A Cubs song from the past surfaces and Sam Fazio and some pals bring it back to tuneful life
On a list of the many things the Cubs might need for a successful season, a new song is not near the top. But that's what the team has now,...
Home > Reviews
All Stories
Return with us, and Mike Royko, to beer-tasting days of old
On the afternoon of July 10, 1973, Mike Royko was not drinking but instead was washing glasses and was ready, if the need arose, to "break up fights." He was...
The couple that writes together has a pair of new books about the world around us
Reunions can be pleasant and so it was when I got together with former Tribune colleagues Barbara Mahany and Blair Kamin. But our conversation was less about what old mutual...
An appreciation: Pioneering female journalist and jazz critic Harriet Choice has died at 82
Thousands of people knew Harriet Rosenfeld Choice by the words she wrote for this newspaper, decades worth of her enthusiastic and influential coverage of the jazz scene, which compelled her...
Bughouse storytelling event to honor novelist Toya Wolfe’s ‘Last Summer on State Street’
Toya Wolfe writes in her spectacular novel "Last Summer on State Street" that "The memories won't go away; they're proof that once upon a time, I lived in a brick...
Designer and illustrator Monte Beauchamp brings comic anthology ‘BLAB!’ back to compelling, colorful life
"BLAB!" is back and though you may not even know what "BLAB!" is, I tell you that it is among the most creative books to ever come from Chicago, even...
Chicago’s new and swanky private Astor Club opens for business in the heart of the Gold Coast
It has been a long time since people gathered for dinner in the basement space of the building at 1300 N. Astor Street in the heart of the Gold Coast,...
Dick Biondi appreciation: The Chicago DJ was the soundtrack for a generation
For the generation of kids who came into their teens during the early 1960s, the soundtrack of their nights came from transistor radios buried under pillows, the music slightly muffled...
Writer Dawn Raffel’s ‘Boundless as the Sky’ is inspired by Italo Balbo’s flight to Chicago for the World’s Fair
Inspiration can strike like lightning or it can sneak up on a person. Few know that better than Dawn Raffel. She is an accomplished writer and her two most recent...
His debut novel ‘Mickey Sojourn’ takes readers on a wild ride, from Hollywood dreams to bank robberies
A man who once robbed banks was sitting outside a South Side tavern last week. "I was sentenced to 60 months and wound up doing four and a half years...