Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Mary Jane’s Ghost
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE: IL
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
Pulitzer prize-winning Chicago Tribune reporter.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
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| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/n2011069034 |
| HEADING: | Gregory, Ted |
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| 100 | 1_ |a Gregory, Ted |
| 670 | __ |a Our black year, 2012: |b eCIP t.p. (Ted Gregory) |
| 670 | __ |a Mary Jane’s ghost, 2017: |b eCIP t.p. (Ted Gregory) data view screen (b. 1959) |
PERSONAL
Married.
EDUCATION:Eastern Illinois University, B.A., 1981; attended DePaul University, 1984-85.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist, author. Winona Daily News, Winona, MN, reporter, 1981-83; Daily Herald, Provo, UT, reporter, 1983-91; Chicago Tribune, IL, reporter, 1991–.
AWARDS:Pulitzer Prize, 2008, shared with five colleagues of the Chicago Tribune for investigative reporting.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Ted Gregory is a general assignments reporter for the Chicago Tribune, where he has worked since 1991. In 2008 Gregory and a team of five other Tribune reporters won a Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for their work on unsafe toys and equipment for children and infants, including lead-tainted goods from China, car-safety concerns, magnetic jewelry, and unsafe cribs. The reporting of Gregory and others led to federal recalls and suspension of sales by major chain stores.
In addition to his reporting at the Tribune, Gregory has also coauthored several books, including Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest to Buy Black in America’s Racially Divided Economy, with Maggie Anderson, and To Chase a Dream: A Soccer Championship, an Unlikely Hero, and a Journey That Re-defined Winning, with his cousin, Paul “Whitey” Kapsalis. In 2017 Gregory published his first solo effort in nonfiction, Mary Jane’s Ghost: The Legacy of a Murder in Small Town America.
Our Black Year
Gregory teamed with Maggie Anderson on the 2012 title Our Black Year. Anderson and her husband John are successful African American professionals living in a wealthy Chicago suburb and raising two daughters. Despite their success, they feel somewhat uneasy about the disparity between their privileged lives and those of most African Americans who live under more difficult conditions in much more poverty-stricken neighborhoods. Knowing that black wealth is only one tenth of white wealth, and that black businesses lag behind those of other ethnic and racial groups, they begin to look for a way that they might give back to their community. They realize that many black consumers as well as those of other ethnicities do not generally frequent and support black businesses. Thus, in 2009, the Andersons decide to make a year-long commitment to buying from black businesses. They believe that by doing so and doing so publicly, they might be able to motivate the black community as well as other groups in the American economy to support black businesses. They establish a foundation and acquire endorsements from celebrities to publicize the experiment.
As Gregory shows in his account of the year of “buying black,” the black community did not support the Andersons’ campaign, and many in the community even condemned their attempt. Gregory blends the personal story of Maggie and John Anderson with economic research and social history to demonstrate why the black economy continues to lag behind. The book also makes an appeal to all American consumers to get involved and begin to reverse this situation, action that would, in the long run, benefit all Americans.
At one point in Our Black Year, Anderson wondered why they were unable to find even one black grocery story in the Chicago area to stock fresh fruits and vegetables. Writing in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer felt that if this book “gets readers to wrestle with that question, it will have done a good enough job to make what is largely a business history an effective probe into how African-Americans spend so much money that flows so overwhelmingly out of their community.” Mother Jones contributor Tim McDonnell similarly felt that despite the challenges, the Andersons “emerged with an appreciation for how African Americans’ collective $913 billion buying power, wielded with due care, might bring a little prosperity to the hood.” Writing in Black Enterprise, Alfred Edmond, Jr., noted that the “story of that year is told by Maggie Anderson, with Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune reporter Ted Gregory, in a provocative and inspiring … book.” Edmond added: “Our Black Year is a must-read for entrepreneurs, especially those black business owners who are frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of support from African American consumers. … Besides that, the book is simply a fantastic read.”
To Chase a Dream and Mary Jane's Ghost
Gregory again penned a collaborative effort with Kapsalis, whose goal to play soccer for the Indiana University team informs To Chase a Dream. Gregory shows how Kapsalis grew up in the Midwest during the 1980s with one overwhelming desire: to play soccer on the Indiana team, winner of eight national championships. But there was a lot standing in his way. Coaches invariably told him he was too small, too slow, and just not good enough to qualify for such a team. But Kapsalis stuck with it, persevering when others told him to give up. He struggled for more than five years to reach his goal, battling not only rejections but an injury that was bad enough to threaten his career. As a walk-on for the Hoosiers, Kapsalis ultimately became a team lead and co-captain of this prestigious soccer team. In an interview on the online Varsity Club IU Athletics, Gregory commented on a lesson to take away from this book: “I think it’s important that people understand how much even a little thing can mean to a kid or a person who is trying to hang in there. Just a kind word or a gesture here and there can mean so much to somebody, and certainly Whitey experienced that [at the University of Illinois].” The contributor on Varsity Club IU Athletics found To Chase a Dream an “inspiring memoir.” Similarly, Soon Har, writing on the Itasaca Community Library website, noted: “I was surprised by how deeply this book engaged, touched and inspired me.” Har went on to term the book an “entertaining, feel-good read.”
Writing on his own in Mary Jane’s Ghost, Gregory describes two separate but interlocked stories: a cold case murder from 1948 and the tale of a man fifty years later who became obsessed with getting to the bottom of the case. In the summer of 1948, two young people were murdered in the small of Oregon, Illinois. Mary Jane Reed and Stanley Skridla were at a local lovers’ lane when they were murdered, and though the case made national headlines, no killer was ever apprehended. Fifty years later, Michael Arians moved to the town, opened a roadhouse, and later became mayor. He also grew to be obsessed with the case, trying to solve it after five decades had lapsed. He ultimately reached out to the Chicago Tribune with his theory of the case, and his story landed on Gregory’s desk. Off and on Gregory followed this story for the next thirteen years, as recounted in this book that is “mostly fast-paced,” according to a Kirkus Reviews critic. Similarly, an online Lit and Life contributor found Mary Jane’s Ghost an “interesting read,” further noting: “Readers will learn more than they will ever want to know about what goes on when you exhume a body that’s been in the ground for decades. … And the other stories that Gregory talks about are all interesting to read about.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Black Enterprise, February, 2012, Alfred Edmond, Jr., review of Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest to Buy Black in America’s Racially Divided Economy, p. 36.
