John Williams

Connell McShane, anchor of ‘NewsNation Live with Connell McShane,’ joins John Williams to talk about the upcoming midterm elections and what is likely happen in the Senate, President Trump canceling and then rescheduling trips to Kansas and Iowa this weekend, and the ballot controversy in Alaska.

With Halloween upon is and the autumn chill, well, not quite here yet, it is time to convene the WGN Radio Book Club (or is it the Boo Club?) for their suggestions on new titles to read during the long (even if they may still be mild) nights ahead.

John Williams (weekdays 10am-2pm, including The Noon Business Lunch, plus the Mincing Rascals podcast)

Ethel Kerry Kennedy (Harper Collins)
This is a roller coaster ride, as any book about the life of the Kennedys (and Skakels) would be.  Here, Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s daughter (one of 11 kids!) writes about the life and times of her mother.  One page they are sailing or enjoying the lush life of privilege and riches, the next page someone gets shot or their plane goes down (Ethel’s parents both died in a plane crash when she was in her 20’s.)  This is a portrait by a loving daughter of a deeply religious, very athletic, quirky and less reported on woman.

The Game Peter King (Norton)
King’s recollection of 40+ years covering football is eminently readable.  And I’m not an NFL fan.  But here are very fun anecdotes about players and games even the casual fan will appreciate.  To wit, how Peyton Manning used a tanning bed to enhance his draft prospects, how Deon Sanders was and still is important to players today, Steve Young’s medical collapse after winning the Super Bowl, Mike Ditka loving his strike season players and even a woman from Chicago who drove to New York to deliver cake to firefighters after 9/11.

The Time Tax Annie Lowrey (Harper Collins)
This book is equal parts revealing, maddening and encouraging.   Lowrey makes a finer point of the notion that time is the universal currency, and our government and corporations rob us of it every day.  How much time and money do you waste each year on hold or trying to navigate a website or doing your taxes?  And it does NOT have to be this way.  (In her telling, you’ll almost want to move to Estonia if you want a more efficient society. ) The book reveals how pointless the DOGE experiment was and puts our systems in surprising historical contexts.  If that sounds boring, it is not. It is all familiar stuff.  Buy one for your congressman Barbarian Days

A Surfing Life William Finnegan (Penguin)
Read this book even if you didn’t grow up in Hawaii (as I did) in the 1960’s and 70’s.  The writing is so inviting, fluid, and interesting.  Finnegan’s Pulitzer Prize chops are instantly on display.  Travel the world in this memoir on a surfboard.  I have not finished it yet (It is more than a decade old; I just got it as a gift from my son) but so far it is smooth sailing.  Err, surfing.

Bob Kessler (news)

Taipei Story  (2006) by R.F. Kuang
I enjoyed this far more than I expected with much of the praise going to the author’s skill in bringing the reader directly into the story and its main character, Lily. She’s a Chinese-American college student spending the summer in an immersive Chinese language program in Taipei, Taiwan. It covers themes of cultural identity, how language shapes culture and individuals, and how even really smart, capable people struggle with their studies and personal relationships. I didn’t learn what she learned in the language program, but I felt the way she felt as she moved through it, experiencing the excitement, disorientation and humor-laden exasperation at every turn.  

Pay Attention: How the Algorithms and Media Wars Are Suppressing Truth and Rewiring Your Brain  (2026) by David Pakman
An insider’s look at content creation in the current moment. I have long admired David Pakman’s ability to make a meaningful impact in the online content space for the last decade-plus and he offers insightful observations on the dangers of what he calls ‘the attention economy.’ It has the ability to not merely influence us but to profoundly reshape who we are (and not in a good way), without us even knowing it. He offers practical tips to be a mindful consumer of the content we are surrounded by that is fighting for our attention and to influence us.

The Hill  (2026) by Harriet Clark
A wistful, meditative novel about a girl growing into adulthood while her mother is in prison. The main characters: the girl, her grandmother and mother are portrayed empathetically. The girl’s life is certainly one of unusual circumstances, but it’s still the only reality she’s ever known and that perspective is artfully presented with amazing authenticity.

The Hunter  (2026) by Tana French
A great 3rd installment of the series that does what the other two do, but even better. It’s satisfying to see how the characters develop and grow, especially that of retired Chicago police officer Cal, his scrappy friend Trey and girlfriend Lena. I’m not sure I’d want to live in the town of Ardnakelty, Ireland but I’ll gladly visit through these books.

Welcome to Your Life: Love, Death & Tears For Fears – An Iconic Musician’s Journey Through Grief, Addiction, and Recovery  (2026) by Roland Orzabal
Roland Orzabal has lived an interesting life full of triumph and tragedies. He also is really into astrology. This engaging memoir includes not only details of that interesting life, but also how astrology has brought a certain meaning and order to those events for him. Even though the astrological explanations are beyond my understanding, his sincerity in writing about them makes up for that gap.

