Read Beat (...and repeat)

Any given day brings a never-ending list of things to do. And if you're Madeleine Dore, you're putting that list of tasks on paper. Looking to get organized? There’s the work thing, the catch-up thing, the laundry thing, the creative thing, the exercise thing, the family thing, the thing we don’t want to do, and the thing we’ve been putting off, despite it being the most important thing....

China is one of the world’s most powerful nations but just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few.  In "Kingdom of Characters," Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Her book f...

Paulina Porizkova found fame as a supermodel, gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1984. Born in Czechoslovakia, Porizkova married Ric Ocasek, leader of the Cars rock group. Her book, "No Filter," reveals what she went through growing up, achieving success (she was the face of Estee Lauder in 1989) as well as her long marriage to Ocasek that ended in divorce--and, after Ocasek&apos...

Ken Zurski’s new book, “Unremembered 2,” continues the author’s fascination with once-famous individuals who no longer find themselves in the limelight. This collection focuses on “artists, actors, actresses and influencers,” he said. It's the fourth book for Zurski, who's been offering up traffic reports on Peoria radio since 2003. When he's not checking the activity on central Ill...

Bob McChesney, professor emeritus of communication at the University of Illinois, and Wisconsin journalist John Nichols collaborated to write "People Get Ready" in 2016, a book that talked about the consequences of the technological revolution. To follow that up, McChesney and Nichols wrote a piece last year for the Columbia Journalism Review on a dramatic proposal, the Local Journalism...

Most of us have heard about Bob Welch, the charismatic CEO of General Electric, the American company that embodied innovation and industrial power throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. What most of us didn’t know until William Cohan wrote Power Failure,” is that Welch who, for 20 years, masterminded the firm that once claimed to “bring good things to life,” enjoyed many successes but he m...

Astrologer Nadine Jane said the 750-page guide  she recently published combines astrology with the tarot and numerology. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done," she told Steve Tarter, noting that the book took a year-and-a-half to complete. Weaving together astrology, tarot and numerology into a one-page summary for each day of the year was difficult enough, let alone making the...

He didn't write a professional word until he was 40. Jerry Saltz  turned to driving a truck after a failed career as an artist (his CB handle was the Jewish Cowboy). When he turned to writing, Saltz did it with a vengeance. In 2018, he received the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Saltz's new book, "Art is Life," is a showcase of why he received that prize, a compilation of column...

Minda Harts has addressed the matter of racial equality before. Her previous books include ”The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table” as well as “Right Within: How to Heal from Racial Trauma in the Workplace.” Her new book, “You Are More Than Magic,” is addressed specifically to teenage women of color. Harts relates her own experience growing up to make the point th...

“It’s Not TV” by Felix Gillette and John Koblin Despite the title, “It’s Not TV” by Felix Gillette and John Koblin chronicles one of television’s great success stories. It’s been 50 years since what started as a small cable channel blossomed into what has become a quality showcase for a medium that’s not always been about quality. In this interview with Steve Tarter, Gillette talks about the “HBO...

Joel Richard Paul’s latest book explores the impact of Daniel Webster, a man often considered one of the greatest orators of the 19th century, but also sheds light on American history along the way. For example, 45 years before the South seceded from the union, the New England states contemplated such a move. Outraged over the loss of critical trade with England due to President James Madison&apos...

World War II is often recalled as that one great war, an engagement between the forces of good and evil that called upon this country to unleash the arsenal of democracy to thwart fascism and annihilate the concept of Nazism. But what we don’t often recall is that while every able-bodied individual was called on to serve his country in this time of need, some of the most able-bodied Americans step...

Talk of democracy being endangered is fashionable these days. It’s easy to be alarmed but Yascha Mounk says there are reasons to be optimistic. In “The Great Experiment,” Mounk spells out his reasons: “Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating members of many different ethnic or religious groups fairly,” he said.  Achieving that goal is now central to the...

