Earth to Tim Flannery: Thank you
The 1985 celebrity-studded charity ditty written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie had a simple title and refrain: "We Are the World." The line, it now turns out, is more...
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College setting is smart move
Laura Kasischke has Midwestern college life down cold. She knows the look of it, the feel of it, the telltale sounds of it. Her new novel, "The Raising" (Harper Perennial),...
Remembering Ray
He had a soft voice - not fragile, not timid, but gentle. You learned to lean forward to hear him speak. In a world in which everyone seems to be...
NCIS staffer knows show’s secret – words
Leon Carroll, Jr., born and raised on Chicago's South Side, knows that the secret of "NCIS" is a simple one: Words. The top-rated CBS drama about the real-life Naval Criminal...
Rickey biography a study of courage
You're thinking exclusively about basketball these days, and who can blame you? The NCAA tournament is just under way in all its sweaty, soaring glory, and you're dreaming about rebounds...
E.L. Doctorow, literature’s dapper Dr. Doom
We are poised on the shifting lip of an active volcano with no safety rail in sight. The veneer of civilization is just that — a flimsy, half-hearted covering, as...
A second look at ‘Jane Eyre’
Doodles don't lie. I still possess a great many of the books I was assigned to read in adolescence, and there is a simple way to gauge how bored I...
Frances McNamara: A sleuth of the past
Frances McNamara is a mild-mannered librarian by day and a cold-blooded killer by night. OK, that's a bit of a stretch. She's not all that mild-mannered. When it comes to...
Great writer, lousy husband
If Ernest Hemingway's tumultuous life were a butcher shop — and, carnivorous tough guy that he was, the big man would've loved the metaphor — then Paula McLain has served...
Three local authors up for LA Times book prizes
Three's (good) company Last week we congratulated Chicago-area residents Christine Sneed and Rebecca Skloot because their books (in the new fiction and science categories, respectively) were finalists for the 2010...