The Perilous Fight  (2026) by Colin Kaepernick
Kaepernick’s experiences as a Black person throughout his life are both both enlightening and disturbing. I was also struck by the level of dedication, physical and mental involvement to be in the highly elite ranks of a star NFL quarterback. For someone to have gone through all he has in order to succeed (including having a titanium rod inserted in his lower leg to prevent further injury), the fact that his career was cut short is deeply unjust and the book makes that case effectively.  

Steve Alexander (agribusiness reporter and host of The Business of Food, now heard Sunday mornings at 6am)

John of John by Douglas Stuart
This is the first book I’ve read (listened to) where one of the characters knits a penis. I’ll let you discover the context of that knitting, and I encourage you to do so — I loved this book. I watched an interview with the author recently and he seems like a jolly enough fellow but, wow, can he write about despair, and disappointment, and a life filled with gloom. There are only a handful of characters, and the dominant one is the remote, windswept, barren island off the coast of Scotland that is unforgiving to the sparse number of families who struggle to scrape out a living in the sheep-based economy. Young people hope to escape the island, which John Calum “Cal” Macleod did, briefly. He went to the mainland to attend art school and explore his homosexuality, but he struggled to find his place — none of which he could share with his father, John, an ultra-religious, rigid (mean and prone to violence) sheep farmer and weaver. He had his own secrets that drove Cal’s mother to move to the other side of the island and start a new family with John’s brother. When John demanded that Cal return because his beloved maternal grandmother was ill (he lied), he did. And he fell back into the routine he had tried to escape, but with added desperation. I could go on and on because Stuart is such a gifted writer. It took me longer than it should have to read because time after time, I went back to savor his descriptions of the complicated lives and situations he created. It’s a master class in novel writing. 

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
This is a beautiful book set in the English countryside (more sheep!) and involves a woman, Beth, who is happily married, but she and her husband are united in the unending grief of losing their son a few years earlier. Then,  a neighbor, who broke Beth’s heart as a teenager, returns to live in the area and things get messy. It isn’t as boilerplate routine and simple as I’m making it seem. It’s well-written and well worth your time.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch    
I rarely read sci-fi, but Bob Kessler (I think) recommended this author, and because it’s set in Chicago with so many familiar landmarks, I gave it a go. I liked it. It’s based on the familiar “What if….?” concept of how our lives would be different had we altered even the smallest things — not meeting a person or not taking a job. Throw in quantum physics and presumptions of how it can alter our existence, and it’s worth the ride!

Steve Bertrand (host of Steve Bertrand on Books podcast, world traveler, retired after over 40 years as a WGN Radio news anchor and reporter)

Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth (Hepworth is on this week’s podcast)
Sally Hepworth’s Mad Mabel has been the word-of-mouth book of the year.  It has climbed to the New York Times bestseller list not once, but twice: a clear sign that friends are telling friends about this funny, sad, ultimately heartwarming story about a cranky old lady who is hiding a secret from her teenage years. Set in Australia, it’s a dual tale of a very sad childhood coupled with a redemption in old age. Hepworth says it’s a story about friendship. You have to figure who the friends are.

American Bread: A History by Andrew Coe
Chances are, you’ve already had a piece of bread today. Maybe morning toast or an afternoon sandwich.  And that bread comes with a story. American Bread comes with many stories, as Andrew Coe explains in his book. You’ll devour this book as if it were an Italian beef sandwich: dipped.  Coe discusses everything from the first breads the Pilgrims ate (made from corn stolen from the native Americans to how Wonder Bread took over the store shelves. By 1950, 80 percent of bread loaves were store bought. Rye bread, the Kaiser Roll and even graham crackers have a story to tell and Coe tells it wonderfully.

Sara Tieman (promotions & public relations manager emeritus and station book club international correspondent)

Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt (2026) – Ben Reeves 
Ooof, fellow friends and readers, keep your tissues at the ready as you read this heart-wrenching and emotional debut novel by author Ben Reeves. We’re given glimpses into the lives of ordinary people as they interact with Travis, someone they know and welcome to varying degrees. Travis is an unassuming man dressed in casual, slightly grungy attire, who also happens to be…Death. He’s there to bear witness. Travis lives alone (until a cat inserts itself into his life) in an undecorated apartment restoring old photographs as another way to pass the time until an encounter with his eight-year-old neighbor Layla and her mother Dalia brings about an unexpected friendship and connection. Layla is a force and I loved her character. I’ll be honest, at one point I had to walk away from the book. Loss is a universal human truth and grief is an undercurrent in our lives, whether we lost someone 30 years ago or five. A few lines brought me back to 1990 like it was yesterday and it was too much. Yet, as I resumed my reading, I thought of the remarkable people (my mom among them) working hospice care and being present in that final transition, much like Travis. Be warned that this one taps into the fragility and fleeting moments of life and while a worthy read, make sure you’re ready for its subject.  