You know about Sears, America’s favorite store until it wasn’t. So how is Sears an example of quitting as cited in Annie Duke’s book, “Quit: The Power of Knowing When To Walk Away”? People know about Sears, the pioneering catalog store that rose to become the nation’s powerhouse retail establishment, accounting for 1 percent of the country’s Gross National Product in 1950, said Duke. They also kno...

Looking back now, the story of what took place in Donald Trump’s White House during 2020 seems like a dream--or nightmare. The events passed by us on television while we were all hunkered down during the pandemic. Two Washington Post reporters looked into that year a little further with interviews of 140 people.  Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker wrote “I Alone Can Fix It,” a book published in 2021....

Marshall Allen has a message for you: get ready to fight. His book, "Never Pay the First Bill," urges consumers to know their rights and understand what you’re up against—namely the nation’s healthcare system. “Our healthcare system is exploiting our sickness for profit,” Allen told Steve Tarter in this 2021 interview. “It’s okay to make a profit and we want to reward excellence but what...

If you want to know more about crime fiction, Martin Edwards is your man. His latest book, “The Life of Crime” is an extensive  (over 700 pages) history of the subject, sectioned off by books, radio, stage, movies and TV. When he’s not recording history, he’s madly writing—mystery novels, short stories and articles. He’s also president and archivist for the prestigious Detection Club, a British gr...

Linda Flanagan paints a vivid picture of the “Little League parent” in her book, “Take Back the Game.” It was herself. She writes about being so proud of her son’s basketball skills before realizing that she’d gotten too caught up in being a super-fan.  Parents need to back off from their kids’ games, said Flanagan, a former track coach, herself. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with sports, s...

Starting  about 15 years ago, television had to adjust to a new world. No longer did the medium have the audience to itself. Cory Barker, a communications professor at Bradley University, explores what happened when TV collided with social media and the internet in his book, "Social Media: Multi-Screen Content and Ephemeral Culture." Barker outlines how campaigns were set up for people t...

William Stixrud, the co-author with Ned Johnson, of “What Do You Say?”, talks about communicating with teenagers.  If you’re a parent, you’ve had a moment–maybe many of them–when you’ve thought, “How did that conversation go so badly?”  At some point after the sixth grade, the same kid who asked “why” non-stop at age four suddenly stops talking to you. The good news is that effective communication...

A friendship famine? Along with everything else we’ve had to put up with for the past two years? We’re a lonely society--in need of friendship, says Marisa Franco, a psychology professor at the University of Maryland and the author of “Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends as an Adult.” How do we make and keep friends in an era of distraction, burnout, and chao...

  Need Einstein’s theory explained? How about an evaluation of Sir Isaac Newton’s contributions to physics? Sean Carroll’s your man. His new book, “The Biggest Ideas in the Universe,” offers up equations, history and some basic math principles but seeks to do it in an easy-to-understand manner. But then you may already know about Carroll. He’s written a number of books such as “From Eternity to He...

Dr. Dale Bredesen   is internationally recognized as an expert in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, and the author of “The First Survivors of Alzheimer’s” (2021).  In “First Survivors,” Bredesen outlined the revolutionary treatments that are changing what had previously seemed like the inevitable outcome of cognitive decline and dementia, presenting the stories of the fi...

Inspired by none other than naval historian and literary agent Jim Hornfischer, Greg Wahl applied a flash fiction approach to what World War Two was about at some of the Pacific Islands that became famous as theaters of war.    Wahl, a former dentist who makes his home in Peoria, said a professor friend of his encouraged him to take on the project that involved two years of research on eight islan...

The title of “Build,” a children’s book by Chris Sickels might also describe the Indiana native’s career. From puppetry to stop-motion animation, Sickels is always building in order to express himself.  “I started in illustration and now I focus on 3D and animation,” said Sickels, who credited Terry Martin, his art teacher, with setting his career in motion. “In rural Indiana, you didn’t just go o...