PAST LISTS
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
B – Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
The Prairie Does Flourish: Sisters of St. Elizabeth: 100 Years of Blooming on Canadian Soil by Joan Eyolfson Cadham
Sisters Augustina, Philomena and Gabriela departed from Klagenfurt, Austria and arrived in Muenster on May 14, 1911, after travelling by sea and train for two weeks. They looked around and saw nothing--the prairie seemed barren--and not a soul was there to meet them. The Sisters of St. Elizabeth not only transplanted their European roots deep into prairie soil, but much like the prairie wildflowers they have flourished against all odds, laying vital foundations in health and home care, education, and elder care.
The Prairie Does Flourish, written for the sisters by Joan Eyolfson Cadham, offers the story of their 100 years among us.
BX 4355.5 Z9 H85 2011
D – History.General and Old World
Tibet Unconquered: An Epic Struggle for Freedom by Diane Wolff
A fabled country in the far reaches of the Himalayas, Tibet looms large in the popular imagination. The original home of the Dalai Lama, one of the great spiritual leaders of our time, Tibetan Buddhism inspires millions worldwide with the twin values of wisdom and compassion. Yet the Chinese takeover six decades ago also shows another side of Tibet—that of a passionate symbol of freedom in the face of political oppression.
As the Dalai Lama grows older, and the Chinese threaten to intervene in the selection of Tibet’s next spiritual leader, many wonder if there is any hope for the Tibetan way of life, or if it is doomed to become a casualty of globalization.
In Tibet Unconquered East Asia expert Diane Wolff explores the status of Tibet over eight hundred years of history. Wolff creates a forward-thinking blueprint for resolving the China and Tibet problem, grounded in the history of the region and the reality of today’s political environment that will guide both countries to peace.
DS 740.5 T5 W65 2010
FC – History. Canada
The Wild Ride: A History of the North West Mounted Police 1873-1904 by Charles Wilkins
The Wild Ride is a brilliantly illustrated history of the Canadian west and the North West Mounted Police – from the throes of Confederation and the Red River Rebellion, through the founding of the Mounties in 1873, to the arrival of the railway in western Canada and the heroics of the Klondike Gold Rush; all of it played out on a vast, barely knowable landscape as hostile as any on earth, and every bit as alluring.
The Wild Ride draws on the letters, diaries and memoirs of those who lived this epic period of Canadian history, bringing their story vividly to life with a captivating collection of photos, drawings and maps.
FC 3216.2 .W55 2010
H – Social Sciences
The Facebook Effect: the Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick
In little more than five years, Facebook has gone from a dorm-room novelty to a company with 500 million users. It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life not only of teenagers but hundreds of millions of adults worldwide. As Facebook spreads around the globe, it creates surprising effects—even becoming instrumental in political protests from Colombia to Iran.
Veteran technology reporter David Kirkpatrick had the full cooperation of Facebook's key executives in researching this fascinating history of the company and its impact on our lives. Kirkpatrick tells us how Facebook was created, why it has flourished, and where it is going next. He chronicles its successes and missteps, and gives readers the most complete assessment anywhere of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the central figure in the company's remarkable ascent.
How did a nineteen-year-old Harvard student create a company that has transformed the Internet and how did he grow it to its current enormous size? Kirkpatrick shows how Zuckerberg steadfastly refused to compromise his vision, insistently focusing on growth over profits and preaching that Facebook must dominate (his word) communication on the Internet. In the process, he and a small group of key executives have created a company that has changed social life in the United States and elsewhere, a company that has become a ubiquitous presence in marketing, altering politics, business, and even our sense of our own identity.
HD 9696.8 .U64 F3335 2010
The War in the Country by Thomas F. Pawlick
The War in the Country is an award-winning writer’s provocative look at rural communities and a passionate call to arms to save them.
Rural life in North America has changed dramatically over the past fifty years. The few remaining family farms now struggle to survive. They have been replaced by corporate-backed factory farms, mining interests, and large-scale tourism developments, all favoured by governments with little understanding of or sympathy for traditional rural life—a life that is sustainable and healthy.
Pawlick, himself a farmer, uses the microcosm of his own rural community in eastern Ontario to portray the groups involved around the world who are waging a war to save their rural way of life. The outcome of these clashes will decide not only the future of rural life globally but also the quality and sustainability of our food, our water, our soil, and our air—of the environment on which we depend for survival. The War in the Country argues that every one of us must join the fight to secure our food future.
HT 421 .P39 2009
On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver’s Missing Women by Steve Cameron
In On the Farm, you will read of William Pickton’s early years and the investigation that turned out to be the biggest, longest and most expensive ever conducted in Canada.
On the Farm delivers a fascinating account of the life of a serial killer, the women he murdered, and the many people who worked day and night for years to solve the crimes.
HV 6535 .C33 P639 2010
L – Education
Campus Confidential: 100 Startling Things You Don't Know About Canadian Universities by Ken S. Coates and Bill Morrison
Our universities represent the very best in our society. They are the wellsprings of new ideas, the incubators of new companies, the centres of culture, the training ground for the leaders of tomorrow, and the meeting place for brilliant young minds and accomplished mentors.
Or at least, that's how it's supposed to be. The truth is, our universities are floundering, and as a result they are coming under attack from all sides -- from government, students, parents, and faculty. To respond to these challenges, the first step is to face the uncomfortable facts about universities today.
That's what insiders Kenneth Coates and William Morrison do in this short book. If we can get past the myths and dreams to come to terms with universities as they actually are, we can start a real debate about what they should be doing.
LB2329.8 .C2 C63 2011
N – Fine Arts
M.C. Escher by Sandra Forty
Maurits Cornelis Escher was a truly unique artist whose vision was quite unlike anyone else's. To enter his world is to set foot into unknown and unsettling territory. His extraordinary pictures of logic and perspective fool the brain into believing the impossible - that staircases can climb forever, that fish can morph into birds, and that water can run uphill.
Escher was a stunning graphic illustrator, especially of landscape and architecture - and in particular of Italian hilltop towns. But it is his world of strange perspectives and distorted vision for which he will be best remembered. The fact that he was able to produce these visual conundrums again and again delighted and mystified his public, many of whom were mathematicians. Remarkably, Escher had no mathematical training, but through his superb draughtsmanship he explored the furthest reaches of crystallography and defied the laws of reason and perception.
NE 670 .E75 F678 2011
P – Language and Literature
Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
The first volume in Martin's fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, combines intrigue, action, romance, and mystery in a family saga. Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers, sorcerers, and assassins who come together in a time of grim omens.
Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavours to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.
