Carolyn Alessio

Pumpkinhead Daley In a city that hosted 1.3 million Grant Park revelers for the July 3 fireworks, Mayor Richard M. Daley nixed a free Grant Park concert by the Smashing...

GOD: STORIES Edited by C. Michael Curtis Houghton Mifflin, 400 pages, $30 The title seems ambitious, even grandiose, but the short stories collected here from the Atlantic Monthly offer compelling,...

ADIOS, BARBIE Edited by Ophira Edut Seal Press, 236 pages, $14.95 `If you can make a Talking Barbie, surely you can make a Working Barbie," writes Susan Jane Gilman in...

UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW By Richard Dawkins Houghton Mifflin, 337 pages, $26 Popular culture often confuses superstitions with science, argues Richard Dawkins in this strident but entertaining book. Dawkins, author of...

LEGENDS OF THE PLUMED SERPENT By Neil Baldwin Public Affairs, 205 pages, $37.50 Picture-book biographies sometimes dilute or simplify their subjects, but this attractive, astute volume on the Mexican god...

EXTRA LIFE: COMING OF AGE IN CYBERSPACE By David S. Bennahum Basic Books, 238 pages, $23 In 1973, 5-year-old David Bennahum first spotted the game of Pong at a French...

IT'S ONLY ROCK AND ROLL Edited by Janice Eidus and John Kastan David R. Godine, 291 pages, $16.95 Buddy Holly and Marvin Gaye rub fictional shoulders with Kurt Cobain and...

RELEASING THE SPIRIT Edited by Haki R. Madhubuti and Gwendolyn Mitchell Third World Press, 260 pages, $15 Don't be fooled by the title--"Releasing the Spirit" is no New Age tract....

RAISED ON RADIO By Gerald Nachman Pantheon, 535 pages, $28.50 Midway through an "attempted" memoir, journalist Gerald Nachman discovered that the majority of his childhood memories revolved around radio programs:...

HERBLOCK: A CARTOONIST'S LIFE By Herbert Block Times Books, 404 pages, $16 paper Best known for his witty and acerbic Washington Post cartoons during the McCarthy and Watergate eras, the...