By John Conroy
FROM SEPTEMBER 2009: A veteran investigative reporter looks into his own beating and finds himself confronting harsh and lingering questions of race Read more
Tag: Long Reads
By Steve Rhodes
He was George Ryan’s chief aide——a gifted, arrogant operator who spent his life in politics. And, prosecutors say, Scott Fawell stood at the center of a vast network of corruption. His story mixes tragedy, farce, and soap opera (a scorned husband helped bring him down)——and adds up to a dismaying case study of the political culture of Illinois Read more
By Michael Lenehan
The Fluffy Ball? Check. The Robolite Pop Up Book Light? Been there, done that. This time around, JD Ma, a Darien entrepreneur who connects American sellers with Chinese manufacturers, is on to something that just might revolutionize ... your closet? Read more
By Bryan Smith
He swaggered into town with a gun for an arm and a penchant for shooting from the lip, raising hopes that he was the savior who would return the Bears to Super Bowl glory—but also questions about his judgment and leadership. As the Bears gear up for the 2009 season, we examine the file on the team’s ballyhooed new quarterback—and explain what all the fuss is about Read more
By Ryan Blitstein
He modernized Chicago’s emergency-response center, served as Mayor Daley’s chief of staff, and led (albeit briefly) the CTA—all before his 38th birthday. Now Ron Huberman, the Israeli-born gay ex-cop, has brought his intensity and his technocratic management style to the city’s public schools. Failure is not an option. Read more
By Bryan Smith
FROM JULY 2009: After launching the Playboy empire here in the 1950s, Hugh Hefner turned Chicago into a frontline of the sexual revolution, acting out his sybaritic fantasy life behind the walls of his mansion on North State Parkway. But as the freewheeling sixties gave way to the decadent seventies, things changed drastically for Hefner and the Gold Coast mansion he called home Read more
By Christopher Benson
Chicago's Hyde Park has hosted a world's fair, nurtured a great university, pioneered urban renewal, and served as both home and crucible for Barack Obama. Read more
Muriel Newman excelled at the art of collecting. One expert called the paintings that graced her Gold Coast apartment “the greatest private collection of abstract expressionists in the world”—and Chicago’s art scene shuddered when she bequeathed most of those paintings to a New York museum. But no one seemed to blame Newman, whose gregarious personality and boundless generosity endeared her to local art institutions and patrons. Nearly a year after her death, a look back at the colorful 94-year life of an unforgettable grande dame Read more
By Geoffrey Johnson
In 1908, Chicago’s chief of police shot to death a Russian-born Jewish immigrant who had come to the chief’s Lincoln Park home. One hundred years later, Aleksandar Hemon, another European who has made Chicago his home, used that tale as a springboard for his acclaimed novel The Lazarus Project. Hemon followed in the path of several historians who had already taken on that same story—yet despite those combined investigations, the circumstances behind the immigrant’s death remain a mystery Read more
By David Bernstein
The arrest of Governor Rod Blagojevich in December cast a shadowy light on the relationships among four leading players in the Illinois Democratic Party—Blagojevich, Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod. The new president and his two aides would like to minimize their dealings with the disgraced ex-governor. But the record tells a more complex story Read more