A force of nature in her time, stage actress Charlotte Cushman who played both male andfemale roles, was friends with Abraham Lincoln who admired her work. Indeed, she acted along side both Edwin and John Wilkes Booth and was said to have left a scar on the assassin’s neck that was later used to identify…
Category: Biography
The Survivors: A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing
Adam Frankel tells in his recently released book, The Survivors: A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing, about identity, family trauma and how in family those who came before us impact our own lives.
How to Forget: A Daughter’s Memoir
Kate Mulgrew is just finishing lunch when I call at the pre-arranged time and she asks for a moment so she can order coffee. She’s eating and talking because her schedule is so tight it requires serious multi-tasking. Right now, she is juggling filming a new season of Mr. Mercedes and is also on…
Pete Buttigieg’s Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future
In January 2011, Newsweek magazine published an article titled “America’s Dying Cities” focusing on 10 cities with the steepest drop in overall population as well as the largest decline in the number of residents under the age of 18. Among those listed such as Detroit and Flint, was South Bend, Indiana which over the…
Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures
When we think of Ben Hecht—and really, how many of us do? it’s because the college drop-out, turned Chicago Daily News reporter and then screenwriter personifies the early part of the 19th century. He was a war and crime journalist who went beyond writing and instead helped solve murder cases, along with the help…
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…
