Jane Simon Ammeson

Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll: How Food Lovers, Free Spirits, Misfits and Wanderers Created a New Profession

Andrew Friedman calls himself a chef writer because, as much as he loves food, he’s passionate about the stories chefs have to tell.

“My point of view is writing not so much about the food but about the chefs, that’s why I say I’m a chefie not a foodie,” he says. “I think too many well-known chefs are almost portrayed as cartoon characters and in a broad stroke. I wanted to spend time with them and really get to know their stories, who they really are and their impact on how we eat now. Like Wolfgang Puck. He’s a tremendous cook but people call him the first celebrity chef. He’s so much more than that.”

To accomplish this, Friedman interviewed over 200 chefs and food writers and others who were leading the food revolution against processed and packaged foods.

“I’m such a geek I would spend three hours with someone just to get a nugget or two,” he says.

The results? An accumulation of tens of thousands of transcript pages and his latest book, Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll: How Food Lovers, Free Spirits, Misfits and Wanderers Created a New Profession (Ecco 2018; $27.99), where he recounts how dedicated and imaginative men and women in the 1970s and the 1980s, who were willing to challenge the rules, revolutionized America’s food scene.

Now chefs are like rock stars, often known just by one name, commanding their own empires of cookbooks, TV shows, restaurants, cookware and food products. But Friedman points out that up until 1976, the United States Department of Labor categorized cooks as domestics. It took lobbying by the American Culinary Federation, at the urging of Louis Szarthmary, the late Hungarian American chef who owned The Bakery in Chicago and wrote The Chef’s Secret Cookbook, a New York Times bestseller, to change the classification into a profession.

“I wanted to show how this became a viable profession,” he says. “I was talking to Jody Buvette, owner of Buvette in New York and she remembers sitting her father down and saying ‘I have two bad things to tell you. I’m gay and I want to be a cook.’ It was like telling your upper middle-class parents that you wanted to be a coal miner.”

Friedman, whose knowledge about restaurants, culinarians and food seems delightfully endless, chose three cities to focus on—San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. What does he think of Chicago’s food scene?

“It’s great,” he says. “I love dining in Chicago and you have some brilliant chefs but I think much of the beginnings started in those three cities.”

Besides, he has those piles of transcripts. There’s surely more than a few Chicago stories in all those pages. In the meantime, Friedman gives us a wonderfully written read about a defining time—one that in some ways separates frozen TV dinners and what many restaurants are serving today.

Ifyougo:

What: 5 course 80s-era dinner inspired by Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll with wines selected by Sommelier Rachael Lowe and conversation at Spiaggia Restaurant

When: Tues. October 2, 7 pm

Where: Spiaggia Restaurant, 980 North Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL

Cost: $150 per person

FYI: 312-280-2750; spiaggiarestaurant.com

What: Talk with Andrew Friedman about Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll

When: Wed, October 3, 6:30 to 8:30 pm

Where: Read It & Eat, 2142 North Halsted St., Chicago, IL

Cost: Purchase a ticket and book combo for $36.45 or 2 tickets and a book combo for $46.45

FYI: 773-661-6158; readitandeatstore.com

October 1, 2018

Young Lincoln: Growing Up in Southern Indiana

Many people aren’t aware that Abraham Lincoln spent his formative years in Southern Indiana, moving there from Kentucky with his family at age seven, leaving with them when he was 21.

It’s these years that Jan Jacobi, an avid Lincoln enthusiast and an award-winning educator who currently is teaching at St. Michael School of Clayton in St. Louis, chronicles in Young Lincoln (Reedy Press $16.95), his recently released book for readers ages 12 to 16.

Growing up in New York, Jacobi moved to St. Louis in 1992 to take a teaching job and says he quickly realized how close his new home was to areas where Lincoln had lived including Southern Indiana and Springfield, Illinois, inspiring him to read book after book about the president.

“One of my students asked me if there was a book he could read about young Lincoln,” recalls Jacobi who because of his towering height is frequently asked to portray the president. “I said there really wasn’t one for his age range. And he told me that I should write one then.”

