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| 1947 - Syndicated columnist Bob Greene will do almost anything to find a human-interest story. When he wanted to write a book about life on the road for the rock band Alice Cooper, Greene volunteered to take a performing role in their show. Each night he dressed up in a Santa Claus suit and allowed the band members to beat him up on stage. In his book "Billion Dollar Baby," Greene revealed that the offstage existence of Alice Cooper was far less outlandish than their performances. Greene still goes on the road, but now he is a celebrity in his own right. He was a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1971 to 1978, when he switched to the Tribune. Though he has been a fixture of Chicago newspapers for nearly thirty years, he says he identifies with the Midwest in general more than Chicago. He was born in Columbus, Ohio, and attended Northwestern University. Greene seems to excite a great depth of feeling from the public; long one of Chicago's most popular columnists, he has also been critically reviled for his turgid prose and syrupy sentimentality. The local alternative weekly even runs an occasional column, "Bob Watch: We Read Him So You Don't Have To," dedicated to excoriating the columnist. In "Billion Dollar Baby" and "Running: A Nixon-McGovern Campaign Journal," Greene has published several compilations of his Tribune and Sun-Times columns, but his best-sellers have been in a different genre. Greene has twice published selections from his own diaries, first in 1984 to celebrate the birth of his daughter, and then in 1987, when he discovered his high school journal among some old papers. Readers welcomed the chance to get to know more about Greene's private life, since he rarely writes about himself in his columns. Selected Works:
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