Steve Bertrand On Books From Wgn Plus

Michael Harvey knows Chicago. The former CBS news producer proves that time and again with his hard-boiled Michael Kelly detective novels. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about his latest, The Governor’s Wife. Spoiler alert: The governor is a crook.

Mary Morris talks Jazz, Al Capone and Chicago in the days of Prohibition with Steve Bertrand on Books. It’s all in her novel The Jazz Palace.

Maz Jobrani is an Iranian-born, American comedian who is looks at his life with both comedy and introspection in his memoir I’m Not a Terrorist, But I’ve Played One on TV. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about why he refuses to play at terrorist and why the King of Jordan has his cell number.

In honor of yesterday’s WGN Radio Walk of Fame Class of 2015 induction, OTL host Mike Stephen debuts an audio vignette tribute to our good friend Steve Bertrand. Meanwhile, please check out the entire OTL #450 episode! https://tribwgnam.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/otl-mike-stephen-steve-bertrand-wgn-radio-walk-of-fame-vignette-150530.mp3

Kazuo Ishiguro, who has won the Man Booker Prize and been awarded the O.B.E., has been called one of Britain’s most important living novelists. His latest, The Buried Giant, examines the frailty of collective memory with the story of an elderly post-King Arthur era couple on their way to visit their long lost son. Their memories aren’t altogether reliable. In this interview with Steve Bertrand on Books, Ishiguro says ours aren’t either.  

New York Times columnist David Brooks says we’ve lost focus on the virtues that matter most: we worry too much about shallow accomplishments and not enough about the more meaningful behavior that truly makes a difference in the world. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about his book The Road to Character.

Erik Larson talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. It was 100 years ago this week that a German U-boat sank the ocean liner with a single torpedo.

Cartoonist Jessica Hagy explains Sun Tzu’s Art of War with Venn diagrams. She talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about taking an ancient text and pulling out current meaning in her book, The Art of War Visualized.

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, author of the new book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania, talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about “the great culling,” the time when elite colleges send out their acceptance notices and 90 percent of their applicants have their hopes dashed.  Bruni says we’ve got it all wrong. He says we should be focusing on how students grow during their time at school, not where they […]

Former Congressman Barney Frank lives up to his name in his new memoir, “Frank.” He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about his life in Washington, the Religious Freedom law in Indiana, Aaron Schock and more.

Are you a libertarian? David Boaz, the executive Vice-President of the Cato Institute, thinks you probably are. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about his book The Libertarian Mind.

Author Boris Fishman talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about A Replacement Life.

Kate Alcott talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about her latest novel, A Touch of Stardust, an inside Hollywood story of an Indiana girl who finds herself in the middle of the making of Gone with the Wind. Kate talks about Hollywood in the 1930s, politics of the 1980s and why her family calls her Pat.

Author Thomas Perry talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about why he stopped writing his Jane Whitefield series. And also why he started up again. The latest Whitefield Novel is String of Beads.

Pico Iyer thinks we’re doing too much, even when we’re not supposed to be doing anything at all. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about Leonard Cohen,  the secular Sabbath and his new book, The Art of Stillness.

What do you know about Illinois’ deadly Sudden Freeze of 1836. It really happened. Alex Gordon uses the real-life event to kick off her supernatural thriller, Gideon. She talks about it with Steve Bertrand on Books.

The Magicians Lie is an early 20th century story of a female magician, a murder and a man who needs to believe her.  Author Greer Macallister talks with Steve Bertrand on Books.

What happens when a renowned mathematician takes the solution to a vexing equation to her death? Hilarity, of course. Thoughtful hilarity.  Stuart Rojstaczer takes on eccentric genius and anti-intellectualism in his novel The Mathematician’s Shiva. He talks with Steve Bertrand on Books.

On its surface, The Barter is a ghost story about two women who inhabit the same land a century apart. On closer look, it’s clear the territory they share is about much more than geography.  Siobhan Adcock talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about writing, mothering and the perils of defining sacrifice as success.

Alex Marwood, the author of The Killer Next Door, talks with Steve Bertrand on Books about living alone surrounded by people, about being a Stephen King favorite, and about people who don’t think her book is funny (me).