PS 3563 .A7239 G36 2011
PS 8000 – Canadian Literature
Motorcycles & Sweetgrass by Brew Hayden Taylor
In Ojibway mythology, Nanabush is a mischievous trickster, shape shifter, and culture hero. Journalist, playwright, and author Drew Hayden Taylor uses this figure, and his manic spirit, as inspiration in his first novel for adults.
John, a mysterious white man, comes into town riding a vintage Indian Chief motorcycle. Taylor uses John’s presence on the reservation to explore the political, religious, and cultural challenges facing the residents as they struggle to reconcile their Ojibway beliefs and traditions with broader Canadian culture and its modern conveniences. Conflict – both physical and philosophical – and compromise are themes running throughout the book. Beneath the playful and light-hearted humour are complex emotions and thoughtful analyses of difficult subjects.
As Maggie, Virgil, and the rest of Otter Lake deal with the white interloper, Taylor brings a modern twist to ancient native folklore. Motorcycles and Sweetgrass is a charming story about the importance of balance and belief – and a little bit of magic – in everyone’s life.
PS 8589 .A885 M68 2010
Q – Science
Extreme Weather: Understanding the Science of Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Floods, Heat Waves, Snow Storms, Global Warming, and Other Atmospheric Disturbances by H. Michael Mogil
Category 5 hurricanes, deadly tsunamis, record-high winds; now more than ever it seems that "extreme weather" has become a reality and a concern throughout the world—and in our own backyard. While these natural events are frightening, few of us really understand what causes them—and we're left to wonder how and where disaster might strike next, what we can do to protect ourselves, and whether such things can be prevented.
Extreme Weather answers these questions and many more in a thorough, scientific, yet absolutely clear and easy-to-understand manner. Along with numerous color photos and illustrations, each weather phenomenon is accompanied by comprehensive visual aids that make learning about the subject as easy as it is fun. Organized by weather-related events including hurricanes, winter storms, lightning, tsunamis, tornadoes, floods, and heat waves, the book explores weather patterns and other factors that contribute to extreme climate conditions. It offers an unprecedented, comprehensive picture of where our weather is headed tomorrow and in the future.
QC 981 .M645 2007
S – Agriculture
A Century of Parks Canada 1911-2011 by Claire Elizabeth Campbell
When Canada created a Dominion Parks Branch in 1911, it became the first country in the world to establish an agency devoted to managing its national parks. Over the past century this agency, now Parks Canada, has been at the center of important debates about the place of nature in Canadian nationhood and relationships between Canada’s diverse ecosystems and its communities.
These fourteen essays trace how the agency has designed, managed, and promoted national parks in response to public demand, political strategy, scientific debate, and environmental concern.
SB 484 .C2 C45 2011
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
D – History.General and Old World
Conversations with Myself by Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela has written almost every day of his long life (he's now 93 years old): notebooks, jottings, drafts of letters to heads of state; and perhaps most movingly of all, letters from his long imprisonment on Robben Island, most of which, tragically, were never passed on to their recipients.
Conversations with Myself is a very personal book—a book of private thoughts and lessons learned; but the sense of hope and gentle wisdom that shines from these letters and diaries make this a book for everyone—a chance to share Mandela's recollections of a long life, fully lived.
DT 197 .A3 2010
H – Social Sciences
You are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier, a Silicon Valley visionary since the 1980s, was among the first to predict the revolutionary changes the World Wide Web would bring to commerce and culture. Now, in his first book, written more than two decades after the web was created, Lanier offers this provocative and cautionary look at the way it is transforming our lives for better and for worse.
The current design and function of the web have become so familiar that it is easy to forget that they grew out of programming decisions made decades ago. The web’s first designers made crucial choices that have had enormous—and often unintended—consequences. What’s more, these designs quickly became “locked in,” a permanent part of the web’s very structure.
Lanier discusses the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design and warns that our financial markets and sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are elevating the “wisdom” of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and judgment of individuals.
Controversial and fascinating, You Are Not a Gadget is a deeply felt defence of the individual from an author uniquely qualified to comment on the way technology interacts with our culture.
HM 851 .L358 2010
L – Education
The Canadian Campus Companion by Erin Millar and Ben Coli
The Canadian Campus Companion contains essential information for all prospective students and parents. This book is a comprehensive and honest guide to the Canadian college and university experience, offering down-to-earth advice on everything from choosing your major to surviving residence, from acing exams to partying safely.
For most students, university is a first foray into adulthood and can be a time of great personal growth, but it is also a time of difficult decisions that will impact the rest of their lives.
LB 2343.34 .C3 M55 2011
P – Language and Literature
The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha
The Book of Awesome presents simple pleasures for a younger, hipper generation. From the smell of gasoline to fixing electronics by smacking them to the extra time you get when the clocks roll back, The Book of Awesome reminds readers of little things that make us smile every day.
Entries include: being the first table called up for the dinner buffet at a wedding, when cashiers open up new checkout lanes at the grocery store, sleeping in new bed sheets, waiters and waitresses who bring free refills without asking, and hundreds more.
Some entries are short and others expand into wonderfully funny and astutely observant essays.
PN 6231 .C6142 P37 2011
PS 8000 – Canadian Literature
Eastern Passage by Farley Mowat
Farley Mowat has courted a great deal of controversy over the years. Famously depicted as a Pinocchio-nosed liar on a 1996 Saturday Night magazine cover, Mowat has never been able to shake the accusation that he embellishes his stories. Despite this, Mowat has obstinately continued to pen straightforward books advocating better treatment of northern First Nations groups, conservation of Canadian wildlife, and more.
Mowat’s new book traces his development as an author, with frequent digressions on subjects such as home-building, family, and wildlife. Covering the episodes that shaped his particular worldview – from post-war research in the North to a sailing trip to Nova Scotia – the author takes direct aim at his critics by providing plentiful references to letters and other secondary sources to bolster his assertions.
In its overarching argument, Eastern Passage insists that progress-obsessed humans are destroying each other and the rest of the natural world. Mowat includes descriptions of traders abusing a sick native boy; beluga whales dying after the U.S. Air Force dropped a nuclear fission bomb into the St. Lawrence River; and a large boat nearly squashing Mowat’s own small vessel. The narrative employs fast-paced, clear prose that captures individual accents and personalities.
PS 8526 .O85 Z463 2010
Small Mechanics by Lorna Crozier
The poems in Lorna Crozier's rich and wide-ranging new collection, a modern bestiary and a book of mourning, are both shadowed and illuminated by the passing of time, the small mechanics of the body as it ages, the fine-tuning of what a life becomes when parents and old friends are gone.
