What Makes a Master Teacher? (in Tyee Books)

Geniuses like Yo Yo Ma and their mentors are profiled in 'Talent Abounds.' For the rest of us sloggers, are there lessons?

Leave summer behind with tour of autumn foliage

I love summer as much as the next guy, but I also like the changing of the seasons. And after a string of muggy days in the 90s, I'm ready for crisp fall temperatures, football and brilliant autumn leaves. The Midwest has plenty of good places to go leaf-peeping. Here are a few worthy fall color drives, starting in the north -- where the leaves first turn red, orange, bronze and gold -- and ...

Revived Indiana resorts mirror their gilded pasts

BETSA MARSH/Special Contributor The 200-foot dome is prominent from a back view of West Baden Springs Hotel.Bitter rivals for so long, French Lick and West Baden Springs in the Hoosier countryside now thrive as sister resorts, yoked in a mammoth historic-preservation project. It took $500 million to restore French Lick to grandeur and bring West Baden back from ruin.

Brookston is more than windmills

The countryside surrounding Brookston, Ind., offers little topographical variety. It is flat enough to have been steam-pressed and ironed and if you don't pay attention, it would be easy to be lulled into a stupor by the repetitive landscape. It is flat, but green and fecund, with fields of corn and soybeans alternating with woods and pastures, a paradise for farmers and John Deere salesmen ...

German businessman 'John Rabe' stands up to Japanese army

A German businessman helps save 250,000 lives during Japan's 1937 invasion of China in the inspiring drama "John Rabe," arriving Sept. 7 on DVD.