Jacobi’s publisher agreed but with one more stipulation. He should write it in first person, using the voice of Lincoln as a youngster.

“I thought no one can do that,” says Jacobi. “But then gradually the voice came to me—I just had to marinate in it.”

Spending time in Spencer County, Indiana where Lincoln grew up, Jacobi talked to some of the residents whose ancestors had been friends of the Lincoln family. They shared with him their views of the Lincolns that had been passed down generation after generation.

Thomas Lincoln has always been somewhat of a cipher—the youngest and least successful of three brothers who all witnessed the death of their father, another Abraham Lincoln, who was shot and killed by a Native American . When the future president was a youngster, Thomas Lincoln was a harsh father but that wasn’t unusual in pioneer days. Thomas also thought his son was wasting his time reading and learning and tried to discourage it. Young Lincoln, in turn, was contemptuous of his father’s illiteracy and failures to get ahead in life and sought the mentorship of other men in the community who were learned and successful. Southern Indiana at that time was a wilderness where cougars and bears were always a menace, food was often scarce and life was harsh and often deadly. Lincoln’s mother died after contracting milk sickness as did a friend she’d been nursing for the same disease; his sister died in childbirth.

As an adult, when his father was on his deathbed, Lincoln, now a successful lawyer, refused to visit him despite the appeals of his step-mother with whom he was exceptionally close and his step-brother. When Thomas died, Lincoln didn’t attend his funeral.

“People in Southern Indiana are kinder to his father,” says Jacobi. “I’m a little harder on him.”

How did Lincoln develop the resiliency that would allow him to overcome his early adversity to lead the country during one of its most tumultuous periods is a question that Jacobi says he has longed tried to answer.

“Lincoln is a remarkable human being,” he says. “There are so many dimensions to him. We have to be careful not to turn him into a saint; but his essential goodness speaks to me.”

So much so, that Jacobi is planning his next book about Lincoln’s time in Springfield.

“Lincoln is endlessly fascinating,” says Jacobi. “He is the quintessential American. The only other person I put in that category is Mark Twain.”

Ifyougo:

What: Jan Jacobi discusses Young Lincoln. He will be joined in conversation by syndicated columnist Steve Chapman. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.

When: Saturday, September 22 at 3 p.m.

Where: 57th Street Books, 1301 E 57th St, Chicago, IL

Cost: Free

FYI: 773-684-1300; semcoop.com

September 18, 2018

Lake Success

“I’ve always wanted to travel the country by Greyhound bus,” says Gary Shteyngart, the New York Times bestselling author about Lake Success, his latest book (PenguinRandom House 2018; $28) which tells the story of Barry Cohen, a hedge fund millionaire who, unable to deal with all the issues impacting his life, jumps on a bus to find his college girlfriend.

“I know, I’m nuts. But I thought it would be a very visceral way to see the country at a difficult time in its history,” continues Shteyngart. “And it sure was. As for the hedge fund part, I guess I realized there were so few people left in New York who weren’t connected to finance one way or another. Everyone else had been priced out.”

You might think that Cohen, a man worth millions who is married to a beautiful, exotic and intelligent wife, has, if not it all, at least a lot more than most of us. But beneath the surface, it’s all breaking into pieces for Cohen, a self-made man who overcame the intense insecurities he had as a boy. His only child is severely autistic, his wife is drifting away having fallen in love with a married neighbor and the Feds are opening an investigation into how his hedge fund lost a billion or so.

Chucking it all including his Black Amex card, cell phone and access to his millions, Cohen has only a couple hundred dolalrs and his expensive watch collection which emotionally means more to him at the time he starts his journey than anything else in his life.

Shteyngart was able to nail down the personalities of his characters by immersing himself in their world.

“I spent three years hanging out with hedge fund people and their spouses and sometimes children,” he says. “A strange alternate reality began to take shape in my mind. I started jotting down the little tics and conversations, but mostly the fact that the real world of the 99.9 percent was no longer available to them. They had moated themselves in to an almost feudal level. In fact, large parts of Manhattan started to seem like a series of gated communities.”

