeff Coen an]]> Midway through Beautiful Piece, an entertaining and gritty novel written in the noir style of mysteries, I began to have an eerie feeling. Imagine, if you will, the look on the face of Bill Murray each morning at 6 a.m. when he awakens to the sound of Cher belting out the lyrics to “I got you babe!” Just as the character portrayed by Murray in Groundhog Day, readers of this novel by Joseph Peterson will find themselves in that perpetual cycle, repeating a snapshot moment of life. In Beautiful Piece, that moment is a hot August day during a brutal heat wave in Chicago when Robert, the narrator, meets Lucy at a gas station and begins a torrid affair that serves as the cornerstone event upon which Peterson constructs his debut novel.]]> The late Pat Smith was a former Springfield resident, one of the three founders of Brainchild, a women’s writing collective that lasted more than 30 years and published a number of books. Now Pa]]> Untitled Document It’s hot off the press, published Feb. 4 — and hot off the keys, cameras, and many footsteps of our own Carl (retired head of Lincoln Library) and R]]>