The Innocence Game, by Michael Harvey.Knopf. 256 pages.Mystery writers often set their stories in their hometowns. For Michael Connelly it is Los Angeles, for Sara Paretsky, Chicago. The late Stuart K]]> I first met Hugh Moore in Allen Ginsberg’s living room, which often served as an auxiliary classroom for Naropa Institute, home to The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. We spent a soli]]> Hope from the Heartland, a new book by Jay Hoffman, the Democratic state representative from Collinsville, starts with the premise that climate change, the energy and economic crises can be solved sim]]> For several weeks in September 1944, people in the town of Mattoon, Illinois, showed the symptoms of exposure to poison gas--nausea, vomiting, weakness leading to near paralysis, light headedness, eve]]> Untitled Document The subtitle of David LaVere’s Looting Spiro Mounds is a footnote to perhaps the greatest public grave robbery in history: Howard Carter’s 1924 disc]]> Proud parent Michael Burlingame has delivered to us a fine 8 lb., 1 oz. baby just in time for the Lincoln Bicentennial. Burlingame, professor emeritus at Connecticut College, has been exp]]> Here’s a book you’ll love. I’m stating up front it’s by a good friend, Rosie Roach Miller, who grew up in Belleville, graduated from Millikin, married a vet from Springfield w]]> During and immediately after Reconstruction in the South, the same entrepreneurs and bankers who had built the Confederacy's munitions and armament plants during the Civil War ]]> Scott Turow is one of the foremost courtroom fiction writers in America. Millions have read his books or viewed adaptations of his works. But Turow does more than write about fictional courtrooms. He ]]> Joseph Flynn, a Springfield writer, is the author of a number of well reviewed novels. In this, his latest thriller, the plot is familiar — the bad guys go after their target by going after the person our hero cares about most. In this case that person also happens to be the first U.S. woman president. The hero, in his case the detective, is her husband. Since he’s the first “first husband,” he has to invent his role. Jim McGill, a former cop, deems it politically unwise to offer his services to the FBI or such like, and so sets up as a private investigator. He soon discovers that this is a political role, too. His wife, a moderate, is in jeopardy from the start because of her unpopular stand against the neo-cons of her party. (He names himself “the president’s henchman.”) His job also endangers his three children, his ex-wife and her husband.]]> Photographer Larry Kanfer is known for his elegant, beautifully composed prairie scenes in Illinois. Many are like portraits of the landscape.The University of Illinois Press has just published Kanfer]]> A compilation of books from Illinois authors and publishers.]]> During the height of the Depression, central Illinois was convulsed by a vicious coal-mining war that pitted worker against worker, changed an industry, and altered the course of organized labo]]> The title of this book, Illinois Politics: A Citizen’s Guide, is less than inviting when compared to many political items on bookstore shelves today. But the story between the covers tells a gri]]> Paul Simon kindles memories of Frank Capra’s classic 1939 film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The fictional drama features Jefferson Smith, a wholesome idealist played by James Stewart. Maintaining uncommon integrity while occupying a seat in the United States Senate, Smith emerges as a lonely voice against the corruption and unbridled cynicism often rampant in American politics.]]> Poor Abraham Lincoln. Even in his 200th birthday year, the guy is still being sliced and diced, his every action scrutinized in an estimated 100 new books that have hit the shelves since the Lincoln Bicentennial festivities kicked off two years ago.]]> If you haven’t yet read Kevin Stein, there is no better introduction than this collection, which will make you think, feel, contemplate soberly and sometimes laugh out loud.]]> Midway through Beautiful Piece, an entertaining and gritty novel written in the noir style of mysteries, I began to have an eerie feeling. Imagine, if you will, the look on the face of Bill Murray each morning at 6 a.m. when he awakens to the sound of Cher belting out the lyrics to “I got you babe!” Just as the character portrayed by Murray in Groundhog Day, readers of this novel by Joseph Peterson will find themselves in that perpetual cycle, repeating a snapshot moment of life. In Beautiful Piece, that moment is a hot August day during a brutal heat wave in Chicago when Robert, the narrator, meets Lucy at a gas station and begins a torrid affair that serves as the cornerstone event upon which Peterson constructs his debut novel.]]> The 19th century witnessed America’s transformation from a rural, agrarian economy and culture into a restless, 20th century industrial giant and imperial power. Large 19th and early 20th century firms were publicly identified with the men who founded them or guided their early growth — Ford and his auto, Edison and his light bulb, Carnegie and Rockefeller in steel and oil. Every manufactured product, from hairpins to train rails, was ripe for mass production. Even grain, the staff of life, became the basis for immense milling and cereal fortunes like Pillsbury and Post. Salt, among the lowliest, but most important foods, used in cooking, preserving and flavoring, was the basis for one of these great 19th century fortunes, still associated with its founder’s name — Morton.]]>