There’s a parallel to Shteyngart and Barry’s upbringing. Both grew up poor and saw Wall Street as a way to make up for the huge amounts of insecurity they felt.

“In our country, being poor is almost considered a moral failing, though often to get rich requires a true moral failing,” he says.

Unlike Barry, Shtenyngart, who immigrated with his parents from Leningrad at age seven, turned to writing dark comedic novels such as Super Sad True Love Story (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize) and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (winner of the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction). It’s humor, based in part upon his parents who he says have a very satirical approach to reality honed in the Soviet Union, where laughter was the only defense against a very stupid system.

“Being an immigrant is also a nice way to observe a society because you have to learn it from scratch,” he adds.

To learn how to become a hedge fund manager, watch this video by Shtenygart and Ben Stiller: http://bit.ly/2x084Iz

Ifyougo:

What: A conversation and book signing with Gary Shteyngart

When: Friday, September 21 at 6:30 p.m.

Where: KAM Isaiah Israel Congregational,1100 E Hyde Park Blvd, Chicago, IL

Cost: $30 tickets include admission for one and one copy of Lake Success

FYI: 773-684-1300; semcoop.com

September 10, 2018

The Mermaid Handbook: An Alluring Treasury of Literature, Lore, Art, Recipes, and Projects

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Sea shell cookies perfect for Mermaids to nibble

Life is busy for a lovely mermaid (and aren’t they all?). There’s riding seahorses through shimmering sea foam capped with frothy white waves, finding the perfect rock on which to display their fish-like tails sheathed in iridescent spangles so they sparkle in the sunlight, combing their beautiful long locks and, of course, singing enticingly so that sailors forsake their duty and travel to their doom all to get a better look.

For mermaids as well as mermaid wannabees or just those who love reading about these mythical creatures, folklore expert Carolyn Turgeon introduces us to their world in her recently released (Harper Design 2018; $35).

Turgeon, the editor-in-chief of Faerie Magazine, a quarterly print publication and author of several books including The Faerie Handbook, showcases all things mermaid by dividing her handbook into four sections. In “Fashion and Beauty” we learn techniques on creating mermaid hair—face it, haven’t you always wanted a reason to sprinkle glitter throughout your locks. Of course, then you need a mermaid mirror to admire yourself. Not to worry Turgeon includes directions. “Arts and Culture” tells the stories of sirens in classic mythology and contains luscious reproductions of mermaid art and recounts tales of mermaid from around the world. Fair warning—mermaids aren’t always nice.

You don’t have to go down to the sea for the section on “Real Mermaids and Where to Find Them.” Here, Turgeon takes us to the advent of mermaids as entertainers starting with the story of Annette Kellerman who learned to swim like a fish in her native Australia to overcome rickets and bowed legs, eventually becoming strong enough to swim an average of 45 miles a week. So good at what she did, Kellerman began swimming for money at young age and by 1907 was performing as the Australian Mermaid throughout the United States in glass tanks and in 1916 starred in A Daughter of the Gods, the first movie to cost over a $1 million to make as well as the first one featuring a naked woman (don’t worry, her long mermaid hair covered the most private of parts). Turgeon takes us into midcentury when there were a plethora of bars and restaurants with tanks for mermaids to perform in. Surprisingly, at least for me, not all of these have disappeared and some mermaid cocktail lounges are still in business including the Dive Bar in Sacramento, California, the Sip ‘N Dip Tiki Lounge in Great Falls, Montana and the Wreck Bar in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We also learn the stories of women who have made their livings as mermaids.

Of course, even a mermaid has to eat and the last section of Turgeon’s delightful book “Food, Entertaining and Stories of the Sea” includes recipes for the types of edibles a mermaid might nibble such as Savory Sesame Seed and Seaweed Cookies, Salmon Poke with Wild Rice, Pineapple and Macadamia Nuts and an assortment of sea-themed shaped cookies covered with royal icing. And because what mermaid wouldn’t want to set the perfect table to indulge in such delights, there are crafts to create seashell fortune party favors and shell cocktail glasses to sip such libations as Blue Sea Cocktails and Seductive Siren Cocktails (recipes included).

