Oh, What a Week!—Pritzker Does Kimmel

Gotta give The New York Times credit for devoting a healthy chunk of space to the life and work of Leonard Zeskind, who died the other day of cancer. At age 75--too damn young, as far as I’m concerned. Zeskind’s expertise was the right…

I didn’t think I’d like Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles nearly this much, when I checked it out of the library. Not even sure how I heard about it–probably a mention in The New York Times. Sounded like a fun r…

It was my father, of guy all people, who turned me on to the novels of Kate DiCamillo. This was in the early 00s—the beginning of the end-stretch of his life. By then he'd bought into everything that Kate DiCamillo’s characters fight a…

It's unnecessary, I know, to give more attention to Michael Connelly, whose books are instant best sellers. But I must show some love for his latest, The Waiting. Which had me up all night and into the morning, reading. Yes, I read past midnight. …

To take a break from the political madness of our time, I was reading Maximum Bob, an old Elmore Leonard novel I found in a baby library not far from my home. Classic Leonard. About a bunch of lowlifes in Florida, where lowlifes flourish, who're co…

My dear friend Keith Kelleher is a vintage radical, who’s been on the front lines of just about every cause worth fighting for since I can remember. So I wasn’t surprised to see he’d joined this weekend's march outside of Tesla&rs…