Brilliantly poised between the mythic and the everyday, the anecdotal and the delicately lyrical, these poems contain the wit, irreverence, and startling imagery for which Crozier is justly celebrated. You’ll find Bach and Dostoevsky, a poem that turns into a dog, a religion founded by cats, and wood rats that dance on shingles.
These poems turn over the stones of words and find what lies beneath, reminding us why Lorna Crozier is one of Canada’s most well-read and commanding voices.
PS 8555 .R72 S53 2011
Midway by David Homel
For the last five years, Ben Allan has successfully kept dromomania — the peculiar male hysteria known as the mid-life crisis — at bay, even writing an award-winning essay on the subject.
But when his fifteen minutes of fame become a countdown to his fiftieth birthday, Ben begins to see his own life reflected in those he has written about. Goaded by his father and colleagues, Ben begins to question why his life has turned out the way it has and what exactly is stopping him from running away from everything he feels is holding him down.
PS8565 .O6505 M54 2010
Bits from the Boldt: a Collection of Poems and Images by Jeff Burton
Bits from the Boldt looks at the world through the eyes of a father of five (including a set of triplets) and a full time university student.
Jeff Burton, a native of Humboldt, took two and a half years of arts and science classes at St. Peter's College before moving on to the U of S campus to pursue a degree in Education.
PS 8605 .U754 B5 2009
Q – Science
Keeping the Bees by Laurence Packer
A world without bees would be much less colourful, with fewer plants and flowers. But that's not all -- food would be in much shorter supply, and available in much less variety. While the media focuses on colony-collapse disorder and the threats to honey bees specifically, the real danger is much greater: all bees are at risk. And because of the integral role these insects play in the ecology of our planet, we may be at risk as well.
The life of Laurence Packer, a melittologist at Toronto's York University, revolves around bees, whether he's searching for them under leaves in a South American jungle or identifying new species in the desert heat of Arizona. Everywhere he travels, he discovers the same unsettling trend: bees are disappearing. And since bees are responsible for up to one-third of our food supply, the consequences are frightening.
QL 563 .P33 2010
R – Medicine
Robert Latimer: A Story of Justice and Mercy by Gary Bauslaugh
In October 1993, Robert Latimer, a Saskatchewan farmer, decided to end the life of his chronically ill daughter rather than subject her to another painful surgery. Tracy, who had the mental capacity of a five-month-old infant, was twelve at the time of her death. She had already endured multiple operations to correct conditions caused by her severe cerebral palsy. Tracy's death and the charge of murder laid against Robert Latimer set in motion Canada's most famous and controversial case of "mercy killing." The case sparked a national debate about euthanasia and the rights of the severely disabled that continues today.
Author Gary Bauslaugh takes us back to the beginning of this case, describes its explosion on the national scene during two highly publicized trials, and looks at later conflicts surrounding Latimer's parole hearing.
Bauslaugh discusses the conflicting views of Latimer's sympathizers and detractors in chapters that explore the ethical dilemmas as well as the legal issues that this case has raised. As a reporter who has followed the case from its beginnings and interviewed Latimer multiple times during his imprisonment and subsequent parole, Bauslaugh's intimate knowledge of the personalities and facts of this difficult case allow him to write a revealing and informed book.
R 726 .B34 2010
The Emperor of all Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
In 2010, about six hundred thousand Americans, and more than 7 million humans around the world, will die of cancer." With this sobering statistic, physician and researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee begins his comprehensive and eloquent "biography" of one of the most virulent diseases of our time. An exhaustive account of cancer's origins, The Emperor of All Maladies illustrates how modern treatments--multi-pronged chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, as well as preventative care--came into existence thanks to a century's worth of research, trials, and small, essential breakthroughs around the globe.
While The Emperor of All Maladies is rich with the science and history behind the fight against cancer, it is also a meditation on illness, medical ethics, and the complex, intertwining lives of doctors and patients. Mukherjee's profound compassion--for cancer patients, their families, as well as the oncologists who, all too often, can offer little hope--makes this book a very human history of an elusive and complicated disease.
RC 275 .M87 2010
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Forst and Gail Steketee
Randy Frost and Gail Steketee were the first to study hoarding when they began their work a decade ago; they expected to find a few sufferers but ended up treating hundreds of patients and fielding thousands of calls from the families of others. Now they explore the compulsion through a series of compelling case studies.
With vivid portraits that show us the traits by which you can identify a hoarder--piles on sofas and beds that make the furniture useless, houses that can be navigated only by following small paths called goat trails, vast piles of paper that the hoarders "churn" but never discard, even collections of animals and garbage--Frost and Steketee explain the causes and outline the often ineffective treatments for the disorder. They also illuminate the pull that possessions exert on all of us. Whether we're savers, collectors, or compulsive cleaners, none of us is free of the impulses that drive hoarders to the extremes in which they live.
For the six million sufferers, their relatives and friends, and all the rest of us with complicated relationships to our things, Stuff answers the question of what happens when our stuff starts to own us.
RC 533 .F76 2011
SEPTEMBER 2011 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
B – Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
Bush Dweller: Essays in Memory of Father James Gray, OSB edited by Donald Ward
This is a collection of 21 reflections on the life of Father James, a monk of St. Peter’s Abbey in Muenster, Sask. who lived in a hermitage for 30 years. The isolation of his hermitage, named Maranatha, served to free Father James to better practice Benedictine hospitality in welcoming eekers who found their way through the bush and knocked on his door.
This work will be welcomed by those whose lives were directly touched by Father James, but its appeal reaches well beyond this circle.
BX4705 .G7325 2010
D – History.General and Old World
The Sleeping Buddha: the Story of Afghanistan Through the Eyes of One Family by Hamid Ghafour
This is the story of one family's past--and Afghanistan's search for a future. As Hamida is drawn deeper into her country's present, other members of her family come to life for us--her great-grandfather the Sufi mystic, her poetess grandmother who urged women to unveil, her great-uncle who wrote the first democratic constitution, her cousin Bahodine who paid for his views with his life. In her family's past she finds the story of Afghanistan itself.
She finds its future in people like the American beautician teaching women a new kind of independence and the archaeologist digging for his country's lost civilization--in the form of a giant Sleeping Buddha.
DS361 .G43 2007
G – Geography. Anthropology. Recreation
Speaking for Ourselves: Environmental Justice in Canada edited by Julian Agyeman, Peter Cole, Randolph Huluza-DeLay and Pat O’Riley
Speaking for Ourselves draws together scholars and activists--Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, established and new--who bring equity issues to the forefront by considering environmental justice from a variety of perspectives, including those of First Nations and women, to demonstrate new ways of working toward environmental sustainability and social justice.
