Looking into the female heart
While Samuel Park's mother sliced vegetables at the kitchen table, she told her son dramatic tales of her youth in South Korea after the Korean War. Park, the youngest child...
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‘Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock’ by David Margolick
The photograph, taken Sept. 4, 1957, is one of most memorable from the civil rights movement: Elizabeth Eckford, one of the "Little Rock Nine" African-American students, in her neat white...
Stacy Schiff, author of ‘Cleopatra: A Life,’ on the perfect biography subject
Heartbroken by my failure to hear biographer Stacy Schiff speak when she was in Chicago last week, I lassoed her by email to discuss one of my favorite subjects: biography....
‘The Buddha in the Attic’ by Julie Otsuka
"On the boat we were mostly virgins." That is the arresting, and alluring, first sentence of Julie Otsuka's slender novel, "The Buddha in the Attic," the story of the Japanese...
‘Cleopatra: A Life’ by Stacy Schiff
I have endured my share of Cleopatra jokes derived from the 1963 movie starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison. So only a biographer as gifted as Stacy Schiff...
“Blueprints for Building Better Girls” by Elissa Schappell
The stories in this collection glance at one another like high school students in corridors between classes. These eight darkly funny stories about different kinds of girls and women —...
A decade later: 9/11 in literature
The tragedy Sept. 11, 2001, prompted questions about America's place in the world, and a proliferation of books resulted. Here is a recommended reading list for those seeking enriched understanding....
A decade later: 9/11 in literature
The tragedy Sept. 11, 2001, prompted questions about America's place in the world, and a proliferation of books resulted. Here is a recommended reading list for those seeking enriched understanding....
‘Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It’ by Don Peck
Books attempting to explain the economic situation are a dime a dozen these days, but my pennies go to "Pinched." Shorn of jargon, this tightly written book distinguishes itself from...
Different on surface, alike at heart
Like many ideas, this seemed like a good one at the time: Ask novelists Jacquelyn Mitchard and Elizabeth Berg to appear in the latest installment of our Author Talks series....