Those wanting to indulge their inner mermaids can try the recipes below.

Honey Gingerbread Cookies with Royal Icing

8 ounces of unsalted butter

One and ½ granulated sugar

2 cups good quality honey

2 teaspoons baking powder

4 teaspoons ginger

4 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon cloves

1 teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoons salt

¼ cup cocoa powder, optional

3 large eggs

9 cups all-purpose flour

1 large egg, lightly beaten and mixed with 1 teaspoon water

Melt the butter in a medium sized saucepan over medium low heat. Add the sugar is still mostly dissolved, then pour in the honey and stir to combine. Cook until very hard and mixture is smooth, but did not boil. Remove from heat.

Sift together baking powder, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and salt. Add up to 1/3 cup cocoa powder, depending on color desired. Add to the warm butter mixture and stir until well combined. Set aside to cool to room temperature.

Transfer the mixture to the ball of an electric mixer and add three eggs, beating until combined. Gradually adding flour, beating all the while.

When all the flour is absorbed, divided the dough in half and wrapped in several layers of plastic wrap.

Store in a cool place for at least 24 hours, or up to a week in the refrigerator. If the Joe is refrigerated bring it to room temperature before proceeding.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375°F. Unwrap the dough and place on a well-floured work surface. Knead flour into the dough until it is very smooth, pliable and not sticky. Roll up to ¼- inch thickness for small cookies, a little thicker for larger cookies.

Use cookie cutters to cut cookies into mermaid friendly shapes such as seahorses, shells and starfish.

Big six minutes, checking to see if any bubbles form. If they do, gently smooth with a spatula and continue to bake until done, about nine minutes total for medium cookies and up to 14 minutes for larger ones. Remove to a wire rack and use a pastry brush to apply coat of the lightly beaten egg. Cool completely.

Decorate with Royal Icing (see recipe below).

Royal Icing

2 pounds of powdered sugar

½ teaspoon cream of tartar

1 to 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

10 tablespoons liquid pasteurized egg whites

Combine powdered sugar, cream of tartar, vanilla and pasteurized egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat high speed with a paddle attachment for 4 to 5 minutes.

Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Blue Sea Cocktail

1 ½ ounces white rum

1 ounce Blue Curaçao

½ ounce Suze or any aperitif

½ ounce Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur

½ ounce simple syrup

Dash fresh lemon juice

Ice cubes

Combine all the ingredients in the shaker.

Shake until will chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass, on the rocks and serve immediately.

From The Mermaid Handbook by Carolyn Turgeon.

September 6, 2018

The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies

Told that his surviving newborn daughter would soon die just like her twin, William Conlin grabbed the premature child and, hailing a cab, fled. But he wasn’t going to the hospital, he was leaving it and heading to see Martin Couney who had no office but operated on the midways of carnivals and fairs such as New York’s Coney Island and Chicago’s 1933 Century of Progress.

A sideshow novelty along with bearded ladies and brothels (yes, many fairs had “female boarding houses” back then) attracting tens of thousands of people, Couney exhibited “weakling” babies that would typically be left to die in hospitals. Instead he saved them through the use of a new and unusual medical device called an incubator. He was often quoted as saying “If we have a child for seven days in our charge we never lose it.” It wasn’t a boast, it was mainly true. Couney operated his Infant Incubator Company at a time where eugenics, based upon the idea that only the strongest, healthiest, smartest and best looking should survive in order to create a perfect race.

“In literature these babies were called ‘weaklings’,” says Dawn Raffel, author of the recently released The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies, by Dawn Raffel (Blue Rider Press $27), adding that Couney’s story was almost forgotten.