GE 240 .C2 S64 2009
H – Social Sciences
Torn From Our Midst: Voices of Grief, Healing and Action From the Missing Indigenous Women Conference, 2008 edited by Brenda Anderson, Wendee Kubik and Mary Rucklos Hampton
Since 1980, more than 520 Aboriginal women have been reported missing or murdered in Canada. From 1993-2003, 370 women were murdered in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Mexico. Since 2001, more than 2,000 Guatemalan women and girls have been brutally murdered.
Responding to the profound tragedy inherent in these statistics, more than 300 women and men gathered in August 2008 at a conference entitled Missing Women: Decolonization, Third Wave Feminisms, and Indigenous People of Canada and Mexico.
Torn from Our Midst includes images and voices from the conference, together with additional reflections, both academic and personal, on the effects of violence and the possibilities for healing. The purpose of this volume is to raise awareness about missing and murdered women and to challenge communities to be courageous enough to look at the heart of this issue, to recognize the systems that allow such atrocities, and to seek justice and healing for all.
HV6250.4 .W65 T67 2010
N – Fine Arts
The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany {Begins Her life’s Work} at 72 By Molly Peacock
Mary Delany was seventy-two years old when she noticed a petal drop from a geranium. In a flash of inspiration, she picked up her scissors and cut out a paper replica of the petal, inventing the art of collage. It was the summer of 1772, in England. During the next ten years she completed nearly a thousand cut-paper botanicals (which she called mosaicks) so accurate that botanists still refer to them. Poet-biographer Molly Peacock uses close-ups of these brilliant collages in The Paper Garden to track the extraordinary life of Delany, friend of Swift, Handel, Hogarth, and even Queen Charlotte and King George III.
How did this remarkable role model for late blooming manage it? After a disastrous teenage marriage to a drunken sixty-one-year-old squire, she took control of her own life, pursuing creative projects, spurning suitors, and gaining friends. At forty-three, she married Jonathan Swift's friend Dr. Patrick Delany, and lived in Ireland in a true expression of midlife love. But after twenty-five years and a terrible lawsuit, her husband died. Sent into a netherland of mourning, Mrs. Delany was rescued by her friend, the fabulously wealthy Duchess of Portland. The Duchess introduced Delany to the botanical adventurers of the day and a bonanza of exotic plants from Captain Cook's voyage, which became the inspiration for her art.
N 6797 .D44 P43 2010
Defiant Spirits: the Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven by Ross King
From a young age, Canadians learn about our country’s most famous painting movement in art classes, yet the Group of Seven’s dramatic landscapes and blazing depictions of Canada’s wilderness still don’t seem to get the respect they deserve.
Ross King redresses this imbalance by situating the group of artists within a larger historical context. His compellingly detailed account begins in 1912, as the painters were just meeting, and continues through the Great War, culminating with the group’s eventual disbanding in the 1930s. The reader gets a glimpse into the lives of young men who were united by the desire to create a distinctly Canadian painting style at a time when critics, collectors, and the public were hostile toward the aspiring modernists.
The heady relationships among the men–from Thomson as MacDonald’s protégé to Harris as the group’s de facto leader–emerge throughout the book. By the time the group officially formed in 1920, their style was already outdated in Europe, but readers of this book will be reminded of their tremendous achievements, which provide a timeless reflection of our country’s magnificent landscape.
ND245.5 .G76 K55 2010
PS 8000 – Canadian Literature
Engendering Genre: the Works of Margaret Atwood by Reingard M. Nischik
In Engendering Genre, renowned Margaret Atwood scholar Reingard M. Nischik analyzes the relationship between gender and genre in Atwood’s works. She approaches Atwood’s oeuvre by genre – poetry, short fiction, novels, criticism, comics, and film – and examines them individually. She explores how Atwood has developed her genres to be gender-sensitive in both content and form and argues that gender and genre are inherently complicit in Atwood’s work: they converge to critique the gender-biased designs of traditional genres. This combination of gender and genre results in the recognizable Atwoodian style that shakes and extends the boundaries of conventional genres and explores them in new ways.
The book includes the first in-depth treatment of Atwood’s cartoon art as well as the first survey of her involvement with film, and concludes with an interview with Margaret Atwood on her career “From Survivalwoman to Literary Icon.”
PS8501 .T86 Z764
The Forest Horses by Byrna Barclay
The Forest Horses is a study in contrasts between two women, one an indomitable spirit living through a turbulent age and the other a troubled soul living in settled times.
On midsummer’s eve, 1941, Lena, keeper of the forest horses of Gotland, is kidnapped by a Russian poacher along with her herd, and taken to Leningrad just in time to endure the two-year German siege on that city during World War II. Interwoven with this story is the journey of Signe, daughter of the ice, who departs from Regina on midsummer's eve 2005 to make her first journey back to the land where she was born, to search out her beginnings, her people, and the possible meaning to be found for a life that has come to somehow mirror the harsh conditions of its beginning.
Byrna Barclay is the award-winning author of novels, short story collections and a playscript. The Forest Horses was the recipient of the John V. Hicks manuscript award.
PS8553 .A72 F67 2010
Light Lifting: Stories by Alexander MacLeod
The seven stories in Light Lifting each encompass a keenly observed, immersive world, and each carries the weight and impact of a novel.
MacLeod’s stories are shorn of sentimentality but drenched in an amorphous yearning, an omnipresent sense of loss and peril that seeps into even the happiest moments. “Good Kids,” about a family of four boys and their relationship with the boy who lived briefly in the rental house across the street, exemplifies a sense of sharp nostalgia. Their reminiscences are balanced with keen insight into the casual, almost inevitable brutality that even “good” kids are capable of.
Despite that underlying sense of sadness, the characters in Light Lifting aren’t adrift. They’re rooted firmly in the real world of work and family. In “Wonder About Parents,” a head-lice infestation serves as the springboard for the history of a relationship and a family, from a drunken dorm-room night to checking each other’s hair for nits, from fertility problems to a child in danger. It’s surprisingly suspenseful–the perilousness of life and love is laid out almost clinically–yet also deeply resonant.
Light Lifting was Globe and Mail Book of the Year, Quill & Quire Book of the Year and a 2010 Giller Prize Finalist.
PS8625 .L445 L54 2010
Girlwood by Jennifer Still
In Girlwood, Jennifer Still’s second collection, her poems come of age. She produces a rich and innovative collection that invokes the ghosts of girlhood past and the movement from childhood to adolescence and adulthood, and how the mother-daughter relationship informs these transitions.
PS8637 .T54 G57 2010
T – Technology
Storms of Controversy: The Secret Avro Arrow Files Revealed by Palmiro Campagna
The development of the Avro Arrow was a remarkable Canadian achievement. Its mysterious cancellation in February 1959 prompted questions that have long gone unanswered. What role did the Central Intelligence Agency play in the scrapping of the project? Who in Canada's government was involved in that decision? What, if anything, did Canada get in return? Who ordered the blowtorching of all the prototypes? And did Arrow technology find its way into the American Stealth fighter/bomber program?
