Chicago -
By Bart Beaty/The Conversation
Last week, the producers behind a number of comic book-derived movies and TV shows announced delays for their franchises: release dates for Wonder Woman and Black Widow were postponed, while The Walking Dead announced that COVID-19 had made it impossible for the show to complete work on the current season and that the finale was being delayed.
But what of the comic books that spawned these blockbuster franchises?
Posted on March 31, 2020
By SIU Press
“Illinois boasts one of the most visible concentrations of Poles in the United States,” SIU Press notes. “Chicago is home to one of the largest Polish ethnic communities outside Poland itself.
“Yet no one has told the full story of our state’s large and varied Polish community – until now. Poles in Illinois is the first comprehensive history to trace the abundance and diversity of this ethnic group throughout the state from the 1800s to the present.”
Posted on March 21, 2020
By Jane Roberts/Undark
As panicked consumers buy up hand sanitizer, masks and other supplies in the hopes of staving off the new, fast-spreading coronavirus, a shadowy array of grifters and opportunists are flocking to Amazon.com and other online booksellers to capitalize on public fear, producing a steady stream of books and manuals that claim to hold the secret to surviving the outbreak.
Since late January, hundreds of titles related to COVID-19 – as the disease caused by the virus is known – have come up for sale online, many of which appear to be written under false or misleading names. One series of books, which includes Coronavirus 101: Everything You Should Know to Avoid Illness and Protect Yourself from the Wuhan 2020 Outbreak and Coronavirus and Face Masks: The Truth, claim to be co-authored by a Dr. Zoe Gottlieb.
Posted on March 6, 2020
By SIU Press
“This engaging biography of Augustus Garrett and Eliza Clark Garrett tells two equally compelling stories: an ambitious man’s struggle to succeed and the remarkable spiritual journey of a woman attempting to overcome tragedy. By contextualizing the couple’s lives within the rich social, political, business, and religious milieu of Chicago’s early urbanization, author Charles H. Cosgrove fills a gap in the history of the city in the mid-nineteenth century,” SIU Press says.
“The Garretts moved from the Hudson River Valley to a nascent Chicago, where Augustus made his fortune in the land boom as an auctioneer and speculator. A mayor during the city’s formative period, Augustus was at the center of the first mayoral election scandal in Chicago. To save his honor, he resigned dramatically and found vindication in his reelection the following year. His story reveals much about the inner workings of Chicago politics and business in the antebellum era.
Posted on March 5, 2020
