Elizabeth Taylor

Great fiction, like great newspaper writing, possesses a certain important power: It can transform readers, transporting them to faraway lands or toward deep introspection. For more than two decades, the...

"It's the economy, stupid," Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign mantra, may be making a comeback in the current presidential race. In this week's Magazine, Richard C. Longworth goes to the front...

Great fiction, like great newspaper writing, possesses a certain important power: It can transform readers, transporting them to faraway lands or toward deep introspection. For more than two decades, the...

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao By Junot Diaz Riverhead, 340 pages, $24.95 Meet Oscar, the nerdy, obese, socially awkward boy from the Dominican Republic, transplanted to New Jersey,...

Images from the last year filled the conference room table. George Ryan heading to prison. Cubs surging, and collapsing. Plenty of weather shots--snow covering cars, the lake spraying sandy children....

Great fiction, like great newspaper writing, possesses a certain important power: It can transform readers, transporting them to faraway lands or toward deep introspection. For more than two decades, the...

The Book of Other People Edited by Zadie Smith Penguin, 287 pages, $15 paper "The instruction was simple: make somebody up," Zadie Smith ("On Beauty") explained in her introduction. The...

The CTA's Blue, Purple and Brown lines are disrupted. Metra is struggling with its schedule. Amtrak has cut back on its national service. Northwest of Chicago, though, there is a...

The New Granta Book of the American Short Story Edited and introduced by Richard Ford Granta, 756 pages, $18.95 paper In the holiday countdown, rather than spend even a moment...

Great fiction, like great newspaper writing, possesses a certain important power: It can transform readers, transporting them to faraway lands or toward deep introspection. For more than two decades, the...