When Storms of Controversy was first published in 1992, its answers to these questions sent a shock wave across the country. Using never-before-released documents, the book exploded the myth that design flaws, cost overruns, or obsolescence had triggered the demise of the Arrow.
Now, in this fully revised fourth edition, complete with two new appendices, the bestselling book brings readers up-to-date on the CF-105 Arrow, the most innovative, sophisticated aircraft the world had seen by the end of the 1950s.
TL 686.3 .C259 2010
U – Military Science
They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: the Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers by Romeo Dallaire
Roméo Dallaire came to global attention for his efforts to stop the Rwandan genocide while serving with the U.N. He also received enormous praise for his book on the subject, Shake Hands with the Devil, which won a 2004 Governor General’s Literary Award. Since retiring from the military a decade ago, Dallaire’s chief mission in life has been the fight to eradicate the use of child soldiers, a practice he first encountered in Rwanda.
Dallaire portrays the making, training, and deployment of child soldiers in detail that is often painful to read. He enumerates the many reasons why children have become the weapons of choice in conflicts around the world, both by governments and criminal enterprises such as the drug trade. The worldwide proliferation of light weapons is partly to blame, as is the sheer plenitude of available recruits: overpopulation has made children a virtually limitless, self-renewing resource. Children are used as combatants, bait, cannon fodder, and even sex slaves. They are cheap to employ and easily replaced.
Dallaire is determined to make a tangible impact on a problem that affects more than 25 million children around the globe.
With his tremendous compassion, tenacity, and crusading spirit, Dallaire has earned the public’s respect and admiration in a way few Canadian public figures ever have. Given the heaviness of its subject, many will choose not to read this book. Yet the world ignored Dallaire once before, with terrible consequences. This time he deserves our full attention.
UB416 .D36 2010
APRIL 2011 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
D – History (General)
On the Road to Kandahar: Travels Through Conflict in the Islamic World by Jason Burke
Through his own personal journey from a college student fighting alongside Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq in 1991 to a seasoned reporter covering conflicts from the Sahara to the Himalayas, British journalist Burke explores the complexities of the region and its culture, politics, and religion, which are often boiled down to anti-West terrorism and radicalism.
Deriding the notion of Islamic culture as monolithic, Burke draws on interviews with government ministers, mujahedeen, and refugees fleeing the violence to offer a portrait of the place of Islam in Middle Eastern politics and conflicts. Burke examines how Islam is used by some to radicalize and mobilize militants, and the propaganda fomented by the West and Islamic nations, including how the U.S. switched from denying Sadam Hussein's human-rights violations to suddenly discovering evidence and using it as justification for going to war against Iraq.
As a journalist, he concedes his own culpability in the misunderstandings about the "Islamic world" as he details the evolving struggle to define and explain what is happening between the West and the Middle East.
DS 63.1 .B87 2006
E – History (Americas)
When the Other is Me: Native Resistance Discourse 1850-1990 by Emma LaRoque
LaRocque presents a powerful interdisciplinary study of the Native literary response to racist writing in the Canadian historical and literary record from 1850 to 1990.
In When the Other Is Me, LaRocque brings a metacritical approach to Native writing, situating it as resistance literature within and outside the post-colonial intellectual context. She outlines the overwhelming evidence of dehumanization in Canadian historical and literary writing, its effects on both popular culture and Canadian intellectual development, and Native and non-Native intellectual responses to it in light of the interlayered mix of romanticism, exaggeration of Native "difference," and the continuing problem of internalization that challenges our understanding of the colonizer/colonized relationship.
E78 .C2 L3733 2010
FC – History (Canada)
Death or Victory: The Battle of Quebec and the Birth of an Empire by Dan Snow
Perched on top of a tall promontory, surrounded on three sides by the treacherous St Lawrence River, Quebec--in 1759 France's capital city in Canada--forms an almost impregnable natural fortress. That year, with the Seven Years War raging around the globe, a force of 49 ships and nearly 9,000 men commanded by General James Wolfe, navigated the river, scaled the cliffs and laid siege to the town in an audacious attempt to expel the French from North America for ever.
In this book which ties in to the 250th anniversary of the battle, Dan Snow tells the story of this famous campaign which was to have far-reaching consequences for Britain's rise to global hegemony, and the world at large. Snow sets the battle within its global context and tells a gripping tale of brutal war quite unlike those fought in Europe, where terrain, weather and native Indian tribes were as fearsome as any enemy.
Based on original research, and told from all perspectives, this is history--military, political, human--on an epic scale.
FC 386 .S66 2010
G – Geography. Anthropology. Recreation
Resolute: the Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen’s Ghost Ship by martin W. Sandler
When Captain John Buddington of New London, Conn., set out on a whaling expedition in September 1855, he discovered the HMS Resolute, a British navy ship without a soul on board. How the Resolute made it from its British home port to Arctic Sea whaling territory to a central place in the White House's Oval Office makes up the core of this gripping historical adventure.
Pulitzer nominee Sandler creates a taut, absorbing story and a multi-faceted portrait of heroism that encompasses the overwhelming missteps, hardships and almost irrational tenacity that sprung from British naval secretary John Barrow's decision that Britain would discover the fabled Northwest Passage around the new world-a task he believed would take no longer than "a single season." That decision would be followed by 40 years of failed search-and-rescue missions-of which the Resolute was just one-after the initial 1845 voyage, led by Captain John Franklin, disappeared.
The discovery of the Resolute represented both a vital clue in Franklin's disappearance and a haunting symbol of its nation's inexhaustible determination to make navigating the passage a uniquely British triumph. Sandler eloquently illustrates how the expedition became a new quest for the Holy Grail and provides an adventure story worthy of that tradition.
G660 .S26 2006
The Legacy: an Elder’s Vision for Our Sustainable Future by David Suzuki
In this expanded version of an inspiring speech delivered in December 2009, David Suzuki reflects on how we got where we are today and presents his vision for a better future. In his living memory, Suzuki has witnessed cataclysmic changes in society and our relationship with the planet: the doubling of the world’s population, our increased ecological footprint, and massive technological growth. Today we are in a state of crisis, and we must join together to respond to that crisis. If we do so, Suzuki envisions a future in which we understand that we are the Earth and live accordingly. All it takes is imagination and a determination to live within our, and the planet's, means.
This book is the culmination of David Suzuki’s amazing life and all of his knowledge, experience, and passion—it is his legacy.