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2017, review of Mary Jane’s Ghost: The Legacy of a Murder in Small Town America.
Mother Jones, March-April, 2012, Tim McDonnell, review of Our Black Year, p. 63.
Publishers Weekly, November 14, 2011, review of Our Black Year, p. 46.
ONLINE
Chicago Tonight, https://chicagotonight.wttw.com/ (March 19, 2012), Michael Lipkin, review of Our Black Year.
Coast to Coast AM, https://www.coasttocoastam.com/ (May 25, 2018), “Ted Gregory.”
Huffington Post, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (March 1, 2012), “Maggie Anderson ‘Buys Black’ for One Year, Publishes Book on Experiment.”
Itasaca Community Library, https://itascalibrary.org/ (May 25, 2018), Soon Har, review of To Chase a Dream: A Soccer Championship, An Unlikely Hero and a Journey That Re-defined Winning.
Lit and Life, http://litandlife.blogspot.com/ (September 28, 2017), review of Mary Jane’s Ghost.
Los Angeles Times Online, http://www.latimes.com/ (May 25, 2018), “Ted Gregory.”
Mother Jones Online, https://www.motherjones.com/ (February 13, 2012), Tim McDonnell, review of Our Black Year.
To Chase a Dream Website, http://www.tochaseadream.com/ (May 25, 2018), profile of author.
Varsity Club IU Athletics, http://iuhoosiers.com/ (May 29, 2014), “Former Student-Athlete Spotlight: Whitey Kapsalis Shares Story of Passion, Perseverance and Patience in New Book about IU Soccer.”
Ted Gregory is a general assignment reporter at the Tribune, where he has worked since 1991. In 2008 he and five Tribune colleagues shared a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. In addition to his newspaper work, Ted is co-author of two books, "Our Black Year" and "To Chase A Dream."
Ted Gregory is a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
In addition to his newspaper work, Ted is co-author of the acclaimed book, “Our Black Year,” (2012 PublicAffairs) a nonfiction account of an African-American family’s effort to patronize black-owned businesses exclusively for one year. He lives near Chicago with his wife and children.
Ted Gregory
3rd degree connection3rd
Reporter at Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune DePaul University
Greater Chicago Area 489 489 connections
Experience
Chicago Tribune
Reporter
Company Name Chicago Tribune
Dates Employed Dec 1991 – Present Employment Duration 26 yrs 5 mos
The Daily Herald
Reporter
Company Name The Daily Herald
Dates Employed Jan 1983 – Dec 1991 Employment Duration 9 yrs
Winona Daily News, Winona, MN
Reporter
Company Name Winona Daily News, Winona, MN
Dates Employed Nov 1981 – Jan 1983 Employment Duration 1 yr 3 mos
Education
DePaul University
DePaul University
Dates attended or expected graduation 1984 – 1985
Eastern Illinois University
Eastern Illinois University
Degree Name bachelors
Field Of Study journalism
Dates attended or expected graduation 1977 – 1981
Skills & Endorsements
Journalism
See 37 endorsements for Journalism 37
Endorsed by Deborah L. Shelton and 6 others who are highly skilled at this
Endorsed by 11 of Ted’s colleagues at Chicago Tribune Media Group
Newspapers
See 33 endorsements for Newspapers 33
Endorsed by Douglas Backstrom, MBA and 5 others who are highly skilled at this
Endorsed by 6 of Ted’s colleagues at Chicago Tribune Media Group
News Writing
See 33 endorsements for News Writing 33
Endorsed by Brian Poulter and 2 others who are highly skilled at this
Endorsed by 7 of Ted’s colleagues at Chicago Tribune Media Group
Industry Knowledge
AP Style
See 32 endorsements for AP Style 32
Breaking News
See 26 endorsements for Breaking News 26
Editing
See 22 endorsements for Editing 22
Copy Editing
See 21 endorsements for Copy Editing 21
Online Journalism
See 14 endorsements for Online Journalism 14
Newspaper
See 9 endorsements for Newspaper 9
Media Relations
See 8 endorsements for Media Relations 8
Publications
See 7 endorsements for Publications 7
Social Media
See 7 endorsements for Social Media 7
Blogging
See 6 endorsements for Blogging 6
Content Management
See 6 endorsements for Content Management 6
Web Content
See 4 endorsements for Web Content 4
Magazines
See 4 endorsements for Magazines 4
Interpersonal Skills
Storytelling
See 11 endorsements for Storytelling 11
Other Skills
Headline Writing
See 16 endorsements for Headline Writing 16
Ghostwriting
See 11 endorsements for Ghostwriting 11
Investigative Reporting
See 8 endorsements for Investigative Reporting 8
Newspaper Design
See 2 endorsements for Newspaper Design 2
Gorilla
See 1 endorsement for Gorilla 1
Dinosaurs
See 1 endorsement for Dinosaurs 1
Trucking Litigation
See 1 endorsement for Trucking Litigation 1
Feature Articles
See 23 endorsements for Feature Articles 23
Editorial
See 10 endorsements for Editorial 10
Writing Skills
See 3 endorsements for Writing Skills 3
Recommendations
Received (0)
Given (1)
Elijah Accola
Elijah Accola
A student working on receiving a degree in Applied Communication Studies.
August 14, 2013, Ted worked with Elijah but at different companies
I found Elijah to be enthusiastic, resourceful and hard-working in my dealings with him.
