By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Tribune We now live in the seventh decade of rock 'n' roll, and it has never felt more irrelevant, if such a thing can be gauged by contemporary radio playlists now dominated by slick rappers and aerobicized dance divas. Even terrestrial [...]

MARK GUARINO | Chicago Tribune To his fans, rock musician Jack White is the guy who just broke the record for having the biggest-selling vinyl record of the last 20 years. The success of his latest album, "Lazaretto," which just beat out Pearl Jam's "Vitalogy" as [...]

BY MARK GUARINO | CHICAGO TRIBUNE Netflix night with Harper Lee sounds like a late-night comedy sketch, as does an afternoon at the laundromat, or even a quick stop at McDonald's with the famously reclusive author of "To Kill a Mockingbird." Yet these scenarios represent just [...]

Hastings' debut novel is a trenchant satire of new and old media BY MARK GUARINO | THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE The terrorism of 9/11, the subsequent invasion of Iraq, and the long and elusive "War on Terror" not only created seismic shifts in the economy and foreign [...]

BY MARK GUARINO | THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE File under irony: Earlier this month Politico reported that former National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander is launching a consulting firm to help corporations firm up their cybersecurity to protect them from surveillance or other outside threats. To [...]

An eight-hour concert inspired by the Hermann Hesse novel? Yes. You gotta problem with that? BY MARK GUARINO | THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE "Play normal music!" The woman yelling this at Neil Young stood three rows away from him at the Rosemont Theater in 2004. Between each [...]

BY MARK GUARINO | THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE Once or twice a year I'm invited to talk with a classroom of university students about my career. Afterward the students pepper me with questions related, naturally, to their future: How do I find work once I graduate? How [...]

By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Tribune March 21, 2014 "The Rise," unlike a lot of inspirational fare meant to help readers love themselves, pursue their dreams and follow their angels, says that failure is a perfectly fine option, even preferable. Sarah Lewis, an Ivy League-trained art [...]

Hornby's collection feels like so much loyal tribute-paying to his personal coterie of hipster swells By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Tribune February 21, 2014 A writer writing about reading writers for readers invested in reading about writing. Got that? If so, this thick volume of Nick [...]

By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Tribune 1:09 p.m. CST, January 24, 2014 The stories of aging rock stars are now old and familiar. But what about aging elitist rock snobs? Take Jimmy Rabbitte. Bored with his job, he huddles around the kitchen table with his wife [...]