GF 75 .S99 2010
N – Fine Arts
Encounters With God: In Quest of the Ancient Icons of Mary by Sister Wendy Beckett
In this story of discovery and spiritual adventure, Sister Wendy Beckett, a contemplative nun and beloved art commentator, travels from England, to Rome, to Ukraine, and finally to a remote monastery in Sinai, to view the earliest icons of Mary. These are among the few that survived the wholesale destruction of icons in the early eighth century. In contrast with the familiar and magnificent icons of later history, these early icons have a haunting simplicity and unfamiliar spiritual power.
In the course of her pilgrimage, Sister Wendy also reviews the history of Christian art, the meaning and function of icons, and shares her thoughts on the relation between beauty, prayer, and the search for God.
N8189.3 .M35 B43 2009
PS 8000 – Canadian Literature
The Nestling Dolls by Gail Bowen
Canadian author Bowen's 12th Joanne Kilbourn mystery (after 2008's The Brutal Heart) focuses largely on the rich family life of the Regina, Saskatchewan, academic who gets involved in a convoluted custody case and murder. At a pre-Christmas concert, a troubled young woman hands a baby boy to teenage Isobel Wainberg with a message for Isobel's mother, Delia, who's a friend and law partner of Joanne's husband, Zach Shreve. The young woman turns out to be Abby Michaels, who says she's Delia's daughter.
When Abby is murdered, her death adds to the confusion and consternation over the fate of her six-month-old son, Jacob. Questions of parentage and custody cloud the murder investigation, while Zack's health presents still more difficulties.
PS 8553 .O9995 N47 2010
Sanctuary Line by Jane Urquhart
Set in the present day on a farm at the shores of Lake Erie, Jane Urquhart's new novel weaves elements from the nineteenth-century past, in Ireland and Ontario, into a gradually unfolding contemporary story of events in the lives of the members of one family that come to alter their futures irrevocably.
There are ancestral lighthouse-keepers, seasonal Mexican workers; the migratory patterns and survival techniques of the Monarch butterfly; the tragedy of a young woman's death during a tour of duty in Afghanistan; three very different but equally powerful love stories. Jane Urquhart brings to vivid life the things of the past that make us who we are, and reveals the sometimes difficult path to understanding and forgiveness.
PS8591 .R68 S25 2010
Fauna by Alissa York
In her highly anticipated new novel, Scotiabank Giller Prize-nominated author Alissa York creates a contemporary human fable that taps into the great tenderness and drama at the heart of the animal world.
The wide ravine that bisects the city is home to countless species of urban wildlife, including human waifs and strays. When Edal Jones can't cope with the casual cruelty she encounters in her job as a federal wildlife officer, she finds herself drawn to a beacon of solace nestled in the valley under the unlikely banner of an auto-wrecker's yard. Guy Howell, the proprietor, offers sanctuary to animals and people alike.
But before love can bloom, the little community must come to terms with a different breed of lost soul—a young man whose brutal backwoods childhood is catching up with him, causing him to persecute the creatures that call the valley home.
PS 8597 .O46 F38 2010
Lyric Ecology: an Appreciation of the Work of Jan Zwicky edited by Mark Dickinson & Clare Goulet
Jan Zwicky is one of Canada's most innovative intellectual figures. As a poet, philosophy teacher, and violinist, Zwicky strives to give voice to the ecology of experience. Whether reflecting on music, history, poetry, or the nature of thought itself, her work opens the reader to nothing less than the possibility of a different way of being.
Despite receiving critical and academic praise culminating in nominations for two separate categories of the Governor General’s Literary Award--both in one year-- Zwicky's work remains mostly unknown. Lyric Ecology seeks to change this.
This collection of twenty-five meditations from various contributors comprises the first formal consideration of Zwicky's philosophy. It includes essays, poems, letters, reviews, and songs, all giving readers insight into her work, what it has achieved, and what makes it significant today.
PS 8599 .W53 Z64 2010
Q – Science
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the nature of reality? Why are the laws of nature so finely tuned as to allow for the existence of beings like ourselves? And, finally, is the apparent “grand design” of our universe evidence of a benevolent creator who set things in motion—or does science offer another explanation?
The most fundamental questions about the origins of the universe and of life itself, once the province of philosophy, now occupy the territory where scientists, philosophers, and theologians meet—if only to disagree.
In their new book, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow present the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe, in nontechnical language marked by both brilliance and simplicity.
A succinct, startling, and lavishly illustrated guide to discoveries that are altering our understanding and threatening some of our most cherished belief systems, The Grand Design is a book that will inform—and provoke—like no other.
QC20.5 .H379 2010
Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations by Eugene Linden
Environmental journalist Linden considers how adaptable human societies are to alterations in weather. He offers several examples of societies that drastically deteriorated, such as Greenland's Norse settlements in 1350, Central America's Mayan civilization around 950, modern Syria's Akkadian Empire circa 2200 B.C.E., as well as other casualties.
Traditional archaeology, Linden reports, has had to incorporate the very vibrant field of paleoclimatology, whose means for determining past climates (ice cores, ocean sediments, oxygen isotope ratios, etc.) Linden crisply summarizes. He also rescues scholars' debates from the esoteric by embedding them in research about contemporary climate and its major factors, such as solar energy, the earth's axial tilt and orbit, the drift of the continents, and the distribution of heat by the ocean and atmosphere.
Relatively restrained in tone, and consequently more persuasive by its sobriety, Linden's presentation of scientists' theories on historical climate change will provoke readers concerned about the implications of global warming for modern civilization.
QC 981.8 .C5 L567 2006
MARCH 2011 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
B – Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
We Want You to Know: Kids Talk About Bullying by Deborah Ellis
Through her association with a community anti-bullying campaign launched in Haldimand, Norfolk, and neighboring communities in Southern Ontario, children’s author Deborah Ellis asked students from the ages of nine to nineteen to talk about their experiences with bullying. The results are thoughtful, candid, and often harrowing accounts of “business as usual” in and around today’s schools.
The kids in this book raise questions about the way parents, teachers, and school administrators cope with bullies. They talk about which methods have helped and which ones, with the best of intentions, have failed to protect them. And some kids reveal how they have been able to overcome their fear and anger to become strong advocates for the rights of others. Additional comments from international students reveal how much kids the world over have in common in the way they experience and deal with bullies.
Shortlisted for Saskatchewan Book Awards Publishing in Education Award 2010
BF637 .B85 E47 2010
E – History. Americas
Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools a Memoir by Theodore FontaineTheodore (Ted) Fontaine lost his family and freedom just after his seventh birthday, when his parents were forced to leave him at an Indian residential school. Twelve years later, he left school frozen at the emotional age of seven. He was confused, angry and conflicted, on a path of self-destruction. At age 29, he emerged from this blackness. By age 32, he had graduated from the Civil Engineering Program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and begun a journey of self-exploration and healing.