Accomplishments
Ted has 2 projects 2
Projects
Paul "Whitey" Kapsalis Our Black Year
Ted has 1 honor 1
Honor & Award
Pulitzer Prize
Biography:
Ted Gregory is a general assignment reporter at the Chicago Tribune, where he has worked since 1991. In 2008 he and five Tribune colleagues shared a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. In addition to his newspaper work, Ted is co-author of two books, "Our Black Year" and "To Chase A Dream." Michael Arians moved to Oregon, IL, where we was elected mayor. Soon he became obsessed with a crime in his community that went unsolved, so he turned to the Chicago Tribune for help. After befriending reporter Ted Gregory, the two remained beguiled by the case of a teenage telephone operator named Mary Jane and what happened to her.
Websites:
rhouse.org/Coincidence.html
maryjanereed.com
Books:
Mary Jane's Ghost
Past Shows:
Illinois Murder Mystery/ Manson Family
Saturday November 25, 2017
Michael Arians and Ted Gregory discussed an unsolved murder and ghosts. Dianne Lake recalled her time as a follower of Charles Manson.
More »
Host: Dave Schrader
QUOTE:
I think it's important that people understand how much even a little thing can mean to a kid or a person who is trying to hang in there. Just a kind word or a gesture here and there can mean so much to somebody, and certainly Whitey experienced that here.
inspiring memoir
Former Student-Athlete Spotlight: Whitey Kapsalis Shares Story of Passion, Perseverance and Patience in New Book about IU Soccer.
May 29, 2014
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Paul "Whitey" Kapsalis may not be a familiar name, but his journey to become an IU soccer player is nothing short of heroic. Undersized and told he wasn't good enough to play for the Hoosiers, Kapsalis beat the odds from walking on to the team in 1983 and sustaining a career-threatening injury to ultimately becoming a team leader and co-captain on one of the most elite soccer teams in the country.
Kapsalis has just released an inspiring memoir of his IU experiences, co-written by his cousin and Pulitzer-prize winning Chicago Tribune reporter Ted Gregory. The book entitled "To Chase A Dream: A Soccer Championship, An Unlikely Hero And A Journey That Redefined Winning" is now available in bookstores and on Amazon.
The IU Varsity Club recently sat down with Kapsalis and Gregory to learn more about the book, and Kapsalis' IU experiences.
Q: Why did you think it was important to share your experiences in this book?
Kapsalis: I think the natural tendency when someone would hear that I played soccer at IU is an assumption that I must have been All-American in high school, that I must have had a full ride, that I must have started four years in a row with a National Championship along the way. So, in intimate settings when I would really tell my story, the response on a small scale was, "Oh my gosh, your story is amazing." It was almost always followed up with, "You ought to write a book."
Six years ago, I got asked on a spontaneous Sunday afternoon to speak at an eighth grade sports banquet for students and parents. The athletic director called and said, "Our speaker backed out on us; we need to have someone come and speak. Can you do it, Whitey?" That was the first time I publicly told my story.
I really wanted to inspire those young students to believe in themselves, to dream, and, as they enter a new journey in their life, to understand what the challenges and potential upsides are if they have the right mindset. So, I told my story that evening and the response was really overwhelming. There were students and parents in tears and many came up to me afterwards and told me that I should share my story in a book. That planted the seed.
I'm not an author; I never dreamed of being an author and had no idea how to do it. Teddy and I are cousins, So, I called Teddy and we got together in Chicago on a weekend and began the journey. That was four and a half years ago.
I was called to share this story once I could see how it moved people and how it might affect people. I'm not a self-promoter; it's not about me. Once I got over that and realized that it could help someone along the way, I agreed to do it. And writing this book was more fun than we could ever have imagined.
For me, really trying to intimately relive these memories was just fascinating. Going through the process, I had the same feelings I had in college; I was brought to tears during the process and I was struck on some incredible memories along the way.
Q: Head Coach Jerry Yeagley encouraged you to transfer away from IU a few times. What was it that enabled you to continue on your path at IU?
Kapsalis: Ultimately, it was a deep passion and desire. I had a really strong foundation and desire to wear the IU jersey. I wanted to represent this university as a soccer player. That never went away, even when Coach Yeagley would tell me to transfer. I would listen to him and I would be dejected and then this fire would start lighting up again.
Coupled with that, I had these very blessed relationships. I had just enough people in my life to keep me going when I was really down and out. It started with family and then, certainly, teammates and some friends from campus. That combination of this passion and desire to really, really see this thing through, coupled with people in my life that inspired me to keep trying -- that was enough for me.
Q: How important are relationships to a student-athlete's success?
Kapsalis: I can talk about that for days. In a lot of ways, the book is a lot about relationships, with my family and my teammates. I wouldn't be anything; I wouldn't have done it; I wouldn't have accomplished what I accomplished; I wouldn't have had staying power; I wouldn't have had the experience; and I wouldn't have had the memories without the people in my life, especially my teammates.
I've thanked them over the years and I'm still in touch with all of them. I don't know that any of them truly understood my journey at the time. Now, coming full circle and having the same guys that I thanked for the last 25 years read about themselves validates exactly what I have tried to say my whole life. It's that I'm so grateful for those relationships.
The one thing that I want most people to realize is how important people are in our lives and the little things and big things that people do that matter.
Gregory: I think it's important that people understand how much even a little thing can mean to a kid or a person who is trying to hang in there. Just a kind word or a gesture here and there can mean so much to somebody, and certainly Whitey experienced that here.
Q: How did you stay positive throughout the journey? What kept you focused on that dream?
Kapsalis: It was pure desire. The first time I drove down here and watched IU play, I just envisioned myself on that field. I could see what it would be like to wear that jersey, play for that coach, travel with the team, get off the airplane and walk onto a field dressed in red. That sustained me; it sustained me for four and a half years. I never lost that desire and passion for wanting to represent this university. I just never did.
There were glimpses of times when I questioned it. But, every time I questioned myself, I'd wake up the next day and kept pointing back to Bloomington. And, ultimately, Coach Yeagley was kind enough to never say, "No." He was as honest as he could be, but he never kicked me off the campus. If he wasn't willing to do that, then I was willing to come back.
