Books

Admit it. When you think of the literary capitals of the world, Springfield doesn’t leap to the top of the list. But beginning on Saturday, Springfield shines like a literary luminary on the prairie. Two major events light the match: the Eighth Annual Illinois Authors Book Fair and the University of Illinois at Springfield’s Verbal […]

Like a man to double business bound I stand in pause where I shall first begin. Claudius in Act III of Hamlet Where to be or not to be? Tonight, March 11, two downtown libraries offer excellent programs for those who appreciate good writing. It’s a choice between two Illinois notables: The state’s new Poet […]

One book. One city. In 1998, the Washington Center for the Book posed the question –“What if all Seattle read the same book?” Six years later we have the definitive answer. If the people in Seattle read the same book, then by gosh, the folks in Chicago would choose one too. Like dominoes, the cities […]

Janet Jackson’s brazen bust-baring before millions of football fans, dubbed by one pundit “a tempest in a C-cup,” got me wondering. Not about the fall of western civ as we know it, but about where the word boob comes from. Or, for that matter, tits, or knockers, or hooters (beforeHooters became a fast-food franchise). Lucky […]

Most Illinoisans could only reply with a blank expression if asked to identify the likes of Jesse Burgess Thomas or Richard Montgomery Young or Otis Ferguson Glenn or James M. Slattery. Yet, at one time, each represented the Sucker State in the United States Senate. Political fame is fleeting, a fact I discovered while teaching […]

Since Sept. 11, 2001, it has become commonplace to see signs outside stores, restaurants, and union halls proclaiming “God Bless America” (often followed by various non sequiturs such as “Fish Fry Friday Night”). But when Kazimir Ladny, at the end of his book about his experiences in World War II as a Polish POW, writes, […]

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 credentialed “credibility” of professors and unable to compete with insights provided by Lindsay’s peers, Conger chooses to write as someone who has read all […]

When the everyday grind gets to be too much, some of us fantasize a bucolic life, picturing ourselves tucked into a little country place full of birds and sunshine. The irony of this particular fantasy is that birds, could they daydream, might be having the same flights of fancy. In the past couple of centuries, […]

Charles Dickens would have loved the Internet. To the boy who worked in the boot-blacking factory, the digital highway would have been an endless piece of paper and a bottomless pot of ink. Dickens never knew the Net, but now the Net knows him. Anyone who has written an essay for his or her English […]

Even the casual observer knows that wars we fight now come with ready-made PR themes. But they may not realize Operation Desert Storm and Operation Enduring Freedom have tapped roots of advertising propaganda nearly a century old. World War I posters (many can be seen at www.firstworldwar.com) were designed to persuade America to enter a […]