I’ve only been to a few hockey games — always under duress — but that didn’t keep me from reading “The Breakaway: The Inside Story of the Wirtz Family Business and the Chicago Blackhawks,” well into the night. Typically I don’t expect sports books to be page-turners, but Bryan Smith, a two-time winner and six-time…
Category: Author event
Book review, signing: New book offers fresh take on Gary/Chicago resident, Nelson Algren
Mary Wisniewski was a college student when she first discovered the writings of Chicago writer Nelson Algren. “Many of his books were set in Wicker Park where my family was from which intrigued me,” says Wisniewski, noting that though Algren’s novels are about shady characters, drug addicts, grifters, drifters and those on the margins of…
Night of Miracles by Elizabeth Berg
It’s a dark world at times and New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Berg feels compelled to make it just a little nicer through her novels. In her latest, Night of Miracles (Random House 2018; $26) she takes us back toMason, Missouri, an imaginary town where kindness reigns and there are happy endings. …
Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America
sleek and glorious as any Art Deco masterpiece whether it be the grand Palmolive Building built in 1922 or the much lowlier but still spectacular Bell telephone Model 302 designed not by a noted artist or architect but instead by George Lum, a Bell Labs engineer in 1937, Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America (Yale…
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean’s newest book, The Library Book (Simon & Schuster, $28), is about a fire and a library but like all things this New York Times bestselling author writes (The Orchid Thief, Rin Tin Tin), it’s so much more. A lover of libraries since she was very young, Orlean had been toying with the idea…
Highland
A Greek immigrant with a love of books and a degree in engineering, Jim Roumbos decided to open Miles Books in downtown Highland in 1986. Since then big chain stores like Borders went bankrupt and closed their doors, but Roumbos remains open. “My dad, who at the time, couldn’t speak English and worked 70 hours…
Swedish Settlements on the South Shore
Northwest Indiana is famously known as a melting pot, a coming together of a vibrant amalgam of people from many countries and different cultures, making the area rich in diversity. But what may be surprising to those of us who grew up in the Region, the first non-English speaking people to move into the Indiana…