Indeed, Raffel, who grew up in Milwaukee, had only learned about Couney in passing when her father mentioned going to the Century of Progress and seeing the exhibit.

“I didn’t even know there was a World’s Fair in Chicago,” was Raffel’s first take away from their conversation. But she later became intrigued and after a visit to the Coney Island Museum embarked upon four years of research.

At first information was difficult to find even though Couney had been the main go to person for premature babies for 40 years. And even then, most premature American babies didn’t survive.

“If you weren’t a place where Couney had a show—and that was only in the summer—you were pretty much out of luck,” she says.

A positive turn in her research came about when Raffel learned about Lawrence Gartner, a highly regarded neonatologist and professor emeritus of pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago who called himself a Couney buff. In an interesting connection to Northwest Indiana, Lawrence’s wife Carol Gartner, another Couney afficianado, retired as a professor of English and the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Purdue University Calumet.

Raffel also interviewed some of the babies, now grown up, who had been saved by Couney. Among them was Barbara Gerber, who was 80 years old at the time she spoke to Raffel and though living in California had grown up on Chicago’s South Side. Gerber and her twin sister, Joanie, were underweight when born. Joanie, at four pounds, was placed in an incubator at the University of Chicago’s Lying-in Hospital until she gained a pound and then was sent home. Barbara, at three pounds, was considered a goner and ended up with Councey where she spent three months. Health wise, Barbara prospered while Joanie suffered lifelong issues, dying at age 48.

A showman and possibly not a doctor at all, Couney made money by exhibiting premature babies in incubators to fair goes and used all sorts of marketing tricks to increase the crowds. One barker, hired to lure people in by yelling “Don’t forget to see the babies” would change his name from Archibald Leach and move to Hollywood where he became known as Cary Grant.

But Couney’s heart was in the right place.

Over the decades, before incubators, which were invented in Europe and widely used there, became commonplace in the U.S., Raffel says he probably saved between 6,500 and 7,000 lives. He also claimed that 85 percent of the babies in his care survived, with most deaths happening with 24 to 48 hours of their arrival.

“One doctor is quoted as saying he’d never seen a hospital as clean as Dr. Couney’s place on the Midway,” says Raffel.

Ifyougo:

What: Dawn Raffel talk, book signing and reading with award winning author Stuart Dybek.

When: 6 p.m., Wednesday, September 5

Where: Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL

FYI: (773) 752.4381; semcoop.com

What: Multimedia presentation and talk moderated by Donna Seaman

When: 6 p.m., Thursday, September 6

Where: Cindy Pritzker Auditorium, Harold Washington Public Library, 400 S. State St., Chicago, IL

FYI: (312) 747-4300; chipublib.org/locations/34

September 3, 2018

Local Flavor: Restaurants That Shaped Chicago’s Neighborhoods

Chicago is a city made of neighborhoods, each individual and diverse, reflective of its residents and also the restaurants anchoring them. In her latest book, Jean Iversen shares with us her impressions and interactions in eight local eateries and the people who made them what they are, chronicling their stories in her latest book, (Northwestern University Press 2018).

It started when Iversen, a Chicago writer whose work has appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business, Time Out Chicago, and the Daily Herald, was researching her first book, BYOB Chicago :Your Guide to Bring-Your-Own-Bottle Restaurants and Wine & Spirits Stores in Chicago.

“Along the way there were a handful of restaurants that inspired me,” says Iversen. “The ones I chose for the book weren’t the oldest restaurants in Chicago, I just wanted them to be run by the ‘mayors’—restaurateurs who had become leaders of their small sections of Chicago over the years.”

Included in her list are eateries in Pilsen, Chinatown, Little Italy, Avondale and on Devon Avenue to name a few. Some had long roots in the community such as Won Kow, a Chinatown restaurant that first opened 90 years but unfortunately closed this year.

Iversen says she asked a baseline of questions such as how have you managed to stay in business. The answers she found, were often similar.

“They were gracious, treated their customers well, offered quality food and had old school values,” she says. “They hadn’t gone out of style and were adaptable.”

