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Conrad Black (aka Lord Black of Crossharbour, aka “The Robber Baron”), author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (2003) and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full (2007), has been sentenced to 78 months in prison (“Judge cuts Conrad Black a break,” by Abdon M. Pallasch, Chicago Sun-Times). He doesn’t look happy. If he [...]

Now the bad news. The Chicago Sun-Times is taking the axe to its book section. From Critical Mass: Just when it seemed the cutbacks in newspaper book sections had struck bone, they’ve gone deeper yet this month. Starting on December 30th the Chicago Sun-Times’ book section – formerly run by Cheryl L. Reed, now by [...]

The Chicago Sun-Times profiles a small-town boy with big-city ideas (“Small-town boy, big-city ideas,” by Mark Eleveld): Uptown takes a lot of its character from its bars, buildings and the different crowds — the occasional transient looks like he popped out of a dime store novel, and the bouncers are straight out of Raymond Chandler [...]

Apparently the last half century has been a time of drought in Chicago letters. In its November issue, Chicago Magazine (“Tough Love: Great Chicago Novels“) offers its list of the “ten essential Chicago novels.” But while inclusion doesn’t necessarily hinge on a novel’s status as classic, the results skew that way, with only one post-1953 book–Sandra Cisnero’s The House on Mango Street [...]