In this powerful and poignant memoir, Ted examines the impact of his psychological, emotional and sexual abuse, the loss of his language and culture, and, most important, the loss of his family and community. He goes beyond details of the abuses of Native children to relate a unique understanding of why most residential school survivors have post-traumatic stress disorders and why succeeding generations of First Nations children suffer from this dark chapter in history. Told as remembrances described with insights that have evolved through his healing, his story resonates with his resolve to help himself and other residential school survivors and to share his enduring belief that one can pick up the shattered pieces and use them for good.
E 96.5 F66 2010
H – Social Sciences
World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of Our Food Supply by Marie-Monique Robin
The result of a remarkable three-year-long investigation that took award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin across four continents (North and South America, Europe, and Asia), The World According to Monsanto tells the little-known yet shocking story of this agribusiness giant—the world’s leading producer of GMOs (genetically modified organisms).
Robin reports that, following its long history of manufacturing hazardous chemicals and lethal herbicides, Monsanto is now marketing itself as a “life sciences” company, seemingly convinced about the virtues of sustainable development. However, Monsanto now controls the majority of the yield of the world’s genetically modified corn and soy—ingredients found in more than 95 percent of American households—and its alarming legal and political tactics to maintain this monopoly are the subject of worldwide concern.
Released to great acclaim and controversy in France, throughout Europe, and in Latin America alongside the documentary film of the same name, The World According to Monsanto is sure to change the way we think about food safety and the corporate control of our food supply.
HD9482 .U64 M6613 2010
N – Fine Arts
Visual Arts in Canada: the Twentieth Century edited by Anne Whitelaw, Brian Foss, and Sandra Paikowsky
The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century charts the developments in Canadian art from the late-nineteenth century to the present with new essays by the country's leading art historians. A comprehensive overview, this volume embraces painting, sculpture, photography, design, video, and conceptual and cross-disciplinary art, as well as studies of art institutions and historiography.
Each chapter explores the richness and diversity of Canadian art; topics range from impressionist painting to the multimedia work of First Nations artists, and from the Group of Seven to contemporary video production.
N6545 .V5885 2010
Northern Light: The Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson and the Woman Who Loved Him by Roy MacGregor
MacGregor re-examines the mysteries of Thomson's life, loves and violent death in this definitive non-fiction account. Why does a man who died almost a century ago and painted relatively little still have such a grip on our imagination?
As Roy MacGregor's richly detailed Northern Light reveals, not much is as it seems when it comes to Tom Thomson, the most iconic of Canadian painters. Philandering deadbeat or visionary artist and gentleman, victim of accidental drowning or deliberate murder, the man's myth has grown to obscure the real view — and the answers to the mysteries are finally revealed in these pages.
ND 249 .T5 M34 2010
P – Language and Literature
30: Thirty years of Journalism and Democracy in Canada: the Minifie lectures 1981-2010 edited by Mitch Diamantopoulos
This anthology paints a compelling portrait of Canada and Canadian journalism in a rapidly changing world. It brings together, in one volume, thirty years of the prestigious James M. Minifie Lecture at the University of Regina’s School of Journalism. Touching on a wide range of topics from war to climate change to our ongoing constitutional crisis, these lectures, delivered by some of Canada’s leading journalists, stand as a tribute to press freedom and journalistic imagination in Canada.
With media industries in crisis and the democratic craft of journalism in peril, this collection serves as a chronicle of the re-invention of Canada, and of Canadian journalism, over the last three decades. The Minifie Lectures, 1981-2010 is an intriguing glimpse into the inner life of the press corps.
Shortlisted for Saskatchewan Book Awards Publishing in Education Award 2010
PN4903 .T45 2009
PS 8000 – Canadian Literature
Waiting for Joe by Sandra Birdsell
On a chilly early morning in late spring, Joe Beaudry and his wife, Laurie, wake up in circumstances that would challenge saints: they are on the lam in a stolen motor home on the edge of a Wal-Mart parking lot in Regina, Saskatchewan. They've gone bust, spectacularly: lost the house that was Joe's gift from his dad, lost the business Joe started when he got married, and stuck his ancient father in a nursing home in Winnipeg so they could flee their creditors. Joe knows the reality of the situation, and is trying to raise enough cash to get them both to Fort McMurray where he hopes he can find work. But Laurie, even though she watched Joe trash their high-end appliances with a sledgehammer when the yard sale didn't deliver enough cash, somehow thinks it's only temporary, and maxes out their last credit card on wardrobe and hair dye and wishes and dreams. For Joe, it's the last straw in a marriage that once seemed star-crossed and now seems simply unworkable.
Pushed to figure out what to do next, Joe simply takes off hitchhiking, leaving Laurie waiting for Joe, and Joe wondering how he will ever find meaning in a world that has disappointed his every expectation. The road for both of them provides surprising answers...
Winner of the Saskatchewan Book Awards 2010 Fiction Award
PS 8553 .I76 W33 2010
Dimensions of an Orchard by Dave Margoshes
Most of the poems in Dimensions, and all of the poems in the first section, called Forms of Devotion, were written at St. Peter’s Abbey where the Saskatchewan Writers Guild holds writers’ and artists’ colonies. That section, and the book as a whole, is all about creation — both creation mythology and the act of creation, art and otherwise.
Shortlisted for Saskatchewan Book Awards 2010 Book of the Year Award and Winner of Award for Poetry
PS8576 .A724 D56 2010
News: Postcards from the Four Directions by Drew Hayden Taylor
In this collection of short humorous essays originally written for the popular media, playwright, novelist and screenwriter Drew Hayden Taylor sends his readers fascinating and exotic postcards from his globetrotting adventures, always on the lookout for the NEWS about aboriginal peoples around the world. Organized around the thematics suggested by the four cardinal directions central to the Ojibwa peoples—East for beginnings and youth; South for journeys both physical and spiritual; West for maturity and responsibility; and North for contemplation and wisdom; these communiqués are sent not so much to instruct as they are to delight.
Never without a healthy dose of irony, humour and often unabashed laughter, these “postcards” offer their readers unexpected insights into the intense and often hilarious complexities of our new multicultural reality. One of the great discoveries of this collection is that each of our First Nations boasts its own traditions—go a hundred miles in any direction and you are no longer on certain ground with respect to the meanings, attributes, even the colours definitive of these cardinal points of the social compass.
