Arts & Culture

Set during Prohibition, Live by Night is Dennis Lehane's fast-paced chronicle of Joe Coughlin, son of a corrupt Boston police superintendent and self-described outlaw. The book follows Joe from his days as a small-time gangster in Boston through a hitch in prison, where he earns the friendship of an Italian mobster.

The best memoirs transcend the strictly personal. New York Times columnist Alex Witchel's book All Gone, about one of the hottest topics among baby boomers — caring for our aging parents — comes across as boomerish in a bad way: self-absorbed and immature, as if she's the first to suffer this sort of stress and loss.

The print newspaper industry may be struggling, but newsprint is alive and well on the walls of a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The show is called "Shock of the News" — and it examines a century's worth of interaction between artists and the journals of their day.

We've all encountered loose change, loose teeth, and certainly loose-fitting pants, but only a lucky few of us have encountered the Loose Meat Sandwich. It's an Iowa classic that's basically like a hamburger, except the patty doesn't hold together at all. We picked up a couple from Maid-Rite here in Chicago.

Mike: The meat pebbles make it so much easier to fatten up those hard to reach parts of the body.

Leah: I think you have to have baleen to eat this properly.