Chicago Reader

Lit & Lectures


Wandering Jews A short-story collection follows Iraq's former Jewish population across borders and oceans.
By Rayyan Al-Shawaf

Recommended The Dollar Store Super Summer Tour The Dollar Store series, wherein writers craft a story based on a sundry dollar-store item, kicks off a road show with an all-you-can-eat barbecue party, Sunday 6/28 at the Hideout.

RUI: Reading Under the Influence This edition's theme: Abraham Lincoln. The featured readers are Patrick Somerville (The Cradle), recipient of the Chicago Public Library Foundation's 21st Century Award; Time Out Chicago books editor Jonathan Messinger; and RUI regulars Rob Duffer and Amy Guth. 7/1 at Sheffield's.

Notable:

"Ideals, Intelligence, and the Law" Chicago Council on Global Affairs program with New Yorker staff writer Jane Meyer (The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals), Monday 6/29 at the Chicago Club.

"1933 Century of Progress Exposition", talk by author Lisa D. Schrenk (Building a Century of Progress: The Architecture of Chicago's 1933-34 World's Fair), 6/29 at Chaddick Institute of Metropolitan Development.

"Our Histories, Our Stories", Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Lincoln on Race and Slavery et al) chats with Chicago Tribune writer Rick Kogan, 6/29 at Harold Washington Library.

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Recently in Lit & Lectures

Antiques Road Show Young fogey cartoonists Adrian Tomine and Seth discuss their own work and some neglected masters at Quimby's.
By Ben Schwartz

The Punishment We Deserve How did the American penal system become abusive?
By Noah Berlatsky

Spring Books: The Asian-American Experience
Given not only the community's growing numbers but its success, Asian America is having a Bellow moment.

Plus New books by Gillian Flynn, Chesa Boudin, and other local authors

The Author's Sister Chicagoan Catherine Cox reflects on The Sisters Antipodes, Jane Alison's memoir about their parents' mate swapping
Hot Type by Michael Miner

Race and Real Estate Redux A history of bloodsucking practices in Chicago's ghettos reads like today's news.
The Business by Deanna Isaacs

Look Into the Sun Does Sy Safransky's "sad magazine" have anything to teach the miserable newspaper?
Hot Type by Michael Miner

Easy to Catalog, Hard to Love A British critic's squeamish take on American exploitation master Jack Hill
By Noah Berlatsky

Novelizing the Novelist Let's see how T.C. Boyle likes it.
The Business by Deanna Isaacs

The Shovelers of North Mozart The West Ridge way: rest on Saturday, help your neighbor on Sunday.
By Adam Langer

Picture Books Lynda Barry's picks for best American comics, visions of the end times, and a creature compendium
By Noah Berlatsky

What's So Funny About Cancer? Breast cancer memoirists all seem to agree that laughter is pretty good medicine.
By S.L. Wisenberg

Out of the Wreckage Richard Yates knew enough sorrow to fill a bookshelf. At the end of his life, when I knew him, he was still working on it.
By J.R. Jones

The Reader's 9th Annual Fiction Issue Every week we tell great stories. Once a year we make them up: fiction by Jona Meyer, Ben Greenman, Latoya Wolfe, James Kennedy, and Rosaleen Bertolino

War Crimes and Other Misdemeanors Deborah Nelson's new book documents Vietnam atrocities the army did nothing to stop.
By Michael Miner

One Man's Drive Is Another Man's Disorder UIC prof Lennard Davis argues that obsession is largely in the eye of the beholder.
By Deanna Isaacs

Girl, You'll Meet a Creature Soon Sexual initiation lurks just below the surface in Lilli Carré's The Lagoon.
By Noah Berlatsky

The Debutantes First books by local authors—including a former trial lawyer, a PR exec, a traumatized artist, a Cubs fan on Zoloft, and a computer programmer who plays bass.
By Noah Berlatsky, Robert McDonald, Ted Cox, Ed M. Koziarski, and Anne Ford
Misadventures in Urban Rehabbing
Ed Zotti, the longtime editor of the Straight Dope, has a new book on the house he and his wife bought to rehab in 1993. They're almost finished. Here's an excerpt.


The View From Behind the Billy Club
Police veterans of the 1968 Democratic National Convention get their say in Battleground Chicago.
By Barry Wightman


Teen Angst, Straight Up
Ariel Schrag (Potential) didn’t survive the Holocaust or flee the Ayatollah, but her comics find meaning all the same.
By Noah Berlatsky


Spring Books Special: Crime Spree
Profiles of Chicago-area mystery and crime writers Steven Sidor, Libby Fischer Hellman, Achy Obejas, and Sharon Fifer


Meta Man
Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project takes his usual themes on a trip through time with a true-crime twist.
By Greg Boose


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