Historical bio roundup
Reviews of: ‘The Patriarch’ by David Nasaw; ‘Thomas Jefferson’ by Jon Meacham; ‘The Man Who Saved the Union’ by H.W. Brands; ‘The Last Lion’ by William Manchester
Roger Moore talks ‘Bond’
The James Bond film franchise has just turned 50, and the actor who served longest in the role, Roger Moore, gets in on the action with a new book celebrating the series. In “Bond on Bond,” Moore reflects on his 12-year tenure and offers thoughts, mostly generous, about the other five actors who have played 007.
Literary listings
Local book signings and literary events, Nov. 16-30.
Chicago man Royko dubbed ‘the best crime researcher in America’ dead at 67
Jimmy Agnew didn’t need Google. Before the Internet, Mr. Agnew plucked literary gold from mountains of obscure resources to provide research to some of the nation’s top true-crime authors. Legendary Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko once dubbed Agnew “the best crime researcher in America.” Mr. …
Obama, Palin and Jobs join Bartlett’s club
NEW YPRK — So much has changed since we last heard from “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,” a decade ago. Barack Obama was a state legislator. Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla. Steve Jobs had just introduced a portable music player called the iPod.
A fiction lover’s delight at the movies this holiday season
Didn’t read the book? Not to worry. A flurry of movies pegged to best-selling books — both classic and contemporary — will be in theaters soon, primers for those who never quite made it through the real deal.
Last volume of Churchill bio highlights finest hours
“The Last Lion,” the long-awaited third and last volume of William Manchester’s masterful biography of Winston Churchill covers the final 25 years of the subject’s life — nearly as long as it took to research and write the book. It was worth the wait.
Review: ‘Custer’ by Larry McMurtry
Is there anything left to say about Gen. George Custer and his infamous last stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn? Yes, evidently. Just ask Larry McMurtry, who has long been fascinated with the notorious general and has finally done something about it.
Literary listings
Local book signings and literary events, Nov. 9-20.
Neil Steinberg tackles nativism in ‘You Were Never in Chicago’
In his new book, the Sun-Times columnist explores what it means to be a Chicagoan.
Fiction review: ‘The Middlesteins’ by Jami Attenberg
Do we really need “The Middlesteins”? It looks like another quiet novel stuck in the suburbs, another mordant comedy about a dysfunctional Jewish family, another bittersweet take on the relationship between food and love. Is Jami Attenberg fixing us the pastrami-on-rye sandwich of literary fiction that we’ve eaten thousands of times before?
New series for Lemony Snicket
If the great hard-boiled detective novelists Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler had a dry sense of humor and wrote for kids, the results might be something like “Who Could That Be at This Hour?” It’s the first book in a new four-volume series by Lemony Snicket, pen name and alter ego of Daniel Handler. It’s also a prequel to Handler’s best-selling “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” which featured Snicket as adult narrator and a character.