Q: What is your favorite part of the book?
Kapsalis: My relationships with teammates and coaches are an important part of the book. And, I met my wife at IU so that is a huge part of the story. If I were to pick one scene from the book that is my favorite part of the book, it was at that Evansville game when we caused the penalty kick and went into overtime. We salvaged a potential tournament bid in the season. We were sitting out on the field in the huddle and some women yells, "We love you, Whitey!" If I had to pick one moment, wow, that was really pretty cool.
Gregory: That moment was very validating for him. To have gone through his experiences, and he hadn't quite fulfilled it all, but at least at this point he felt like, "Wow, after everything I've been recognized and validated."
Kapsalis: It was just this voice out of the crowd. I didn't know who it was; I never looked back. I still don't know who it was even today.
Q: What does it mean to you to be a part of IU's soccer tradition?
Kapsalis: It's a second family. It's the most rewarding, gratifying athletic experience I've ever had in my life. I learned the greatest life lessons of any component of my life, including the classroom: how to prepare, how to be a teammate, how to be a leader, how to be a champion, how to win, how to lose.
Being an athlete here shaped who I am. It gave me the conviction to make the decisions that I make today as a father, as a husband, as a salesperson, as a volunteer soccer coach. I would say that all of those decisions and choices that I've made were formulated in that four and a half years here at IU as an athlete, without question.
And the IU program is like an open door. You can call Coach (Jerry) Yeagley's cell phone and he answers; you knock on his door and he opens it and brings you in for dinner. Even the players: we don't talk about it very much; it's kind of taken for granted. But, when we're together you can just see it. It's powerful, very powerful.
Q: What do you hope people will take away from your experiences at IU?
Kapsalis: Persistence and perseverance with patience. That's the message. I never obsessed about this goal or this dream. It never consumed me. It rarely kept me up at night. It was a burning desire like nothing I could ever explain, but I was very patient, and I think back then patience was difficult. I think today patience is even more difficult. Are we willing to let it play out? Are we willing to stay long enough to really have our dreams come true? Let it play out, be patient with the process. And as long as you've got the burning desire then there should not be a stopwatch on the journey.
Today, Kapsalis resides in Indianapolis with his wife, Sherri, and their three children. He is a sales representative in the apparel industry and a volunteer youth soccer coach. He is also a Youth Minister and Eucharistic Minister and serves as Chairman of the Bigelow-Brand Charity Advisory Board of the Pancreatic Cyst & Cancer Early Detection Center.
Kapsalis will be signing books at each of the "On The Road with The Hoosiers" events this summer. View schedule of events.
Purchase "To Chase A Dream" on Amazon.
Print Friendly Version
QUOTE:
mostly fast-paced,
Gregory, Ted: MARY JANE'S GHOST
Kirkus Reviews.
(Aug. 1, 2017): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Gregory, Ted MARY JANE'S GHOST Univ. of Iowa (Adult Nonfiction) $18.00 10, 1 ISBN: 978-1-60938-523-1
The story of an unsolved double murder from 1948 in the small town of Oregon, Illinois.In a meandering account that sometimes shifts away from the cold case altogether, Pulitzer Prize- winning Chicago Tribune reporter Gregory (co-author: To Chase a Dream: A Soccer Championship, an Unlikely Hero and a Journey that Re-Defined Winning, 2014, etc.) opens with his receipt of an envelope from a stranger residing in Oregon, Illinois. The sender was Michael Arians, owner of a small business and former mayor of Oregon. Arians never knew the two murder victims, young teenage lovers named Mary Jane Reed and Stanley Skridla. Arians, however, was incensed that nobody had been arrested, that the county sheriff's department might have initiated a coverup, and that contemporary residents failed to honor the memories of the dead couple. After Gregory convinced his editors to let him investigate the cold case, he became as fascinated with the story behind Arians' quixotic quest as with the details of the homicide. Arians developed an intriguing theory about the case (no spoilers here), but the author began to believe that other theories were more accurate. As Gregory was trying to carve out the time to seek the smoking gun, downsizing at the Tribune threatened his ability to proceed. Throughout the book, readers will navigate through digressions about American daily newspapers, Oregon's history, Illinois geography, and other unrelated feature stories that the author was pursuing. Eventually, though, Gregory turns his attention back to the double murder: the array of suspects, Arians' theories and his business ventures, which were complicated by financial difficulties, and, toward the end of the text, Arians' meltdown due to circumstances beyond his control. Soon after meeting Arians, the author decided that the obsessive sleuth was not crazy, but the Arians minibiography comes across as pedestrian. The narrative, while mostly fast-paced, would feel more compelling without some of Gregory's tangents, and the failure to identify the killer(s) leads
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to a flat ending.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Gregory, Ted: MARY JANE'S GHOST." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2017. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499572599/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=6cb43f0d. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499572599
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QUOTE:
gets readers to wrestle with that question, it will have done a good enough job to make what is largely a business history an effective probe into how African- Americans spend so much money that flows so overwhelmingly out of their community.
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Our Black Year: One Family's Quest
to Buy Black in America's Racially
Divided Economy
Publishers Weekly.
258.46 (Nov. 14, 2011): p46+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2011 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy Maggie Anderson, with Ted Gregory. PublicAffairs, $25.99 (320p) ISBN 978-161039-024-8
What began as a 90-day project to "Buy Black" became a year-long project (20092010) and a foundation promoting black entrepreneurship for a Chicago couple, Maggie and John Anderson. They tried to get through the year patronizing only African-American businesses, "to document what products and services we could and could not find." While this book shows them living their lives with social difficulties (what should one do if invited to a friend's party thrown in a white establishment?) and emotional crises (a terminally ill parent, stressed friendships), the primary focus is on their foundation--its history, hard times, and highlights of the "Empowerment Experiment." In merging the details of their effort--checking out establishments, getting celebrity endorsements, black business history, and multiple statistics-the book becomes repetitive, overwritten, and more tiresome than its dynamite subject deserves: "How insane is it that we couldn't find a Black-owned store in all of Chicagoland with a consistent supply of fruits and vegetables ?" If Anderson's book gets readers to wrestle with that question, it will have done a good enough job to make what is largely a business history an effective probe into how African- Americans spend so much money that flows so overwhelmingly out of their community. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy."
