Every Sunday morning, before church, I go running with my youngest son along the paths winding through the University of Illinois Arboretum. Along the route, we pass Japan House. So it was only fitting to do a feature story on the man behind Japan House, Shozo Sato....
Raiders of the Lost Notebook
The "Lost Notebook" sounds like something that Indiana Jones would pursue through jungles and across sands. But for mathematicians worldwide, the quest for this rare gem has taken them on a much different path—through libraries and stacks and stacks of documents....
How Did the Nazis Become So Popular?
It seems hard to imagine today, but the Nazis rose to power because they were considered a populist movement at one time, working for the common good. But how could people come to believe such a thing? I recently interviewed University of Illinois professor Peter...
A Wrong Turn in History
A wrong turn triggered World War I. To find out how, check out a recent story that I wrote for the University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. A Wrong Turn in History
Finding a More Complicated Lincoln
Edna Greene Medford became a historian at a time when the legacy of Abraham Lincoln had lost some of its luster in the African American community. So she said she never had any plans to specialize on Lincoln. But Professor Medford can credit C-SPAN for changing those...
The Myth of Black Confederates
My two worlds converged recently. In my world as a writer for the University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, I recently did a story about the "Myth of Black Confederates"--a subject that directly applied to my other world as a writer of historical...
Why Do Students Today Have Problems With Old Movies?
Pat Gill teaches some of the most popular film classes on the University of Illinois campus. But over the years she has noticed that an increasing number of students have problems with old movies--and by old movies she includes those in the 1980's and 90's. As a...
The School of Rock
What in the world does the University of Illinois have to do with REO Speedwagon, Dan Fogelberg, Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," Billboard magazine's most powerful person in music, and the most prolific Grammy-winner living today? You can find out in a cover...