January 22, 2011
Our next Book Trailer of the Week is for Susan Casey’s riveting investigative study The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean. A 2010 NY Times Notable Book, The Wave travels around the world and back in time to search out gargantuan walls of water including a 1,740 foot-high monster that pummeled the Alaskan coast in 1958. Along […]
January 20, 2011
Rebecca Janowitz is a lawyer, committed public servant, and the author of the fascinating new book Culture of Opportunity: Obama’s Chicago – The People, Politics, and Ideas of Hyde Park. Written from her informed perspective as a long-time community insider, her book is an engaging exploration of how Hyde Park’s unique blend of independent politics, social activism, and racial […]
January 20, 2011
Thanks to Watermelon Express, an innovative technology design company, people studying for the SAT, GRE, MCAT, LSAT, and the GMAT will now be able to stop carrying those expensive, humongous test prep books around. The Chicago-based company, founded by Ujjwal Gupta and Ashish Rangnekar, has developed test prep applications for the iPhone, the iPad and the […]
January 19, 2011
A lecture highlighting the history of Africans and African Americans in Paris, France will be held on February 1 at the Alliance Francaise de Chicago, 810 N. Dearborn. The travel guide discovery of historical African-American Paris will be lead by Kiratiana Freelon, a Harvard graduate who has traveled and lived in over 25 countries, and […]
January 18, 2011
There has been a lot of discussion about using My Media Mall (Overdrive) on the ipad. We can use Bluefire Reader but books must be first downloaded to the computer then transferred to the ipad. Bluefire does a great job of explaining this process, but it’s really not ideal. So, we heard some rumors about […]
January 18, 2011
The Conan Doyle estate has asked author Anthony Horowitz to write a new Sherlock Holmes book for adult readers to be set in traditional Victorian London. Read more in today’s NYT article. (Laura H.)
January 17, 2011
An unpublished short story by famed mystery writer Dashiell Hammett has been discovered in a library archive. “So I Shot Him,” a 19-page story, will appear in Strand Magazine February 28. Several others were found and I hope they will also see the light of day. (Hammett’s known for The Maltese Falcon.) Shira S.
January 15, 2011
Our latest Book Trailer of the Week is for Dan Chaon’s pulse-pounding novel Await Your Reply. A fixture on many 2009 best book lists, this haunting tale explores the dangers of reinventing yourself as it traces the oddly interlocking lives of three disparate characters: an 18-year-old orphan who runs away with her high school teacher, a college dropout […]
January 11, 2011
“Fresh Air” regular Maureen Corrigan reviews a fascinating book which is sure to stir up parents, psychologists, and culture experts for the foreseeable future. She notes the vast differences between Chinese values and current American attitudes toward child-rearing in “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” Education pros generally us warn not to insult or restrict […]
January 11, 2011
David McCullough, a two-time Pulitzer winning author of historical subjects, is coming out with a work about American artists and intellectuals in Paris in May. “The Greater Journey” is his first full-length work since “1776.” Shira S. Ben Franklin in Paris