Publishers Weekly, 14 Nov. 2011, p. 46+. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com /apps/doc/A272739651/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=6a49be63. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A272739651
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QUOTE:
emerged with an appreciation for how African Americans' collective $913 billion buying power, wielded with due care, might bring a little prosperity to the hood.
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Our Black Year: One Family's Quest
to Buy Black in America's Racially
Divided Economy
Tim McDonnell
Mother Jones.
37.2 (March-April 2012): p63. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2012 Foundation for National Progress http://www.motherjones.com
Full Text:
Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy By Maggie Anderson, with
Ted Gregory
PUBLICAFFAIRS
During the 1990s, according to the National Housing Institute, less than two cents of every dollar spent by African Americans was going to black-owned businesses. Troubled by this and other stats demonstrating stark economic disparities, Maggie Anderson's family, a well-to-do bunch who attended the Obamas' Chicago church, decided to patronize only black-owned businesses for a year. In the process, they had to put up with gangsta wannabes, racism allegations, and the difficulty--shared by many a low-income urbanite--of finding a decent grocery store But they emerged with an appreciation for how African Americans' collective $913 billion buying power, wielded with due care, might bring a little prosperity to the hood.
McDonnell, Tim
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
McDonnell, Tim. "Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially
Divided Economy." Mother Jones, Mar.-Apr. 2012, p. 63. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A282067650/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=96657330. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A282067650
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QUOTE:
The story of that year is told by Maggie Anderson, with Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune reporter Ted Gregory, in a provocative and inspiring new book
Our Black Year is a must-read for entrepreneurs, especially those black business owners who are frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of support from African American consumers. Besides that, the book is simply a fantastic read.
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
"Our Black Year": the story of one
family's mission to buy black
Alfred Edmond, Jr.
Black Enterprise.
42.7 (Feb. 2012): p36. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2012 Earl G. Graves Publishing Co., Inc. http://www.blackenterprise.com/
Full Text:
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
A LITTLE MORE THAN THREE YEARS AGO, John and Maggie Anderson, a well-educated, upper-middle-class, professional couple living in suburban Chicago, decided to spend more of their income with black-owned businesses as a means of providing much-needed economic stimulus to struggling black communities. The Andersons, parents of two young daughters, embarked on a journey--called The Empowerment Experiment---during which they vowed to spend only with black-owned businesses for all of 2009. The story of that year is told by Maggie Anderson, with Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune reporter Ted Gregory, in a provocative and inspiring new book, Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy (PublicAffairs; $25.99).
The Andersons, driven in equal parts by Obama fever, middle-class guilt, and the knowledge that strong black-owned businesses are a key source of desperately needed jobs for African Americans, approached their experiment with the heated fervor of crusaders and cold objectivity of socio-economic researchers. The Empowerment Experiment was conducted as a research project via a foundation set up by the Andersons, which partnered with Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management's Levy Entrepreneurship Center for the study. A website dedicated to the cause, EEfor Tomorow.com, serves as a hub of information about black- owned businesses and self-help economics.
The Empowerment Experiment also drew hefty national media attention from outlets ranging from CNN to BLACK ENTERPRISE. (In addition to being featured in our magazine and appearing on the Black Enterprise Business Report television show, Maggie documented some of her experiences as a guest blogger for BlackEnterprise.com.) However, in her book, Maggie reveals the previously untold truth about her family's experiences with a no-holds-barred disregard for political correctness. For example, she details her crushing disappointment with a prominent group of Chicago's black business owners who she says reneged on an initial promise to help finance The Empowerment Experiment. She is also brutally honest about the substandard and mediocre black-owned firms she and her family encountered.
5 of 6 4/18/18, 10:44 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Our Black Year is a must-read for entrepreneurs, especially those black business owners who are frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of support from African American consumers. Following the Andersons' story provides valuable insights into location, pricing, and customer service issues that can serve as significant barriers between black businesses and the consumers who want to patronize them. Entrepreneurs who choose to not react defensively, but to focus on reducing or eliminating those barriers have the potential to be handsomely rewarded in terms of bottom-line sales and customer loyalty. The Andersons are proud of and passionate about--and even emotionally bonded toy--those business owners who went out of their way to cater to their needs and exemplified entrepreneurial excellence. Besides that, the book is simply a fantastic read.
Edmond, Alfred, Jr.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Edmond, Alfred, Jr. "'Our Black Year': the story of one family's mission to buy black." Black
Enterprise, Feb. 2012, p. 36. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc /A290733562/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=28e62f91. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A290733562
6 of 6 4/18/18, 10:44 PM
“Our Black Yearâ€
Alfred Edmond, Jr.
by
Alfred Edmond, Jr.
March 1, 2012
“Our Black Yearâ€
A little more than three years ago, John and Maggie Anderson, a well-educated, upper-middle-class, professional couple living in suburban Chicago, decided to spend more of their income with black-owned businesses as a means of providing much-needed economic stimulus to struggling black communities. The Andersons, parents of two young daughters, embarked on a journey–called The Empowerment Experiment–during which they vowed to spend only with black-owned businesses for all of 2009. The story of that year is told by Maggie Anderson, with Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune reporter Ted Gregory, in a provocative and inspiring new book, Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest to Buy Black in America’s Racially Divided Economy (PublicAffairs; $25.99).
The Andersons, driven in equal parts by Obama fever, middle-class guilt, and the knowledge that strong black-owned businesses are a key source of desperately needed jobs for African Americans, approached their experiment with the heated fervor of crusaders and cold objectivity of socio-economic researchers. The Empowerment Experiment was conducted as a research project via a foundation set up by the Andersons, which partnered with Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management’s Levy Entrepreneurship Center for the study. A website dedicated to the cause, EEforTomorow.com, serves as a hub of information about black-owned businesses and self-help economics.
