Books

“‘Arbolist’ … Look up the word. I don’t know, maybe I made it up. Anyway, it’s an arbo-tree-ist, somebody who knows about trees.” — President George W. Bush, USA Today, Aug. 21, 2001 Little did George W. Bush realize, when talking to reporters in defense of his initiative to allow logging in national forests, that […]

Did King James I commission Shakespeare to translate the Psalms for the now-famous version of the Bible? A case is made for that transaction in R. Gary Patterson’s new book about rock & roll. If you’re wondering what Shakespeare has to do with rock & roll — or, for that matter, where Faust, Shelley, Hawthorne, […]

No one who reads the remarkable new poems by John Knoepfle can fail to be touched by their penetrating strength. If poems from the sangamon (1985) brought history up out of the Midwest, this one goes back to Knoepfle’s place of Irish ancestry, taking everything American and Irish with him, and us, too. There are […]

Political potboilers have always scored high on summer-reading lists, and Bush’s War for Reelection: Iraq, the White House, and the People seems to qualify. Written by investigative reporter James Moore, the book seems to possess the ingredients necessary for inclusion in the genre. The difference, of course, is that this study of the White House […]

In her last book, Nine Nights on the Windy Tree, Martha Miller introduced Bertha Brannon, a Springfield lawyer who finds herself involved in a mystery. It was a good read, and I was looking forward to meeting Brannon once again in Miller’s new book, Dispatch to Death. Miller, who lives in Springfield, uses the capital […]

What happens when 10 siblings decide to join forces? Add 10 cousins to the mix, and imagine the fun and frivolity. Often, downright naughty things happen. Springfield native Helene Odell Moss O’Shea, the middle child of 10, writes of her family’s escapades in A Handful of Prisms, due out July 4. The book brims with […]

Arbor Day is Friday, April 30, and the Arbor Day Foundation (www.arborday.org) is offering you a deal. You can join the Foundation and for $10 receive either 10 flowering trees or 10 pine trees. Even though these “trees” are foot-tall sprouts, it’s still a pretty sweet offer. After you’ve read (or flipped through) Native Trees […]

There should be a warning sign for anyone venturing down nostalgia way: “Caution! Platitudes ahead.” Why must reminiscences punish the present to paint the past as more precious? In his memoir Now, When I Was a Kid …, Dan McGuire avoids this pitfall. Comparisons between now and the good old days do not abound. Enthusiasm […]

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 […]