Books

Two Sons of China, by Andrew Lam, paperback, 466 pages, Bondfire Books, published December 2013. Available through Amazon, iTunes, and via www.TwoSonsofChina.com. Andrew Lam, M.D., who graduated from Springfield High School in 1994, skillfully crafts his historical novel, Two Sons of China, taking the reader to the 1940s and a China which is suffering from […]

A 1919 painting of Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas during a debate at Charleston, on Sept. 18, 1858. Abraham Lincoln: An Illustrated Life and Legacy, by Thomas F. Schwartz and Thomas Cussans. Thunder Bay Press, San Diego, Calif. 96 pp., $29.99. ’Tis the new year, and a good time for settling in with a good […]

Mike Ditka, who coached the Bears in 1985, still makes a good living off the legend. The 1985 Super Bowl Champion Chicago Bears are a cottage industry. In a city starved for winners and bereft of championship rings, players and coaches of “Da Bears” are recalled and revered with unrequited love. Mike Ditka, who coached […]

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A July sunset over South Mountain. Controlling the high ridge was crucial to the Union victory. PHOTO BY ROBERT SHAW A Day Long to Be Remembered: Lincoln in Gettysburg, by Michael Burlingame with photography by Robert Shaw. Published by Firelight Publishing, Heyworth, Ill., in association with John Warner IV, 2013. 220 pages. $34. Photographer Robert […]

This is Robert E. Hartley’s ninth book on Illinois history and politics. Battleground 1948: Truman, Stevenson, Douglas, and the Most Surprising Election in Illinois History, Robert E. Hartley, Southern Illinois University Press, 206 pp., illus., notes, bibliography and index. Given our state’s convoluted, complex, and at times outright Byzantine political history, tagging any election as […]

Children get injured; children get sick. And more often than we might expect, they have medical conditions that even the parents may not be aware of and are yet to be diagnosed. It is every care provider’s fear that something will happen to a child who has been entrusted to his care. So when something […]

Through Time and Space, $15, by Sarah Hathaway Thomas, 2013. Available from Prairie Archives, The Sly Fox in Virden and Amazon.com. In Through Time and Space, Sarah Hathaway Thomas’ new book, “time” refers to stories of World War II – her parents, aunts, a childhood chum – and brings us to recent time with adventures […]

Identical, by Scott Turow, Grand Central Publishing. $16.80. Chicago attorney Scott Turow strives to be an intellectual cut above his fellow courtroom fiction writers. His nine best-selling fiction novels have a literary quality that is lacking in many novels of this genre. The level of writing is not surprising given Turow’s continued practice of law […]

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HousePoems by Dan GuilloryMayhaven Publishing, 2013161 Pages, $19.95 HousePoems is the latest book by Dan Guillory, poet, essayist and historian of the central Illinois landscape and its people. He has presented his readers with a rich volume describing homesteads ranging from log cabins to central Illinois mansions to the White House itself – where he […]

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 Kaminsky, who taught at Northwestern University, often set his mysteries in Chicago and its northern suburbs. While Michael Harvey was born and raised in […]