Nathaniel Hawthorne

Once upon a time, Halloween was a one-day event. Then the pumpkins and parties started moving back to the weeks between Columbus Day and Oct. 31. Now the holiday is morphing into an entire season, at least in the tourism industry, with haunted walks,...

Once upon a time, Halloween was a one-day event. Then the pumpkins and parties started moving back to the weeks between Columbus Day and Oct. 31. Now the holiday is morphing into an entire season, at least in the tourism industry, with haunted walks,...

++++++++++++++++++++ || Barbara's Bookstore at UIC, 1218 S. Halsted St., Chicago, 312-413-2665 || || || || || 1. || When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (Little, Brown, $25.99): The humorous essayist recounts quirky events from his life. ||...

I have no idea how I feel about John Edwards' extramarital sexual dalliances. The Icarus-like tumble that powerful men take in such cases is a strange and disturbing thing to behold; like a lot of people, I am still sorting out my emotions. No such...

Fortunately or unfortunately, Salem, Mass., is known around the world for its infamous past. It was the macabre location of the Salem witch trials of 1692, which resulted in the deaths of 20 innocent people and the imprisonment of hundreds more. Today,...

Fortunately or unfortunately, Salem, Mass., is known around the world for its infamous past. It was the location of the macabre Salem witch trials around 1692, which resulted in the deaths of 20 innocent people and the imprisonment of hundreds more....

Is Philip K. Dick the father of the paranoid style in American fiction? "Every pay phone in the world was tapped," a character thinks in "A Scanner Darkly." "Or if it wasn't some crew somewhere just hadn't gotten around to it." As it happens, that...

School is almost out and that means one thing: It's time for summer reading lists. But this year, students who dread the idea of plodding through Shakespearean verse to learn the tales of star-crossed lovers and ruthless rulers can take heart. Wiley...

Puritans breaking into power ballads makes heady sense in Mark Governor's rock musical "shAme," adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter." And not just because opposites -- in this case, repression and rock music -- attract. The story of...

In the long and often embarrassing history of intellectuals' attempts to grapple with pop culture, there are, at least, a few high points. One of them is the work of the late Leslie Fiedler, the garrulous and provocative critic of literature who could...

How we love it. How we adore these delicious tales of the mighty and prideful, knocked from their high perch by a branch they wield themselves. How we relish the notion that a spectacular rise may contain the seeds of a tumbling fall. When a spotless...