The Empowerment Experiment also drew hefty national media attention from outlets ranging from CNN to Black Enterprise. (In addition to being featured in our magazine and appearing on the Black Enterprise Business Report television show, Maggie documented some of her experiences as a guest blogger for BlackEnterprise.com.) However, in her book, Maggie reveals the previously untold truth about her family’s experiences with a no-holds-barred disregard for political correctness. For example, she details her crushing disappointment with a prominent group of Chicago’s black business owners who she says reneged on an initial promise to help finance The Empowerment Experiment. She is also brutally honest about the substandard and mediocre black-owned firms she and her family encountered.
Our Black Year is a must-read for entrepreneurs, especially those black business owners who are frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of support from African American consumers. Following the Andersons’ story provides valuable insights into location, pricing, and customer service issues that can serve as significant barriers between black businesses and the consumers who want to patronize them. Entrepreneurs who choose to not react defensively, but to focus on reducing or eliminating those barriers have the potential to be handsomely rewarded in terms of bottom-line sales and customer loyalty. The Andersons are proud of and passionate about–and even emotionally bonded to–those business owners who went out of their way to cater to their needs and exemplified entrepreneurial excellence. Besides that, the book is simply a fantastic read.
Join the Conversation
Maggie Anderson ‘Buys Black’ For One Year, Publishes Book On Experiment (VIDEO)
Oak Park, Ill. mother Maggie Anderson entered 2009 with an ambitious goal: for her and her family to “buy black” for an entire year. Anderson hopes her effort to support African American-owned businesses will her inspire her community become more active their sometimes struggling neighborhoods.
Anderson wrote about her experience in “Our Black Year,” a book published last month and co-authored by Ted Gregory. She explained to Fox Chicago this week that the idea came about because she and her husband John wanted to embark on their dramatic adventure as a means to “inspire economic empowerment.”
(Scroll down to watch an interview with Anderson.)
“We have all these consumers with hard-earned wealth spending money at businesses, and that money exits the community and goes to empower other people’s communities when our communities need that money,” Anderson told Fox.
The results, Anderson admits, were mixed. They struggled at first to find necessities like diapers, aspirin and fresh food from businesses that fit their criteria in the Chicago area , even though city is home to the most black-owned business in the country.
As Anderson explained on NPR last month, children’s clothing was also tough to find. While the Andersons said they expected to find most of what they needed on the Chicago’s nearby, black-majority West Side, they mostly found “stereotypical fried chicken shacks, fried fish shacks, barber and braid salons and a couple of funeral parlors.”
But, Anderson argued, it wasn’t always that way — before integration, the area was loaded with black-owned banks, department stores, drug stores and other businesses, but “in flexing our economic might, by proving that we can shop wherever we want, in so doing, we abandoned a lot of those businesses,” NPR reported.
Anderson has caught some flak from people who criticized her experiment as national media attention grew, a University of Chicago magazine reported. A Facebook group called “Stop the Empowerment Experiment” was launched. Its founder Greg Krsak criticized the project as being “as much based on ‘choosing not to do business with someone’ as it is ‘choosing to do business with someone.’” When the project was initially called the “Ebony Experiment,” Ebony magazine threatened a lawsuit.
Despite the criticism, Anderson has pressed on and continues to urge the black community to support black-owned businesses however they can, as she told Mother Jones last month:
I encourage everyone to immediately get 10 subscriptions to black-owned media, immediately get an account at a community-owned bank, immediately look for the basic services — like an alarm company, just check to see if there’s a black-owned alarm company in your community. There are. Plenty of them.
WATCH an interview with Anderson about her family’s “black year”:
HuffPost
BEFORE YOU GO
Chicago-Area Family ‘Buys Black’ for One Year, Publishes Experience in ‘Our Black Year’: MyFoxCHICAGO.com
Book Review: Our Black Year
Tim McDonnellFeb. 13, 2012 11:00 AM
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Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest to Buy Black in America’s Racially Divided Economy
By Maggie Anderson, with Ted Gregory
PUBLICAFFAIRS
During the 1990s, according to the National Housing Institute, less than two cents of every dollar spent by African Americans was going to black-owned businesses. Troubled by this and other stats demonstrating stark economic disparities, Maggie Anderson’s family, a well-to-do bunch who attended the Obamas’ Chicago church, decided to patronize only black-owned businesses for a year. In the process, they had to put up with gangsta wannabes, racism allegations, and the difficulty—shared by many a low-income urbanite—of finding a decent grocery store. But they emerged with an appreciation for how African Americans’ collective $913 billion buying power, wielded with due care, might bring a little prosperity to the hood.
Be sure and read our interview with the author here.
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Tim McDonnell
Tim McDonnell is a Mother Jones alum and current Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling Fellow reporting on climate change in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. Follow him on Twitter.
QUOTE:
I was surprised by how deeply this book engaged, touched and inspired me
An entertaining, feel-good read.
To Chase a Dream: A soccer championship, an unlikely hero, and a journey that redefined winning by Paul “Whitey” Kapsalis & Ted Gregory
Recommended by Soon Har in Adult Serviceschasedream
1n 1983, on the verge of joining Michigan State as a freshman and soccer player, Paul “Whitey” Kapsalis realized thatmore than anything else, he wanted to play soccer for Indiana University. He enrolled at IU at the last minute and got into one of the country’s top college soccer teams by the skin of his teeth. Whitey’s passion would drive him for the next five years, taking him to many unexpected places, high and low and back again.
She says:
I was surprised by how deeply this book engaged, touched and inspired me – despite not knowing who Whitey was, not caring about college soccer, and not having much interest in athletics in general. Written by Whitey’s cousin, the Chicago Tribune’s Ted Gregory, the writing is well-paced and warmly conveys Whitey’s voice, while the story’s many lessons feel genuine and universal. An entertaining, feel-good read.
