A Breakneck Chase!
A history primer and a book recommendation.
Posted on November 28, 2011
Why The Cubs Are Such Turkeys
By Glenn Stout
“It isn’t Wrigley Field or because they play so many day games . . . it’s always been poor management . . . [Theo Epstein faces] a far more daunting task than when he took over the Red Sox.”
Posted on November 22, 2011
Ace Frehley Signs Books And Body Parts In Chicago
By The Beachwood Space Ace Affairs Desk
At Books-A-Million in Chicago last week hawking No Regrets. Wait for the Norway guy.
Posted on November 14, 2011
Tony La Russa vs. Chicago
By Steve Rhodes
No rival manager has been as entwined with both Chicago baseball teams as Tony La Russa, who started his managing career with the White Sox – and whose firing is famously Jerry Reinsdorf’s biggest regret – and who went on to manage the Cubs’ greatest rival.
Buzz Bissinger’s 3 Nights in August, in fact, is a profile of La Russa as reported through the prism of a three-game series against the Cubs in 2003 – and includes plenty on his White Sox days.
Now that La Russa has retired following his World Series win, it’s a good time to go back and take a look at the Chicago portions of Bissinger’s book, as well as a few other tidbits.
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“When he started his managing career with the White Sox in the middle of the 1979 season, the prevailing sentiment was that he had been hired by owner Bill Veeck because he came cheap; his only experience was a little more than a year of managing in the minors with Knoxville and Des Moines.
“He was thirty-four years old and scared for his life. Self-doubt rattled through him – Do I really know what I’m doing? – and he became a whipping boy for the radio broadcast duo of Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersall, who offered the almost daily critique that he managed with his head squarely up his ass.
Posted on November 3, 2011
Wage Theft in America
By Interfaith Worker Justice
“While crowds seeking economic justice occupy Wall Street and other cities, an interfaith movement has been busy winning victories and making allies in the effort to end wage theft. Kim Bobo tells that hope-filled story in her newly revised and expanded version of Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Americans are not Getting Paid and What We Can Do About It.
The book is being released this month, in conjunction with the National Wage Theft Days of Action scheduled for Nov. 17-20.
Bobo, Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice, says few people in media or government were paying attention to “wage theft” in 2008, the year her book was first published. But she says, “A lot of progress has been made since then.”
Posted on November 2, 2011
The Chicago “L”
By The Society of Midland Authors
Greg Borzo, author of The Chicago ‘L,’ will discuss the history of the city’s elevated trains in a Nov. 8 Society of Midland Authors program at the Cliff Dwellers Club.
Borzo’s talk will explore one of Chicago’s most enduring icons, a working antique that has contributed mightily to the growth and development of the city and suburbs.
Borzo conducts public tours of the “L” and local historical sites for the Chicago History Museum, Chicago Cycling Club and other organizations. For details on his book, visit www.TheChicagoL.com.
Posted on October 27, 2011
Revolution In The Air
By Haymarket Books
Haymarket Books is pleased to present:
Revolution in the Air: The Arab Spring and a World in Motion
with
Tariq Ali
world-renowned political writer, novelist, and filmmaker
co-author, with Oliver Stone, of Haymarket Books’ On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation
frequent contributor to The Guardian, London Review of Books, and the New Left Review
Thursday, Oct. 27th
Doors 7:00 pm \\ Talk 7:30 pm \\ Free
Seating: first come, first served
Victory Gardens Biograph Theater
2433 N. Lincoln, Chicago, IL
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/pIpUFH
Talk \\ Q & A \\ Booksigning \\ Bar
Please join us for an evening with world-renowned political thinker and activist Tariq Ali. From the revolts that have shaken the Middle East, to the Occupy Wall Street sentiment sweeping the U.S., mass movements have been born across the globe. Join us as we discuss this new resistance to the status quo, it’s challenge to empire and the dictates of capital, and radical notions of democracy and liberation born anew.
Posted on October 26, 2011
Monster Mash
By BaylorPress
If you have ever wondered why the zombie apocalypse is such a hot topic in popular culture right now, sit tight because you’re in for a treat.
On October 18, 2011, Scott Poole, author of Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting, sat down to have a conversation with Stephen Asma, author of On Monsters, at 57th Street Books in Chicago.
Plus, Poole and Asma get down and dirty with the topics of justice, serial killers, and the “psychology of monsters.”
Posted on October 21, 2011
Occupants
By The Beachwood Rock Local Affairs Desk
From the Chicago Review Press . . . Occupants, by Henry Rollins.
“For the past twenty-five years, Henry Rollins has searched out the most desolate corners of the Earth – from Iraq to Afghanistan, Thailand to Mali, and beyond – articulating his observations through music and words, on radio and television, and in magazines and books. Though he’s known for the raw power of his expression, Rollins has shown that the greatest statements can be made with the simplest of acts: to just bear witness, to be present.
“In Occupants, Rollins invites us to do the same. The book pairs Rollins’s visceral full-color photographs – taken in Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Northern Ireland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and elsewhere over the last few years – with writings that not only provide context and magnify the impact of the images but also lift them to the level of political commentary. Simply put, this book is a visual testimony of anger, suffering, and resilience. Occupants will help us realize what is so easy to miss when tragedy and terror become numbing, constant forces – the quieter, stronger forces of healing, solidarity, faith, and even joy.”
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Uploaded to YouTube by wwwhatsup:
“Henry Rollins, author of Occupants (Chicago Review Press), discusses the book with Thurston Moore at McNally Jackson NYC on Oct 14 2011.”
Posted on October 17, 2011
The One Thing John Wayne Gacy Would Never Admit
By Steve Rhodes
John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection in 1994 but he lives on as a caricature, a talking point, and subject still in the news, perhaps because his crimes were so unfathomable but also most certainly because his life as a clown entertaining sick children and a glad-handing political do-gooder made him such a contradiction.
On television last Saturday night, for example: A showing of the 2010 movie Dear Mr. Gacy, starring William Forsythe. “A teen communicates with imprisoned serial killer John Wayne Gacy.”
As a discussion point last Friday, for example, on the Springfield State Journal-Register’s food blog: “When serial murderer John Wayne Gacy (below) was put to death in Illinois in 1994, his requested last meal was Kentucky Fried Chicken, fried shrimp, french fries, strawberries and Diet Coke. But since January of 2000, there has been a moratorium on executions in Illinois, so the prison cooks are no longer putting together special meals for the condemned . . . should a dying person be granted a final meal of his choosing?”
And as unfinished business, for example, still torturing the parents of murdered children: “A mother who has for decades doubted her 14-year-old son was a victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy may learn the truth after a judge Thursday granted her request that the body be exhumed for DNA testing.”
All of which brings to mind a book published in August that certainly taught me a lot about the Gacy saga, John Wayne Gacy: Defending A Monster; subtitle: “The True Story Of The Lawyer Who Defended One Of The Most Evil Serial Killers In History.”
For example, I had no idea Gacy was so well-known in the political community; I didn’t grow up in Chicago and I’ve never had much interest in the details of crime cases like Gacy’s.
Perhaps most important, though, is the conclusion that former Gacy lawyer (and now a former Cook County judge back in private practice) Sam Amirante comes to about what drove the demented man. Let’s take a look.
Posted on October 10, 2011