The Long Eighteenth Century
Talking About Women’s History: A Whole Bunch of Questions with Vanessa Riley
Honored as the 2023 Georgia Literary Fiction Author of the Year, Vanessa Riley is an acclaimed author known for captivating novels like Island Queen, which is based on the true story of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, who rose from slavery to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the colonial West Indies, and Queen of…
Read More
Napoleon’s Russian Campaign
I am writing this on February 20, a week (or more) before you are reading it. I was amused to learn this morning that it is National Clean Out Your Bookshelf Day, a “holiday” that has been celebrated each 20th of February since 2014 by, well, I don’t quite know who. It is also the…
Read More
Silent Night: A Reprise
Earlier this month, My Own True Love and I began the holiday season with one of our favorite events: Songs of Good Cheer at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music. For the last 25 years, a band of musicians and (now former) Tribune columnists Eric Zorn and Mary Schmich have led the audience in…
Read More