Plus: Name That Graffiti
1. Chicago Tag Book.
“A Blackbook with several tags and signatures mostly from Chicago, with a few international heads. 2006 – 2013.”
Posted on February 27, 2014
Why Harold Ramis Loved Libraries
By The Highland Park Public Library
Because that’s where the books are.
Posted on February 25, 2014
Relevant Excerpt: The Cartel: Inside The Rise And Imminent Fall Of The NCAA
Taylor Branch vs. Northwestern
“College athletes are not slaves,” writes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Taylor Branch in The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA. “Yet to survey the scene – corporations and universities enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men, whose status as ‘student-athletes’ deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution – is to catch the unmistakable whiff of the plantation.”
*
From Chapter 5, “The Myth Of The ‘Student-Athlete.'”
Today, much of the NCAA’s moral authority – indeed, much of the justification for its existence – is vested in its claim to protect what it calls the student-athlete. The term is meant to conjure the nobility of amateurism and the precedence of scholarship over athletic endeavor. But the origins of “student-athlete” lie not in a disinterested ideal but in a sophistic formulation designed, as the sports economist Andrew Zimbalist has written, to help the NCAA in its “fight against workers’ compensation insurance claims for injured football players.”
Posted on February 21, 2014
Death Of The American Trial
By The Darrow Committee
On the 76th anniversary of famed attorney Clarence Darrow’s death, this year’s annual Darrow commemoration on Thursday, March 13, looks at the “The Death of the American Trial” with professor Robert P. Burns, author of a 2009 book by the same title.
A special unique aspect of this year’s event will be several dozen Darrow-related items from the collection of the late actor Leslie Nielsen, courtesy of his widow Barbaree Earl. Nielsen was a fan who also played the attorney in theatrical productions. The collection includes videos, playbooks and other items treasured by the actor, known for his wide range of projects including Airplane!, The Naked Gun series and numerous TV roles.
Posted on February 17, 2014
Local Book Notes: Doniger, Morrissey & The CIA
Plus: Orland Park Porn And Proyecto Latina
“Proyecto Latina and Gozamos are partnering to launch a groundbreaking writing initiative to cultivate a new generation of Latino writers and help promote Chicago as a mecca of powerful Latino voices,” Ray Salazar writes on his White Rhino blog.
“The unique partnership brings together two organizations in the community that value the power of stories told through a variety of traditional and innovative platforms. The initiative will be housed at the 1900 South in the Pilsen neighborhood, where the idea was conceived by writers and media makers Diana Pando, Luz Chavez and Stephanie Manriquez.”
Posted on February 14, 2014
Listen To Linh Dinh
By Laura Janota/Roosevelt University
Linh Dinh, author of the award-winning novel Love Like Hate, will read from his work as part of this spring’s Roosevelt University Reading Series at 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 17, in Roosevelt’s Gage Gallery.
Dinh was born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, came to the U.S. in 1975, and has also lived in Italy (as a guest of the International Parliament of Writers) and England (as a David T.K. Wong Fellow at the University of East Anglia).
He also is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House and Blood and Soap; and five books of poems, including All Around What Empties Out and Borderless Bodies.
Posted on February 10, 2014
Invite: The Chicago Grand Slam
By Rhyme Catchers
This is an experiment.
This year, for the first time ever, Catcher in the Rhyme (the University of Chicago’s Spoken Word student group) and the Reva and David Logan Center For the Arts are pleased to announce the first annual Chicago Grand Slam (CGS): A day-long poetry festival to be held on Sunday April 13, 2014, at the Logan Center on the University of Chicago campus.
Posted on February 7, 2014
Local Book Notes: Bob Gates Vs. The Chicago Crowd
Plus: The Staple Singers And Big Bill Broonzy
1. A New Staple Singers Biography Doesn’t Quite Take You There.
“Tribune critic Greg Kot follows the march toward freedom for a family of protest-music royalty – but gets lost along the way,” Aimie Levitt writes for the Reader.
2. George Pataki’s Daughter Now A Chicagoan, Author.
“Allison Pataki, daughter of the long-time New York governor, now is a Chicago resident and author,” Shia Kapos reports for Crain’s.
“Her historical novel, The Traitor’s Wife, is set in her home state and centers on the story of Benedict Arnold and his wife, a socialite who married the Revolutionary War hero and then persuaded him to team up with her former British lover to take control of West Point. Of course the ruse was discovered, but who knew Arnold had a wife?”
Posted on February 4, 2014