Each restaurant’s story opens a door and we get to see the personalities of not only the owners but their workers and customers. Iversen spent a lot of time showcasing not only Wow Kow but also Tufano’s Vernon Park Tap in Little Italy; Nuevo Leon/Canton Regio in Pilsen; The Parthenon in Greektown; Borinquen in Humboldt Park; Red Apple Buffet in Avondale; Hema’s Kitchen in West Rogers Park; and Noon O Kabab in Albany Park.

She also collected recipes, a daunting task.

“They weren’t intellectual property as far as the owners were concerned, many just hadn’t written them down,” she says. “I had to get them to sit down and get them to tell me more specific amounts than just “a little bit of this and that.”

Ifyougo:

What: Jean Iversen discusses Local Flavor: Restaurants That Shaped Chicago’s Neighborhoods. She will be joined in conversation by Jeffrey Ruby. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.

When: Saturday, August 25, 3 pm

Where: 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St., Chicago, IL

Cost: Free

FYI: (773) 684-1300; semcoop.com

August 22, 2018

Ohio: A Novel

He was a successful journalist, but Stephen Markley says the arc of his career was leading him in a different direction than his ultimate dream—to be a novelist. While many of us would have just continued with the flow of success, Markley instead signed up to attend the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa, among the most prestigious of writing programs. But the next step was to write a novel and though it took almost five years for Markley to reach his goal the effort and time were well worth it as his recently published novel, Ohio: A Novel (Simon & Schuster 2018; $27), is garnering great reviews.The The book tells the story of four friends who meet up years after graduating high school in an attempt to sort out issues from their past, mend relationships and come to an understanding about how and why they’ve changed in the intervening years. Their lives also parallel the transformation of their home town, the fictional New Canaan based in part on Mt. Vernon, Ohio where Markley grew up.

“New Canaan is not exactly Mt. Vernon though I certainly borrowed freely and shamelessly from there, particularly from my high school and it wasn’t difficult for me to access what it felt like to come from a town like New Canaan, to move away and return, to gossip about what’s been going on, to drink till the bars kick you out when you’re back home,” says Markley. “I wanted to explicate how I grew up and the monumental changes I’ve seen since 9/11 and how they impacted the place where I lived and the lives of those I knew.”

Describing his book as both a murder and social mystery as well as a ghost story, Markley says the book is about “big things.” These includes the opiate crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Great Recession, the loss of good paying union jobs which catapulted many workers out of the middle class and, ultimately, how dramatically New Canaan, like so many real places, morphed from prosperity into a rustbelt relic.

Markley was a senior in high school when the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 occurred. Suddenly everything changed and life became totally different.

“There were military recruiters everywhere and everyone was talking to them about enlisting and many people I know signed up,” says Markley. “My approach in creating characters was taking inspiration from those I knew but not taking people I knew—I didn’t want to copy people but to use stories to help form the people in my book. By doing so, they became real to me, When choosing the fate of my characters, I struggled, going back and forth as to what happens to them. They’re part of the story I wanted to tell.”

Ifyougo

What: Talk, Q&A, Signing with Stephen Markley

When: Thursday, August 23 at 6 p.m.

Where: Barnes & Noble, 1130 North State St., Chicago, IL

Cost: Free

FYI: (312) 280-8155; stores.barnesandnoble.com/store/2922

August 21, 2018

Hope Never Dies: A Obama-Biden Mystery

Watching news clips of Barack Obama windsurfing off of Richard Branson’s private island, kayaking with Justin Trudeau and BASE jumping in Hong Kong with Bradley Cooper while he’s grouting tile in his master bathroom and playing darts on a board his daughter gave him years ago, Joe Biden, feeling left-out (he doesn’t even have Secret Service protection anymore), grumpily wonders why the 44^th president hasn’t called him in the months since Donald Trump took office. Biden’s grousing changes quickly when Obama appears in the woods behind his house late one night, coolly smoking a cigarette and delivering the terrible news that Finn Donnelly, the Amtrak conductor that Biden befriended as he traveled back and forth between Delaware to Washington D.C. has been murdered. On his body, Barack says, was a printout map of Biden’s home. Is someone targeting the vice-president?

