Feature

Five young adults in matching blue-and-burgundy polo shirts sit in a row at a long blond-wood table in the sunny Governor’s Conference Room at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. At first glance, they could be students from University of Illinois at Springfield or Lincoln Land Community College, but as soon as they open their mouths […]

Untitled Document Part of the intrigue of the Underground Railroad is its mystery — we’ll never know the whole story. Its activists tried to keep their work secret, so they kept no official records; many African-American participants couldn’t read or write, which prevented them from leaving records. What we know comes from oral histories, journals, […]

Untitled Document A Sangamon County public official gets caught in a cocaine scandal. The state’s attorney can’t handle such a high-profile case himself: No matter what the legal outcome, critics will claim that he gave his buddy some kind of sweet deal. So the state’s attorney pitches this hot potato to somebody else: Special Prosecutor Charles […]

  Nearly 35 years ago, a young Frank Edwards stood watch over Springfield Beach. As one of the summertime spot’s lifeguards, he surveyed activity in the pool — an enclosed area about the size of two city blocks — and scrutinized action on the high dive and slides. He watched hungry beach-goers flock to the […]

Untitled Document Will Durst makes his living skewering politicians and showcasing the folly and hypocrisy that are rife in party politics. He does so prolifically through a wide variety of outlets: online, on the radio and television, in print, and in front of live audiences. Durst’s driving passion is not to further the agenda of […]

Untitled Document Just past midnight on a chilly February night, Club Chrome is heating up. The nightclub on Springfield’s south side is packed to the gills with teenagers clad in myriad shades of red, yellow, and green; the spacious dance floor has been transformed into an ersatz exercise studio as young women and girls — […]

Justin Robbins knelt on the living-room floor in his Piper Glen home with his 4-year-old daughter, Sydney. The pair held hands, closed their eyes, and prayed for Matt Hughes — a self-proclaimed country boy from Hillsboro and nine-time Ultimate Fighting Championship welterweight champion who was fixing to fight Georges St. Pierre in a live, nationally […]

Untitled Document The wonderful thing about young people is that they come unformed and optimistic, lacking the baggage that seems to burden older folks. It’s not that they don’t see things; they often see things more clearly than the rest of us. For several years, organizers of the annual Race Unity Rally have leaned on […]

Untitled Document “You have to understand, I’ve been doing this for 25 years,” says Joshua “Illinois” Shapiro, “and for 25 years there were no Indiana Jones films with crystal skulls. Sometimes I actually have had to take on a job. . . . but my love, my passion is the crystal skulls, because I know […]

Untitled Document Do you feel the love?” asks Bill Homann. He is sitting in an easy chair in the living room of his modest suburban tract home in Valparaiso, Ind. On a nearby coffee table, the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull is resting on a towel. The skull appears strangely luminous, reflecting a piercing blue-white light from […]

Untitled Document On a Thursday in mid-May, the U.S. Senate did something that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. Led by Democrat Byron Dorgan, the senators — Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives — gave Rupert Murdoch and his fellow media moguls the sort of slap that masters of the universe don’t expect from […]