When Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock announced he’d be resigning from the U.S. Congress it was seen by many as yet another example of the state’s seamy political underbelly. As detailed in […]
Category: authors
Baseball on Trial honored
Baseball on Trial by Nathaniel Grow is co-winner of the 2015 Larry Ritter Book Award from the Society of American Baseball Research. The award recognizes the best new baseball book […]
NWSA First Book Prize entries being accepted
June 1, 2015, is the next application deadline for the NWSA/University of Illinois Press First Book Prize. From the NWSA press release: The National Women’s Studies Association and the University of […]
Campaign cash and Corrupt Illinois
Political corruption isn’t just about under-the-table dealings. A major factor that contributes to a system that many see as broken in the state of Illinois and throughout the country is […]
Digital Depression author Dan Schiller on Net Neutrality
Digital Depression author Dan Schiller is a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science and the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In light […]
The Creolization of American Culture wins Irving Lowens Book Award
The Creolization of American Culture: William Sidney Mount and the Roots of Blackface Minstrelsy by Christopher J. Smith has been awarded the Irving Lowens Book Award by the Society for […]
Q&A with Midwest Maize author Cynthia Clampitt
Food historian and travel writer Cynthia Clampitt recently answered some questions about her book Midwest Maize: How Corn Shaped the U.S. Heartland. Q: What was the importance of corn to […]
From aeromotive to aerospace
When aviation pioneer Octave Chanute died in 1910, no one could have dreamed that man would not only conquer the air, but venture into outer space. Five years after Chanute’s […]
A video preview of The Land of Milk and Uncle Honey
“Back then farming was people,” says Alan Guebert. Guebert has written about agribusiness issues in “The Farm and Food File” since 1993. But the syndicated columnist notes that he would […]
The Stanley Brothers on the record
Gary B. Reid’s introduction to the Stanley Brothers was a used record he picked up for 33 cents in 1973. That modest investment launched Reid on an odyssey that would […]
Q&A with Before the Ivy author Laurent Pernot
Laurent Pernot is the executive vice chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago. Pernot came to the U.S. as a Chicago-area foreign-exchange student in 1988 and caught ’89 Cubs playoff fever. […]
800 thousand dollars in shoe boxes
Authors Thomas J. Gradel and Dick Simpson document many colorful and dubious characters in their book Corrupt Illinois. An example (on page 1 of the book, even) would be former […]