And so the bromance rekindles as the ex-president and ex-vice are back working as a team as they race to solve the crime in Andrew Shaffer’s Hope Never Dies (Quirk Books 2018; $14.99). The title is a parody of the James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies” and the dime store detective novel-like-cover depicts Obama, the wind whipping his red tie behind him, standing in the passenger seat of a Thunderbird convertible pointing the way as a determined Biden drives but the story itself isn’t farce. Shaffer, who is a New York Times best seller author, says that though the action is over-the-top at times—Obama roughing up a biker; Biden head-butting a villain and getting thrown off a fast moving train to name a few—he resisted getting too campy.

“The book is more than a one-note joke,” says Shaffer.

Growing up in Iowa, Shaffer enrolled in the University of Iowa’s noted creative writing program.

“They teach serious fiction there and you’re reading a lot of serious authors like Phillip Roth,” he says. “So I’m writing like I’m in my 60s, divorced and living in the suburbs. I was only 21 and I thought what am I doing? I wanted to write the type of fiction I like to read such as authors like Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake and Lawrence Block.”

Shaffer had been thinking about writing a mystery with Joe Biden as the main character for years.

“I thought about maybe making it a cozy type of mystery,” he says. “But I got the idea for this when they’d been out of office for a week or so. I wrote a note to my agent asking how about a Biden-Obama mystery and she said really? I said yes.”

Inspired by the 1980s buddy cop movies he liked such as “Tango & Cash,” Shaffer says that the mystery isn’t just about Biden’s love of ice cream but instead covers serious topics such as the opioid epidemic. Since the book’s recent release on July 18, it’s been selected as an Amazon Best Book of the Month: Thrillers July 2018 and an Official Summer Read of Publishers Weekly. He is already working on the next book in the series, Hope Rides Again.

“It’s a legacy in ways,” Shaffer says about the series. “”It’s for people, no matter what part of the political spectrum they’re on, need some kind of hope.”

Ifyougo:

What: Book signing with Andrew Shaffer.

When: Sunday, August 19 at 2:00 p.m.

Where: Anderson’s Bookshop, 123 W. Jefferson Ave., Naperville, IL.

FYI: (630) 355-2665; andersonsbookshop.com

August 16, 2018

Sales of Red’s Nature Adventure to Benefit the Shirley Heinze Land Trust

Always adventuresome, Red, an energetic Irish setter, gets lost as he and his friends explore the northwestern Indiana nature preserves of the Shirley Heinze Land Trust. But losing his way becomes an educational experience for Red in James Dworkin’s third book about the lovable canine’s escapades, Red’s Nature Adventure, illustrated by artist Michael Chelich.

“As Red tries to find his way he wanders through all these different land formations and sees all the diverse types of plant and animal life that live there,” says Dworkin, chancellor emeritus at Purdue University North Central and a professor of management at Purdue University. “Red gets to meet so many animals and they help him as they show him around the nature preserves.”

Working in partnership with the Shirley Heinze Land Trust, Dworkin, who will be signing copies of his on Saturday, August 18th from 12 noon until 2pm at the Indiana Welcome Center, located at 7770 Corinne Drive, in Hammond, Indiana, is donating all the proceeds from sales of Red’s Nature Adventure to the non-profit.

The Trust, an organization founded in 1981 with a mission to preserve, protect and restore significant natural areas in northwest Indiana encompasses 2400 acres of prairie, tallgrass, high dune, oak savanna, boreal flatwoods, dune-and-swale, woodlands, marshes, swamps, ponds, fens, bogs, and riparian habitat.

“I really believe in what they’re doing,” says Dworkin. “And I felt this was a way I could help them in perpetuity and also introduce kids of all ages to the importance of land stewardship.”

Though the book is aimed for readers from third grade and up, Dworkin says that it can be also be read to younger children.

