Steve Vogel's Clippings

I worked my way through undergraduate school (and got much of my journalism education) by being a sportswriter for a pretty good smaller-city newspaper, The Bloomington, Ill., Pantagraph.Mostly I covered high school sports. But in October of 1967 I … [Read more...] about Batting behind Lou Brock

There's a group of former members of Congress who now label the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate as dysfunctional institutions incapable of meeting the needs of our troubled nation. The report by the Association of Former Members … [Read more...] about Congress at crossroads

In 1983 central Illinois was shocked by the killings of a young mother and her three children, a case that became the subject of my book, Reasonable Doubt. The husband and father, David Hendricks, was convicted and later acquitted of the murders. … [Read more...] about Eerie parallels to Hendricks case

It’s not that I didn’t find things to laugh aloud about in Christopher Buckley’s new political satire, Make Russia Great Again. It’s that so much of what he conjures up in his imitable style is, well, just so plausible. The book is set in the … [Read more...] about The new Buckley satire

Words can inspire. But they can also be dangerous. Words on Fire author Helio Fred Garcia spells out why and how President Trump’s rhetoric is reckless and perilous. I’ve personally experienced Garcia to be a great teacher, and that … [Read more...] about Words are important

It was a lengthy, interesting profile of journalist and author Lionel Shriver in a recent issue of The New Yorker that stirred me to read the most disturbing fiction I’ve ever encountered—her "We Need to Talk About Kevin". I don’t read that … [Read more...] about We Need to Talk About Kevin