Category: Books

Jerry Kirshenbaum (BSJ60)

When Jerry Kirshenbaum’s family moved into a grand house on fashionable Miami Road in Benton Harbor, Michigan, life was comfortable but not always peaceful. Beneath a serene surface lay the screaming fits of an unhappy mother, the sufferings of a beloved handicapped sister and a long-buried crime committed by the author’s immigrant father, a truck-driving, cigar-chomping burlap bag merchant and poker player known as Mook.

Mook was a man of charisma and contradiction — equal parts hard-bitten and folksy, profane and profound. The story of his ascent from poverty to the splendor of Miami Road is shadowed on every page by a question: Where did he find the strength to get through love, loss and his own failings?

Miami Road is a vivid, often funny portrait of resilience set against the backdrop of Chicago’s once heavily Jewish West Side and Benton Harbor, a raucous Midwestern town whose rise and fall parallels Mook’s ups and downs. Filled with rogues, sad sacks, live wires and deadbeats plus outsized figures like Muhammad Ali and Al Capone, this is an unforgettable story shaped by hardship, humor and heart.

Shannon Edwards (MSJ95)

AI is already shaping how children learn, play, and see the world, leaving many families feeling overwhelmed and uncertain about navigating this new digital reality. AI for Families provides the guidance families need to approach AI innovation with confidence and on their own terms.

The book isn’t about fearing AI or fighting against AI, but a guide providing practical support for the questions families are already wrestling with at home. From strengthening app privacy settings to helping kids think critically about AI-generated responses, AI for Families offers clear explanations, historical context, and actionable solutions that put families in control of decisions based on their individual values, beliefs, and needs.

Most importantly, AI for Families is about embracing the deeply human traits of curiosity, creativity, empathy, and connection that will serve children well into the future. The goal isn’t competing with AI, but raising kids who can work alongside new technology while owning and celebrating what makes us uniquely human.

Alice Foeller (BSJ98)

In this memoir of a liminal passage through grief, Alice Foeller shares compelling stories from the days and weeks following her husband’s suicide. Her sensible and actionable guidance serves as a handbook for anyone who seeks the courage and confidence to show up for someone who is grieving. Whether read as a resource for grief support or the gripping narrative of a resilient widow, The Art of Compassion will enlarge the reader’s capacity for compassion and caring through critical passages.

The book includes narrative descriptions of the author’s own experience, suggestions on how to move forward through the unique grief following suicide, and ways that communities of understanding may form to give support to those passing through one of the most difficult traumas in human experience.

This resource can be many things: autobiography, guidebook, and tutorial for those working with grieving persons. Though meant for individual reading and reflection, it also doubles as a text for those learning about suicide and its aftermath. Small study groups will find The Art of Compassion is the perfect size and format for lively discussions.

Bob Reiss (BSJ73)

Coming January 2026. Distraught 12 year old Abani Singh shows up at the office of Mark St. Johns, private detective and grandson of the legendary RKO Pictures detective “The Falcon”, claiming to have witnessed a self-driving car hit a man, back up, hit him again and drive off by itself. Mark assures her that this is impossible, but when he sees people targeting the girl when she leaves his Edgar Allan Poe street office in New York, he reconsiders, rushes to protect her, and finds himself facing a danger which threatens far more than one child. Film rights to RKO.

Barry Pearce (BSJ1991)

The Plan of Chicago: A City in Stories has an unusual structure – 9 linked stories set in 9 Chicago neighborhoods – and unusual range.

The characters – half men, half women – include immigrants from Poland, Mexico, Ireland, and Somalia. They work as housepainters, taxi drivers, sketch artists, and scam artists – exploited by or exploiting others to make it in an unforgiving city. Chicago features heavily in their plans, though the plan of Chicago – shaped by divisions of race, class, gender, violence – often forces them apart. Despite that division, incongruous lives intersect here in unexpected ways. An Irish tradesman in a changing neighborhood struggles with the complications of befriending an African American coworker. His boss’s self-absorbed wife, a Polish immigrant, learns to count people in new ways working for the Census. A Romanian boy who helps his father fake accidents tests the limits of filial loyalty, and the claims adjustor investigating his case confronts dark baggage when his partner works with rape victims.

Through these varied characters – Black and White, straight and gay, wealthy and working-class – Pearce captures the breadth and depth of the city that sits dead center in America and better than any other, reveal its promise and flaws.

Chris Serb (MSJ95)

“Eckie: Walter Eckersall and the Rise of Chicago Sports” is part biography, part social history about Walter Eckersall, a three-sport champion in the early years of formal high school competition in Chicago and the best football player to ever compete at University of Chicago. Eckersall went on to become the Chicago Tribune’s lead sportswriter, creating the role of sports-star-turned-sports-journalist. His primary focus was football, but he also advocated the re-establishment of boxing in Chicago and the growing Olympic movement. He was also a champion of equal opportunity for Black athletes when they desperately needed allies.