“Little kids will enjoy the story while older kids can learn about the environment,” he says, noting that Chelich’s wonderful illustrations portray Heinze Trust nature preserve locations in Gary, Hammond, Hobart, Portage, Chesterton, Valparaiso, Michigan City, and South Bend. “This book has multiple possibilities. Teachers can make interesting assignments based on the book and there’s an appendix in the back that has information about the importance of protecting these natural places and how to visit them.”

Dworkin has written two other books about Red, including The Dog and the Dolphin.

“I got the idea for that one when I was sitting on the beach on Sanibel Island and I kept seeing this dog walking back and forth,” he says. “I wondered what he was doing and then I saw a dolphin out in the water and the dog swam out and they started playing.”

Since he started writing children’s books, Dworkin and his wife, Nancy, have made over 250 appearances at schools, hospitals, stores, book signings and readings. He doesn’t charge for any of it and if anyone is interested, he says to contact him at 219-363-2970 or jdworkin@purdue.edu

Ifyougo:

What: Book signing to benefit the Shirley Heinze Land Trust. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.

When: Saturday, August 18th from noon until 2 pm

Where: Indiana Welcome Center, 7770 Corinne Drive, Hammond, Indiana

FYI: 219-989-7979 or 800-ALL-LAKE; southshorecva.com

August 16, 2018

The Joe Maddon Story: “Try Not to Suck”

In a Zen-like move that baffled many in the sports world, Joe Maddon, then the new manager of the Chicago Cubs, enacted a “less is more” philosophy by almost completely eliminating batting practice. What went against a long time baseball tradition as well as causing intense angst among the Cub fans and head scratching from pundits, now is credited with being one of factors helping the wonderful losers win their first World Series in 108 years.

“For over a century of baseball, the belief was if you’re struggling then the answer was to work harder,” says Jesse Rogers, who with Bill Chastain, authored Try Not to Suck: The Exceptional, Extraordinary Baseball Life of Joe Maddon (Triumph Books, March 2018) with a foreword by Ben Zobrist.

Maddon’s beginnings in baseball weren’t promising. A Minor League catcher for Los Angeles, after four seasons, with only 180 times at bat and three home runs, he hadn’t advanced further than Class A. Obviously it was time for a change and so he segued into management, working in a variety of positions for the Angels including minor league manager, scout and roving minor league hitting instructor, bench coach and interim manager.

“His 31 years in Anaheim were an apprenticeship,” says Rogers, a television, internet and radio reporter for ESPN since 2009 who was an insider covering the Cubs in 2016 (Chastain, who covers the Tampa Bay Rays for MLB.com and knew Maddon from his days there). “He saw a lot of things there that he thought should be done differently, but he couldn’t challenge it. But he was able to take what he learned to Tampa Bay where he could put some of that in place. He very much believes in less. If you’re struggling, don’t work more instead cut back. ”

One of the positives from that strategy is players retain more energy as the long season progresses—an advantage over other teams who hew to conventional wisdom.

“Joe’s surprised that more people aren’t doing this after seeing how successful he’s been,” says Rogers.

But though he upended some traditions, Maddon has his superstitions just like most of those in the business.

When rain called a temporary halt during Game 7 of the Series with Chicago and Cleveland tied at 7-7, Maddon headed to his office and, spotting his bag, recalled thinking “it was time for my dad.” Grabbing his dad’s hat which he kept in the bag, he stuffed it down the back of his pants.

“I said to myself ‘Let’s go’,” he is quoted saying in the book. “I took him back there with me and during the course of the next inning I kept touching it back there.”

The title of Chastain and Rogers’s book s from one of Maddon’s oft-quoted maxims. Others include “don’t let the pressure exceed the pressure” or “do simple better.”

“Probably my favorite one in general is ‘Embrace the target,’” says Rogers. “Joe says he’s really a big believer of running towards the fire as opposed to running away. I think that’s a good lesson for all of us.”

August 10, 2018

Author: Jane Simon Ammeson

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