Wes in the News » The Chicago Tribune

Swinehart on Friend’s “Cheerful Money”

David Pesci — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:44:34 +0000

Kirk Swinehart, assistant professor of history, reviews the new book by New Yorker staff writer Tad Friend titled, Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor. Writing for The Chicago Tribune, Swinehart says Friend” has written the memoir of the season–and one for all time. ‘Cheerful Money’ doubles as a bittersweet family portrait and deceptively subtle ethnography.”

Swinehart: “American Heroes” is the ‘Real Deal’

David Pesci — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:37:35 +0000

Kirk Swinehart, assistant professor of history, has a reivew for The Chicago Tribune of Edmund Morgan’s latest book, American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America. Swinehart says: “as so many times before, Morgan proves himself one of our deftest thinkers about race — what he once called ‘the American paradox, the marriage of slavery and freedom.’”

Swinehart Says Hooper’s ‘Tall Man’ is “Mesmerizing”

David Pesci — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:23:42 +0000

Assistant Professor of History Kirk Swinehart reviews Chloe Hooper’s gripping new book Tall Man which recounts a true crime incident that brought Palm Island back into the public consciousness of Australians and made news throughout the world.

Swinehart on Merriman’s book The Dynamite Club

David Pesci — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:55:56 +0000

In The Chicago Tribune, Kirk Davis Swinehart, assistant professor of history, reviews John Merriman’s new book The Dynamite Club, which examines an 1894 anarchist bombing in Paris. Swinehart calls the book “that rare thing: virtuosic storytelling that doubles as superb history.”

Swinehart Reviews Historical Novel “Blindspot”

David Pesci — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:18:20 +0000

Kirk Swinehart, assistant professor of history, reviews the historic novel Blindspot in The Chicago Tribune. Set in 18th Century Boston, Swinehart says Blindspot “succeeds as raw entertainment; better, it soars as cunning academic revisionism.”

Lim on FDR’s “Intellectual” Fireside Chats

David Pesci — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:19:00 +0000

Assistant Professor of Government Elvin Lim talks about the intellectual complexity and near college-level language that FDR used in his popular fireside chats.