"Our Black Year"
Michael Lipkin | March 19, 2012 11:00 am
The Anderson family from Oak Park began an experiment in 2009: trying to buy things only from African American-owned businesses. How difficult was it for the family to buy black for an entire year? Maggie Anderson is here to tell us on Chicago Tonight at 7:00 pm.
Read an excerpt from Maggie Anderson's Our Black Year below:
It all started with dinner.
In 2004 my husband, John, and I were celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary. That night we were the only Black people at Tru, a five-star restaurant in Chicago’s ultra-exclusive Gold Coast neighborhood. Instead of enjoying the romance of the moment, though, I ruined it by bringing up the discouraging status of Blacks in America. Although we moved on to other topics, they all seemed to lead us back to how fortunate we were and how we should be doing more to help improve the situation—The Black Situation.
John, a highly educated financial planner, talked about how too few Blacks own businesses, and this has led directly to forlorn neighborhoods and a general hopelessness that ultimately results in crime, violence, drug
abuse, lousy academic performance in miserable schools, teen pregnancy, and shattered families. Eliminate economic disparity and you start to make structural progress on all these intractable problems.
Don’t get me wrong. Black people have made great progress in America. We fought for and achieved integration in housing and education, the right to vote, and equal employment opportunities. When we came together to elect the nation’s first Black president, it sparked an awareness of our power. And yet there is no awesome American success story like that of Wal-Mart, Penney’s, Hilton, Hershey, Sears, or McDonald’s coming from a Black family because there is nothing in our culture, history, or experience that tells us we can do it. And it won’t happen until we have a sense of pride in each other, like our Hispanic counterparts; until we believe in the possibility of intergenerational economic empowerment, like our Jewish friends; and until we make it our mission to become a successful group of entrepreneurs, like our Asian and Middle Eastern peers.
At the moment Blacks are a distant third to Asians and Hispanics in every measure of entrepreneurial progress, including success rates and revenue growth, even though just forty years ago we were first by a wide
margin. Our neighborhoods had those grocery stores, dry cleaners, department stores, drugstores, and banks—all owned by local entrepreneurs. Now so many of our neighborhoods are run down that everyone has come to accept this as the norm. Black kids can go their whole lives without ever encountering a Black business owner.
These communities are starving to death because the money Blacks earn and spend—nearly $1 trillion of buying power—flows right out of those neighborhoods. Maybe you’ve heard the jokes about it, jokes along the lines of “Man, he was running away from the cops faster than a Black dollar out of the community!”
Only those people directly affected by these circumstances seemed to care—not people like us.
Maggie Anderson / Credit: Randy FlingOkay, I thought. Maybe next time we’ll go to a Black-owned restaurant for our anniversary. But what would that accomplish, aside from pacifying our guilt?
Anyway, who has the time to figure this out? We had our own great lives to build. John worked his way up from a middle-class Detroit neighborhood to Harvard and then earned an MBA at Northwestern. I grew up in drug-infested Liberty City, Miami, one of the poorest, most violent neighborhoods in America, and made it to Emory University, followed by the University of Chicago for a law degree and an MBA. We had achieved great success in corporate America—John as a financial adviser, me as a strategy consultant—but we hadn’t completely lost our moral compasses.
John is active in 100 Black Men, a national mentoring organization that enhances the educational and economic empowerment of the Black community. I had been active in the Rainbow PUSH Coalition of religious and social development organizations led by Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. We were mentoring youth at our church, and we donated to the NAACP and the United Negro College Fund.
And, along with a lot of successful Blacks—especially those born in the mid-1970s and later, after the most explosive battles for civil rights had settled into a more nuanced tug-of-war or been ignored altogether— we had developed a dangerous sense of gratification, even entitlement, which is an awful state of mind. It renders you idle and robs you of the passion to make a difference. We’d played our part in allowing the Black community to be reduced to a massive consumer segment that every other group taps for their own benefit.
Black people say stuff like, “It’s a shame how Black people think the White man’s ice is colder.” Then we get upset about how other groups— Italians, Jews, Arabs, Greeks, Asians, Hispanics—have, in effect, exploited the phenomenon. It’s a staple of Black talk radio. Tune in and chances are you’ll hear an angry exchange about how the Koreans took over the Black hair industry; or how so many major cosmetic, hair care, and toy companies have started Black product lines (Hallmark’s Mahogany cards, Dove’s “My Black is Beautiful” skin care, Mattel’s Black Barbie) that millions of us support while quality, Black-owned firms like Carol’s Daughter, Fashion Fair, and Kwanzaa Kidz struggle to stay alive; or how most poor, urban Blacks go years without seeing other races face to face, except for the shopkeepers and business owners who are draining money from Black neighborhoods. It’s called the Middle Man Minority issue.
Black filmmakers who depict life in the ’hood, like Spike Lee and John Singleton, always show it. The famous “D motherfucka’, D!” scene in Do the Right Thing is a great example. Remember when the kid walks
into a convenience store and engages in a hate-filled exchange with the two Asian owners over batteries? That scene—and the entire movie, really— was about the frustration Blacks endure because we don’t own businesses in our communities. Not one Black business owner was depicted in a movie about a Black neighborhood. There were Hispanic-owned businesses, the Italian pizza joint, and the Asian convenience store. And there was racial tension that emerged because of it.
The film was highly acclaimed and provoked some great dialogue about race relations, but nobody mentioned the core issue: economics. No one talked about money leaving the community—a phenomenon called “leakage”—and that it’s a critical reason why these communities are so battered.
A map of black-owned businesses in Chicago. The yellow triangle is Anderson's house. Then there are popular Black comedies, such as Friday, Booty Call, and Barber Shop. Many scenes unfold in the convenience stores and beauty supply stores owned by Koreans and Indians. That fact barely registers with Blacks because it’s part of our everyday experience that we’ve come to accept. In fact, a dollar circulates among banks, shopkeepers, and other businesses for nearly a month in Asian American communities before that money flows out of the neighborhood. In Jewish communities that neighborhood circulation is roughly twenty days, and in predominantly White Anglo-Saxon Protestant communities it is seventeen days. Want to know what it is in African American neighborhoods? Six hours.