This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (and Why It Matters) (2025) – Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman
This British author duo are better known as “The Map Men,” hosts of a popular YouTube channel of the same name dedicated to educating and entertaining on the subject of yes, you guessed it…maps. This is their debut book dedicated to the topic and I can confidently say I know a whole lot more about maps now than I did previously, so job well done, book and authors! We start with Chapter 1 – “The Map That Deleted a Country” and why so many, many maps (like one IKEA produced and sold) fail to include New Zealand that there’s a Reddit thread dedicated to this and the country itself ran a tourism campaign because of it. Or, Chapter 2 – “The Map That Guessed” focusing on the US, the origins of the 49th parallel international border between Canada and the States, and the John Mitchell map circa 1755 which shows a more precise East Coast but anything west of Virginia is much more nebulous. Despite this, the Mitchell map was still referenced until late in the 20th century! The writers do intersperse a bit of wit and comedy throughout, which I found amusing but might not be to everyone’s taste. If you fancy learning a bit more about maps, I think it’s a fascinating read. 

The Calamity Club (2026) – Kathryn Stockett
This one clocks in at a weighty 634 pages so if you’re in the mood to hunker down with a long read, this is the one. Could the story be edited down? Possibly, but it was paced well enough for me that it didn’t feel endless and there’s a lot to unpack in its pages as it touches upon poverty, abandonment, sterilization, sex workers, homosexuality, addiction, eugenics, and race in the list of its many themes. The action takes place in 1930s Mississippi and alternates in the telling between two characters with big personalities who I adored – Birdie Calhoun and Meg LaFleur. Resourceful, doer Birdie travels up to see her social-climbing sister Frances about money for their family. Frances lives with her husband Rory and mother-in-law Mrs Tartt in a bit of a dream, clueless state inside their mansion, whereas Birdie attunes quickly to issues in the household. Eleven-year-old Meg LaFleur lives in an orphanage where she is singled out for punishment by chairlady Garnett and dreaming of a reunion with her mother Charlie before she gets sent to a canning factory like an older orphan before her. A series of calamitous events ensues that will connect these characters and others I haven’t named as even bigger financial problems befall Mrs Tartt and Frances. The various story arcs do come to a tidy conclusion so you won’t come to the end and be disappointed by a lack of resolution. Recommended if you like strong female characters and historical settings. 

And here is a small sample of what’s on my to-read pile before the end of the year: The Pirate Queen (2026) by Ariel Lawhon, Partita (2026) by Barbara Kingsolver, London Falling (2026) by Patrick Radden Keefe and Peck & Peck (2026) by Bonnie Garmus

Enjoy this edition of “The Best of Speed Jokes.” What was your favorite joke of the week? Keep sending your jokes to [email protected]!

Pingree Grove Village Clerk Laura Ortega joins John Williams to talk about how long she’s been living in Pingree Grove, what the community is like, the recent boom in housing, how the area has grown over the years, the excitement over the new Jewel / Osco development, the huge draw of Goebbert’s Farm, and the benefits of living in area where it’s quiet, yet close to transportation that can get you where you need to go.

Brook Carey, original co-owner, the Milk House in Pingree Grove, joins John Williams to talk about when Milk House opened, the support they have received from the Pingree Grove community, the honor of having an ‘Illinois Maker’ award, how the shop is a labor of love, the most popular flavors, how they like to work on the fringes with their creations (while also having great vanilla and chocolate), the way they have flavors for every palette, who comes up with their ice cream ideas, and what separates them from their competition.

Tony LaPalio, Founder / CEO, Senior Tech Support, joins John to talk about what Senior Tech Support does, the average age of their customers, what customers have the most difficulty navigating, their focus on training and education, why he recommends YouTube TV and Hulu Live TV, and to answer all of your questions regarding your home technology.

Author and registered dietician nutritionist Dawn Jackson Blatner joins John Williams to talk about the best time to enjoy your Halloween candy, her favorite thing to do with leftover Halloween candy, her recipe for Freezer Sweetpotatoes, and to answer all of your health and nutrition question.

John Williams brings you another round of Speed Jokes. Keep sending yours to [email protected].

The Mincing Rascals this week are John Williams of WGN Radio, Eric Zorn of The Picayune Sentinel, Austin Berg, Executive Director of the Chicago Policy Center and author of the The Last Ward on Substack, and award-winning journalist and political pundit Marj Halperin. The Rascals begin the podcast discussing their predictions for the midterm elections. Next, the Rascals discuss the New York Times story about how Mary Peltola’s Senate campaign recruited candidates in an effort to take votes away from Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan in Alaska. Is this a big scandal? Sticking to scandals, the Rascals talk about the controversial ad run by the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign and what it means for his chances to win the election. And how are President Trump’s policies impacting the most important midterm races? Switching to local issues, the Rascals talk about Chicago’s election system and how some candidates are running for two offices at the same time. Do the Rascals believe this is a big deal? The Rascals also talk about referendum questions on this year’s ballot including one about a millionaire tax and another about a permanent fairgrounds space. And downstate, voters in 11 Illinois counties will decide whether to explore separating from Cook County and forming a new state. What’s the point of these non-binding questions? In Chicago, the hotel workers strike continues. What are the Rascals thoughts on the dispute?

We are ‘Keeping it Green’ with Bob Bertog, president of Bertog Landscape Co. in Wheeling and a certified landscape professional with the National Association of Landscape Professionals, joins John Williams to answer all of your lawn and garden questions.