On Labor Day, the young women of Ottawa who died of radium poisoning from their work at Radium Dial were memorialized. Chillingly, they were the second Radium Girls: an identical case made an identical furor in New York ten years prior, but it took years for the science, and the law, to make it to Illinois.
The graying of Obama has become a theme of this presidency: to his supporters each patch of gray reflects another piece of the mess that George W. Bush left his successor to clean up; to his detractors the gray reflects the anxious condition of a man in way over his head. I sought the opinion of Dr. Charles Zugerman, associate professor of clinical dermatology at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University…
Alex Kotlowitz explains the danger of crafting a single narrative—and discusses the great Chicago (and American) paradox.
Our writer-at-large Bryan Smith looks back on his September 11th reporting from Ground Zero.
In October 1933, a plane bound to Chicago from Newark via Cleveland exploded in the skies over Chesterton, Indiana. It’s cited as the first incidence of American airline terrorism… but it’s still a mystery.
Skipping President Obama’s speech last night, Rep. Joe Walsh hosted a small-business forum at Schaumburg’s Prairie Center for the Arts. Yesterday, I posted part one of my Q&A with the 8th District congressman. Here, part two of our conversation, in which he talks about growing up in an Irish Catholic family, why he switched his stance on abortion, who his closest friends are in Congress, and …
Where “pop” becomes “Coke,” “crayfish” becomes “crawdad,” and other fine questions of American regional dialects. Plus: the origins of the “word, schmerd” tic.
The dangers and advantages of “social media” in the wake—or the moment—of national disaster, from the Kennedy assassination to the attack on the World Trade Center.
When President Obama takes the mic tonight for a jobs speech before a joint session of Congress tonight, Congressman Joe Walsh will not be in attendance. Instead, he’ll be flying home to host a “small business job forum” in Schaumburg, part of his suburban Chicago 8th District…
Why the USPS is nearing the brink, and what can be done to fix it. Right now it’s in an awkward position between subsidized public good and flexible private business, so the philosophy will have to change as much as the operation.
