Read Beat (...and repeat)

Journalist Gloria Dickie, based in London where she serves as an environmental correspondent for Reuters, offers a superb study of the eight surviving species of bears with "Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future."  Recounting her travels in search of spectacled bears in Ecuador and Peru, sloth bears in rural India, pandas in China, sun and moon bears in South Vietnam, black and g...

Alexis McCrossen is a professor of history at Sothern Methodist University who cannot only tell you what time it is but tell you something about time, itself. Her book, "Marking Modern Time" is a history of clocks, watches and other timekeepers in American life. She notes that the public clock era flourished in the United States between the 1870s and the 1930s. That was a period, she tol...

Edith Wilson may have wielded more power than any first lady in U.S. history for a period during the second term of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency but, if she did, she never admitted it. That’s part of the story that Rebecca Roberts tells in her new book called “Untold Power.” Edith Wilson first met the president during Wilson’s first term. “She inherited a jewelry store when her first husband died i...

It’s easy to take the phenomenon of the Sunday paper for granted. Until just recently, the idea of a metro Sunday newspaper complete with color comics, special supplements and inserts landing on your porch with a resounding thud was the way of the world. While the devastating decline in the nation’s newspaper industry has suddenly made us conscious that the world may not always have newspapers to...

When you talk about great Chicago cuisine, you're talking about Italian beef sandwiches, deep dish pizza and the Chicago hot dog. Those are just some of what's covered in "Made in Chicago," a guide book to 30 different Windy City delicacies gathered by two Chicago journalists, Monica Eng and David Hammond. While Eng is a reporter for Axios Chicago and cohost of the podcast Chew...

When you talk about the state of rural America, the story usually involves boarded-up storefronts and shrinking downtowns. Declines in jobs and population in small towns in Illinois and across America stretch back decades.  But Norm Walzer and Chris Merrett have just produced “Rural Areas in Transition,” a book that sees new hope for rural America, hope spurred on by technology.  The book shows th...

Rachel Koller Croft is on her first book tour …and loving it. A screenwriter who lives in Los Angeles, Croft has added novelist to her job description with the recent publication of “Stone Cold Fox,” a thriller about an ambitious woman who wants to leave a dark past behind to marry an heir to one of the country’s wealthiest families but first must go toe-to-toe with a female adversary. Croft share...

“Burner” is the new action adventure novel, the 12th in the “Gray Man” series by Mark Greaney, but it could also describe the author’s career who’s definitely been on a hot streak in recent years. “The Gray Man” was the most-watched movie of 2022, according to Netflix, and there’s now a second film in the works. Meanwhile Greaney keeps pouring out the novels. This year he’s due to turn out his 13t...

Jeff Karzen is a sportswriter who’s now telling the world what Peoria sports fans already know: that basketball plays a major role in the community. A hotbed of talent since the 1980s, Peoria has produced a number of standout players, such as Shaun Livingston, A.J. Guyton, Marcus Griffin, and Sergio McClain – just to name a few. The city captured six high school state championships – including Man...

The history of air travel in this country has been marked by a number of celebrated moments in history—the Wright Brothers’ first ascent, Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight and the crash of the Hindenburg crash of 1937 (that effectively ended the airship era) are among the best known. But the air race of 1919 that drew 63 flyers in a competition that pitted them against each other in an effort to c...

 Joe Sawchak is a collection assistant for the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pa . We called him to talk about the hell pig, the prehistoric creature that was completely in charge of the planet for more than 10 million years. You always have to wade through a lot of names when it comes to paleontology but don’t let that stop you from marveli...

Alice Boyes believes you can be more productive. You just need to learn what helps you innovate, produce, and flourish... without the burnout. Her book, “Stress-Free Productivity,” gives you the ability to formulate your own personalized system. Now with more people than ever working outside the office, there’s a greater need than ever to be personally productive, the former clinical psychologist...

