Feet, bras, autopsies, hair – Peggy Shinner takes an honest, unflinching look at all of them in "You Feel So Mortal", a collection of searing and witty essays about the body: her own body, female and Jewish; those of her parents, the bodies she came...

In 1952 the "New Yorker" published a three-part essay by A. J. Liebling in which he dubbed Chicago the "Second City". From garbage collection to the skyline, nothing escaped Liebling's withering gaze. Among the outraged responses from Chicago residen...