Patrick T Reardon
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Patrick T. Reardon is a Chicagoan, born and bred. He is an essayist, poet, literary critic, and expert on the city of Chicago. He has been writing about the city, its region, its planning issues, and the literary scene for more than 40 years. For much of that time, he was a reporter at the Chicago Tribune.
He has also written extensively about his Catholic faith in articles and essays in a variety of newspapers and magazines, as well as in several books.
Reardon is the author of ten books, including the urban history The Loop: The ‘L’ Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago (Southern Illinois University Press) and two poetry collections Darkness on the Face of the Deep (Kelsay Books) and Requiem for David (Silver Birch Press). Others include Faith Stripped to Its Essence: A Discordant Pilgrimage through Shusaku Endo’s ‘Silence’ and Daily Meditations (with Scripture) for Busy Dads.
In addition, he has written chapters for a variety of works including Chicago Days: 150 Defining Moments in the Life of a Great City.
Reardon was the urban affairs writer and a feature writer at the Chicago Tribune during a 33-year career at the newspaper. He specialized in writing about social issues, public policy questions and the interconnections within the Chicago region. He was the primary reporter and team leader on a wide variety of in-depth multi-part series on such subjects as the urban underclass, Chicago’s public school system and the middle-class migration out of the city. Reardon was one of a team of Tribune writers and reporters who won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for Gateway to Gridlock, a series of stories about the nation’s over-crowded skies.
In 2009, he authored two planning booklets for the Burnham Plan Centennial and wrote 78 essays over a nine-month period for the Burnham Blog. In addition, he edited (and wrote key portions of) a report for the Friends of the Parks titled The Last Four Miles: Completing Chicago’s Lakefront Parks.
A former scholar-in-residence at the Newberry Library, he was a member of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council of the Archdiocese of Chicago and was a member of the advisory board of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. His poems and essays have appeared in a variety of publications in the U.S. and Europe.
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| Language | English |
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesEssay: Anger, Judgment and Forgiveness
The Book of Sirach, in the Hebrew Bible, was written about 2,300 years ago, but its admonitions are far from old-fashioned: “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.” Does that sound familiar? So much of what we hear in our world is toxic with anger. We live in a culture of outrage, of being quick to judge — and to judge harshly. And, if I’m honest, it’s not just the world and the people around me who are wrathful. I confess that I am quick to anger, fast to judge.
Poem: Shadow of the walking bird
Shadow of the walking bird In those days, judgement was in the howl throat of every woman and man. I was at the bottom of the cistern in thick mud — above my head, a waste land of light. Doctrine, that sheaf of thin reeds, was slapped against the cheek, a buffeting, a spitting, speaking false from hollow power. The messenger died running through the hell of evils, in great darkness, in last days. In the tavern, a shot of Old Testament.
Book review: “Hark!” by Ed McBain
It’s a wedding — actually, it’s two weddings — and everyone’s having a great time, laughing and dancing and smiling — except Steve Carella. He felt no joy. This is in Carella’s home city, the city where he was born and where he works as a detective in the squadroom of the 87th Precinct, the subject of what became 55 novels by Ed McBain over the course of a half century.
Poem: At the hill tomb
At the hill tomb At the hill tomb, she finds nothing. She tells the guys, and they run to find folded blooded linen. She sits on the grass of the garden, and the gnarled gardener is there, his sweat rich with grit- clumped dirt, his hair thisway andthat. She sees him take the innocent seed and thumb it into the maternal loam, and the bread is broken. Patrick T. Reardon 8.8.26 This poem originally appeared in Time of Singing, Spring, 2017, and in my book Salt of the Earth: Doubts and Faith (2023).
Book review: “Lincoln and Religion” by Ferenc Morton Szasz with Margaret Connell Szasz
It may seem strange that the question of Abraham Lincoln and religion is a “thing” in historical circles. This, after all, is the president who mentioned God often in his speeches and writings while leading the Union in the Civil War. For instance, in his second inaugural address of March 4, 1865, in a statement of national policy and an official government document, Lincoln talked about the two sides of the four-year-old war and their relationship with God.
Book review: “Biblical Prose Prayer: As A Window to the Popular Religion of Ancient Israel” by Moshe Greenberg
Moshe Greenberg was a Philadelphia-born rabbi and Bible scholar who, in mid-career, had a bee in his bonnet. Excuse the homey metaphor, but it seems fit for a homey insight that Greenberg had about the way average people prayed in ancient Israel. Indeed, the short book, just 66 pages, that resulted from this insight is titled Biblical Prose Prayer: As A Window to the Popular Religion of Ancient Israel, published in 1983.
The 27 books — A remembrance: Father Dom Grassi and the endless ripples of a book recommendation
For more than three decades Patrick T. Reardon was an urban affairs writer, a feature writer, a columnist, and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000 he was one of a team of 50 staff members who won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Now a freelance writer and poet, he has contributed chapters to several books and is the author of Faith Stripped to Its Essence. His website is https://patricktreardon.com/.
A remembrance: Father Dom Grassi and the endless ripples of a book recommendation
My friend Dom Grassi died this week, and I remember him with a deep fondness for many reasons. He loved being a priest, and he loved giving homey homilies. In addition, he was a writer and a reader. And, back in the spring of 2016, as we stood in the back of church waiting for the procession to start the Mass, Dom recommended a book to me that enriched my life in many unexpected ways — and is still enriching my life. The book he recommended was How to Read the Bible by Harvey Cox.
Poem: Communion (a psalm of Hambone)
Communion (a psalm of Hambone) Burn tomb. Seed stump. Wind, breath, spirit. Hambone stands his ground at the gold altar. Canticle of saints shudders the doors, stutters the brick walls. Sinews clutch. Holy wind! Holy breath! Mourning, he marched three times under the walls of Troy. The wind of God over the face of the waters. Darkness on the face of the deep. Earth’s salt. City of Cities. Endless Requiem. Communion of lost. Patrick T.
Essay: We like doing good…and that’s hopeful
The guy sitting in the window booth of the bagel shop, surrounded by six or eight odd-size bags and packages, could have been an aging hipster. It was that sort of Chicago neighborhood. Outside, beyond the window, el trains rattled the morning as they lumbered overhead every few minutes, north or south, anchored by stolid yellow-painted girders rising up above the cold, late winter sidewalk covered with overnight frozen snow.