So the Midwest is fly-over country, is it? Everything that’s worth anything is found on the U.S. coasts, is that what you think? Then you need to hear from Jon Lauck. His book, “The Good Country,” helps offset what some scholars’ have put out there. Lauck, who edits the Middle West Review and teaches history and political science at the University of South Dakota, serves up a more detailed picture...

If you can keep up with all the names, this is a prehistoric creature that may interest you. The entelodont, otherwise known as dinohyus or daedon, was a strange looking animal that spent almost 20 million years on the planet, finally going extinct about 17 million years ago. There's a catchier name for this beast: hell pig. As paleontologist Scott Foss put it, this was a pig-like animal as b...

After suffering a panic attack in a speaking engagement in front of some 100 people, Chris Bailey decided to investigate the cause of the anxiety he suffered. The result is his book, "How to Calm Your Mind." For years leading up to the attack, Bailey, who's first book was "The Productivity Project," had been obsessed with the subject of productivity, the topic he was on st...

"Your information has a life of its own, and it’s using you to get what it wants." If that sounds like a science fiction story then you haven't talked to Caleb Scharf, author of "The Ascent of Information: How Data Rules the World." One of the most unique features of the human race is the vast amount of information we carry around. But in our rush to build the infrastructu...

Illinois is a state that brings a lot of variety and history to the table. "Illinois Trails & Traces" is proof of that. Author Gary Marx and Dan Overturf team up to provide unique portraits of people and places across the state. Marx is a journalist who worked for numerous newspapers including the Southern Illinoisian in Carbondale, Ill. and the Kansas City Star in Kansas City, Mo. S...

Todd Kashdan isn't preaching insubordination just to be a disruption. His approach is that insubordination, rather than be viewed merely as a negative exercise, is actually something than help societies to progress. Kashdan, a professor of psychology at George Mason University, is talking about principled insubordination, challenging conventional wisdom and improving on it.  Most would-be reb...

The authors want to point out how powerfully we are influenced by our perspectives and prejudices—our frames, noted Forbes magazine.  Humanity faces unprecedented challenges that threaten our very existence but don't give up on the human spirit--and intelligence, said De Vericourt in an interview with Steve Tarter.   To frame is to make a mental model that enables us to make sense of new situ...

Around the world, there are millions of hostile rivalries, yet only a fraction erupt into violence, a fact too many accounts overlook. When hostilities do break out such as the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine, it's that rare case where factors have forced that most costly of actions, war. "Unchecked leaders ignore the cost of war," said Christopher Blattman, referring to Vla...

Instead of supressing a young person's curiosity about  an individual who might be different, a parent should accept it, said Amber O'Neill Johnston, author of "A Place to Belong." Turn the idea of being color blind on its head, she said.  In "A Place to Belong,"  she helps families to honor their cultural heritage and champion diversity in the context of daily family...

As enjoyable as the book, itself, is the lilting Scottish accent of author/artist Johanna Basford as she chats with Steve Tarter about "30 Days of Creativity." Basford, an accomplished player in the adult coloring book world, has numerous titles to her credit but "30 Days" is an effort to let someone who may never have picked up a crayon to join in. She suggests spending just 1...

You were born influential. But then you were taught to suppress that power, to follow the rules, to wait your turn, to not make waves.  Zoe Chance, author of "Influence is Your Superpower," seeks to explain how you can rediscover the power that brings great ideas to life. It's about giving that power to everybody, not just left in the hands of the power-hungry people in this world,...

Before you order that favorite pair of jeans, you may want to hear what Maxine Bedat has to say on what she found out about the clothing industry.  Did you know how many thousands of miles were involved or the number of hands who picked, spun, wove, dyed, packaged, shipped, and sold the item to get it to you?  Did you know that in the 1960s, about 95 percent of what Americans wore was produced in...

A noted British historian whose previous books includes volumes on Churchill and Napoleon now turns to the "The Last King of America," his book, published in 2021, about George III. Often dismissed as a buffoon--a heartless and terrible monarch with few, if any, redeeming qualities--George deserves better, notes Roberts. The best-known modern interpretation of him is Jonathan Groff'...