But Eckie was no saint! A terrible student who never graduated high school and rarely went to class in college, Eckie got expelled a month after his eligibility expired. He was arrested for theft, got a woman pregnant out of wedlock, hastily married her in a shotgun wedding, then quickly abandoned his young family. He also struggled with a drinking problem, exposed during divorce proceedings but quickly buried by complicit media peers. A cautionary tale, and one that echoes with the college athletic experience today.

“Eckie” brings this long-forgotten figure back into the spotlight he deserves, in the larger context of the growth of Chicago sports, and sports journalism in general.

Frank DeCaro (BSJ84)

Half a century after the drug-fueled, DJ-driven, glamour-drenched musical phenomenon of disco was born at a New York City loft party, disco’s musical and fashion influences live on in popular culture. “Disco: Music, Movies, and Mania under the Mirror Ball” (Rizzoli New York) is an entertaining, yet serious tribute to a musical genre that has never been given its proper due, nor taken its true place in the historic struggle for LGBTQ+, gender, and racial equality.

Painting a vivid portrait of this provocative era – with photos from disco’s heyday up through today – DeCaro explores the cultural importance of disco and how the music and dance of queer Black and Latin clubs became a mainstream phenomenon.

Through personal interviews with disco’s biggest stars including Gloria Gaynor, Thelma Houston, Village People, and a never-before-published sit-down with Donna Summer, the book champions the diverse origins of disco while celebrating its influence on today’s groundbreaking artists such as Lady Gaga, Duo Lipa, and Miley Cyrus. It’s a must for all lovers of Seventies music, movies, television, fashion, and pop culture.

Ekta Garg (MSJ2002)

Have you ever wondered why Jack and Jill needed that pail of water in the first place? Or how Sleeping Beauty managed to prick her finger despite a royal order to destroy every spindle in the kingdom?

Fairy tales and nursery rhymes have given us some of the most iconic characters and images in storytelling; think Cinderella’s glass slipper or Jack’s oversized beanstalk. But what about the in-between moments? The ones that never made it to the page?

In this enchanting micro-collection of short stories, award-winning author Ekta R. Garg explores the untold scenes between the lines of some of our most loved tales. Find out what the Wicked Witch of the East was doing in the road before Dorothy’s house fell on her. Learn where Goldilocks came from. Meet the conmen who convinced the emperor he had new clothes and more.

Rediscover the wit, heart, and magic of the classics, and see them as you’ve never seen them before in “The Witch’s Apprentice and Other Stories.”

Rick Rockwell (BSJ79)

From the deserts of northern Mexico to as far south as the Rio Plata in Argentina, this book from Routledge traces the history of journalism in Latin America from its earliest roots and examines how it relates to the modern importance of media in the twenty-first century.

By exploring mestizo roots, “The History of Journalism in Latin America” examines Indigenous foundations, pre-colonial methods, and post-colonial systems of communication to show how earlier publications became instrumental to regional nineteenth-century independence movements throughout Latin America. Although the history of communication in the region is characterized by the control and censorship of empires, be they Indigenous or European, this study argues that modern journalism at its core is the story of crusading for freedom and independence. Through a country-by-country approach, this book explores key themes such as family media empires in Mexico, newspaper competition in Brazil, the dissemination of political agendas in Colombia’s El Espectador, and conservative media outlets in Argentina and Chile. It demonstrates the varied roles of media: businesses, societal forces, and institutions of governmental change.

Rick Rockwell is the co-author of the award-winning Media Power in Central America (University of Illinois Press, 2003).

Chris Sweeney (MSJ08)

“The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne” tells the fascinating and remarkable true story of the world’s first forensic ornithologist— Roxie Laybourne, who helped solve murders, investigate airplane crashes, and break up international poaching rings using nothing more than a microscope and a few fragments of feathers. Award-winning journalist Chris Sweeney takes readers deep within the vaunted backrooms of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History to tell the story of this burgeoning science and the enigmatic woman who pioneered it.

Once divorced, once widowed, and sometimes surly, Roxie shattered stereotypes and pushed boundaries. Her story is one of persistence and grit, obsession and ingenuity. Drawing on reams of archival material, court documents, and exclusive interviews, Sweeney delivers a moving and amusing portrait of a woman who overcame cultural and scientific obstacles at every turn, forever changing our understanding of birds—and the feathers they leave behind. NPR selected it as one of its most anticipated books of summer, while Publishers Weekly described it as entrancing.