Here are a few more disturbing numbers:
—Less than two cents of every dollar an African American spends in this country goes to Black-owned businesses.
—More than 11 percent of Whites and Asians own their own businesses, compared to only 7.5 percent of Latinos and 5.1 percent of Blacks.
—White-owned firms have average annual sales of $439,579. Blackowned firms? $74,018.
—In 1997 African Americans represented 13 percent of the population but owned only 3 percent of all US businesses, which generated 2 percent of the nation’s business revenues.
The scenario is particularly galling when you consider that Blacks generally spend more on groceries, footwear, clothing, and shoes than the overall population and that Black teens in particular spend 20 percent more a month than the average US teen, especially on the categories of apparel, video game hardware, and PC software.
John and I came across statistics like this all the time. And just like us, lots of Black folks would wring their hands about it. But at the dozens of meetings we attended—including national conferences for organizations like the National Black MBA Association, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, 100 Black Men, the NAACP, and National Urban League—no one was doing anything about it. Maybe, I thought, these problems were just unmanageable. Mainstream media only mentioned the dearth of Black business owners in passing. Universities seemed too bogged down or maybe frightened to offend benefactors; taking a stand was perhaps too dangerous, too militant.
John and I discussed these issues while we debated spending $60 for a celebratory lobster. But the irony wasn’t lost on us. At the end of our meal, as we paid our $250 dinner bill, we realized we were part of the problem. That money could have done at least a little good in a struggling Black community. Maybe it could have helped a Black entrepreneur employ more people, mentor more children, and serve as a source of pride in his neighborhood. Maybe it could have contributed to the tax base and helped to improve underfunded schools or served to defray the cost of an at-risk youth program, the kind that helps discourage drug use and teen pregnancy and reduces the number of Black men in prison. We realized something else, too, that so many others know deep in their hearts: Good intentions and spirited conversations won’t cut it. We had to act, and that action had to be distinctive, creative, and influential—something that would resonate with people who were feeling equally frustrated. We wanted to inspire, unite. We wanted to change things—or at least try.
Excerpted from Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy by Maggie Anderson with Ted Gregory Copyright © 2012 Excerpted by permission of the author. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Related Links:
Chicago Tribune article on Anderson's decision to "buy black"
Chicago Tonight story on Anderson's experiment, from 2009
University of Chicago Magazine article on Anderson, after the experiment ended
More on Anderson's Empowerment Experiment
More on Our Black Year
QUOTE:
interesting read. Readers will learn more than than they will ever want to know about what goes on when you exhume a body that's been in the ground for decades
And the other stories that Gregory takes about are all interesting to read about.
September 28, 2017
Mary Jane's Ghost by Ted Gregory
Mary Jane's Ghost: The Legacy of a Murder In Small Town America by Ted Gregory
Published October 2017 by University of Iowa Press
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Publisher's Summary:
Summer 1948. In the scenic, remote river town of Oregon, Illinois, a young couple visiting the local lovers’ lane is murdered. The shocking crime garners headlines from Portland, Maine, to Long Beach, California. But after a sweeping manhunt, no one is arrested and the violent deaths of Mary Jane Reed and Stanley Skridla fade into time’s indifference.
Fast forward fifty years. Eccentric entrepreneur Michael Arians moves to Oregon, opens a roadhouse, gets elected mayor, and becomes obsessed with the crime. He comes up with a scandalous conspiracy theory and starts to believe that Mary Jane’s ghost is haunting his establishment. He also reaches out to the Chicago Tribune for help.
Arians’s letter falls on the desk of general assignment reporter Ted Gregory. For the next thirteen years, while he ricochets from story to story and his newspaper is deconstructed around him, Gregory remains beguiled by the case of the teenaged telephone operator Mary Jane and twenty-eight-year-old Navy vet Stanley—and equally fascinated by Arians’s seemingly hopeless pursuit of whoever murdered them.
My Thoughts:
Murder, obsession, a cover-up - just the kind of book that I used to love to read 30 years ago. I'm thinking Joseph Wambaugh, Vincent Bugliosi. I couldn't wait to get started on this one. Unfortunately, Gregory failed to deliver the kind of gripping story I was expecting.
That may be partly my own fault and false expectations. I wanted more about the lives of Mary Jane Reed and Stanley Skridla; it would have made the solving of their murders as imperative to me as it was to Mike Arians and Ted Gregory. But the book is titled Mary Jane's Ghost for a reason and the reason is not, entirely, a supernatural one (although Arians spends decades convinced that Mary Jane's ghost does haunt the restaurant he owns). Rather, the book is about the way that Mary Jane's murder haunts these men, particularly Arians who spent more than $100,000 trying to solve the murders, agitates officials for decades, and gains a reputation as being a little bit crazy amongst the townspeople.
If Gregory had stuck to that story, even, I think it would have been one that kept my attention. But by the time he came into the picture, and so many years after the murders, there were few people to interview and not a lot of evidence to examine. Perhaps there just wasn't enough to write a whole book about. So Gregory puts himself, and the stories he was writing for the Chicago Tribune during the more than a decade that he was involved with Arians, into the book. It begins to feel like a book about Ted Gregory and the stories he wrote for more than a decade, that happened to include, over and over again, the murders of Reed and Skridla and Arians quest to solve them.
It's not that Gregory doesn't have an interesting story; he does. He was, after all, at one of the countries most respected newspapers at the time of the Great Recession and at the time that print media relinquished its reign at the source of hard-hitting news. It's a story worth telling; it just wasn't the story I was expecting.
Still, at just over 200 pages, it's an interesting read. Readers will learn more than than they will ever want to know about what goes on when you exhume a body that's been in the ground for decades (hint: you'll be glad this is a book and not a documentary). And the other stories that Gregory takes about are all interesting to read about. I just wish there were more about Reed, perhaps pictures, so that I might have understood better how Arians became so obsessed by a girl who died years before he came to Oregon, Illinois.