PS 8589 .A885 N48 2010
The Death of Donna Whalen by Michael Winter
In her home on Empire Avenue, Donna Whalen was stabbed 31 times. Her friends, family, and neighbours believed it was her abusive boyfriend, Sheldon Troke. But the evidence is all circumstantial, providing a daunting challenge for police and prosecutors—and the course of justice takes many unpredictable twists and turns before the truth is finally revealed.
In this mesmerizing work of documentary fiction, Michael Winter pieces together the transcripts and court testimonies of Sheldon's trial. He preserves the nuanced voice of each witness, and the result is a harsh account of the tragedy that befell Donna Whalen and the controversial aftermath that tore her town apart.
PS 8595 .I624 D43 2010
R – Medicine
Changing my mind by Margaret Trudeau
In her memoir, Margaret Trudeau speaks with candour and insight about the illness that silently shaped her life--a life lived often in turbulence and in the public's fascination. Plagued since childhood by extreme moods, Margaret was ill-prepared for the high-profile role into which she was cast at age twenty-two, as Canada's youngest first lady.
But away from the cameras and the public appearances, and increasingly isolated at 24 Sussex Drive, Margaret struggled with a growing depression offset by bouts of mania. Her behaviour seemed inexplicable to many -- including to herself -- and two years after the birth of their third son, Michel, the marriage broke down. Gradually, though, a fragile stability took hold, as Margaret found happiness in work as a photographer and in her marriage to Fried Kemper. But the tragic death of Michel Trudeau, closely followed by Pierre Trudeau's own passing, caused her to spiral into suicidal depression. Finally accepting the diagnosis of bipolar, she sought medical treatment.
A recipient of the Society of Biological Psychiatry Humanitarian Award, she now offers her journey of recovery, acceptance and hope, and generously shares with us many previously unreleased photos.
RC516 .T78 2010
T – Technology
Prairie Feast: A Writer’s Journey Home for Dinner by Amy Jo Ehman
A year of eating locally results in a gastronomical journey through prairie food festivals, local food traditions and the infamous community dinners. Prairie Feast is a humorous, light-hearted chronicle of the writer’s love affair with good food, prairie traditions and flavours from her childhood with recipes peppered throughout. Fueled by nostalgia and her taste buds, she set out to rediscover the flavours of her childhood – the flavours of natural, local, farm-fresh prairie food. When she vowed to serve only locally produced food at her own dinner table for one year, the pursuit took on a life of its own.
Beautiful photographs enhance Amy Jo’s menus, recipes and her adventures in the pursuit of home grown prairie food. It is not about miles, but a way of life. It is our community, our history and an opportunity to find ourselves in the food we eat. Prairie Feast is a love story, a celebration of every good thing this bountiful land has to offer.
Winner of Saskatchewan Book Awards 2010 First Book Award
TX 715.6 .E398 2010
Always Fresh: the Untold Story of Tim Hortons by the Man Who Created a Canadian Empire by Ron Joyce with Robert Thompson
Almost every town has at least one Tim Hortons franchise. Many know that it was hockey legend Tim Horton who opened the first restaurant, but few know the inside story of Ron Joyce, who, after the death of Horton, grew the company into a colossal North American enterprise. Always Fresh is Joyce's own story about the much-loved business that has become a cultural tradition, from 1964 and the first almost-failed Tim Hortons to Joyce's decision to sell the company to Dave Thomas of Wendy's.
Along the way, Joyce provides an account of the strategy behind the chain's phenomenal expansion, the Tim Hortons philosophy of freshness and quality, and the company's successful launch of such products as Timbits. This is a candid look at the successes and failures of a business empire and the determined passion of a man who changed our morning routines forever.
TX910.5 .J69 A3
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
B - Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
Vidh: a book of mourning by Phyllis Nakonechny
In Vidh: A Book of Mourning, Phyllis Nakonechny hopes "to break through the unspoken code of secrecy that surrounds the experience of loss". The book contains a collection of "small moments in time that occur over a period of four years. Each is a concise representation of a brief instance occurring in the larger panorama of grief."
Vidh: A Book of Mourning is a story of the loss of love and of learning to live without a partner. The experience outlined in this journey into widowhood, will help others to find what they need and struggle to find in their journey into grief.
Shortlisted for Saskatchewan Book Awards Book of the Year Award, Non-Fiction Award and First Book Award in 2010.
BF575 .G7 N35 2010
Truth to power: the journalism of a Benedictine monk by Andrew Murray Britz, OSB
Truth to Power represents 20 years of provocative journalism by Father Andrew Britz, a Benedictine monk at St. Peter's Abbey.
Although Britz is best known for his challenging editorials, weighing in on the concrete issues of our turbulent times, there is also a deeply contemplative dimension to his writing, the legacy of his life as a monk and a trained liturgist who is steeped in church history.
In Truth to Power, editor Dennis Gruending has chosen a sampling of Britz's best writing during his tenure as editor of the Prairie Messenger, a Catholic weekly news journal that has been published by the monks since 1904.
BX1753 .B75 2010
D - History.General and Old World
Sunray: the death and life of Captain Nichola Goddard by Valerie Fortney
Twenty-six-year-old Captain Nichola Goddard became the sixteenth Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan. She also earned herself a spot in the history books: the first female Canadian soldier to die in combat.
Goddard, say her friends and family, would have hated being singled out for her gender: she was as strong, as capable and as brave as any male in uniform. She was not just a soldier on equal footing with her fellow troops; she was a leader-a "sunray," in military parlance-in one of the most dangerous positions in the armed forces, a Forward Observation Officer with the artillery unit.
In Sunray: The Death and Life of Captain Nichola Goddard, award-winning journalist Valerie Fortney examines how a woman raised by self-described "left-wing hippies" came to find herself fighting-and dying-in Afghanistan. Based on in-depth interviews with Goddard's family, friends, and colleagues, as well as exclusive access to never-before-seen letters, Sunray tells the story of a remarkable 21st-century soldier. It is an intriguing, heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring look at the decision to serve, and at the costs.
DS371.43 .G64 F67 2010
Ghosts of Europe: journeys through Central Europe's troubled past and uncertain future by Anna Porter
One of the country's most distinguished writers and publishers returns to her roots to explore the consequences of democracy in the former Hapsburg lands.
In 1989 the Berlin Wall was dismantled. Communism gave way to democracy. Since that time the former borderlands of the long defunct Hapsburg Empire and the more recently dispersed Soviet Empire have been trying to invent their own versions of democracy and market-driven economics. But these experiments have led to a widening gap between rich and poor and there are many disquieting signs of old hatreds and racial tensions returning.
Author Anna Porter travels through the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to speak with leading intellectuals, politicians, former dissidents and the champions of aggrieved memories. The Ghosts of Europe is an exploration of power, nationalism, racism and denial in nations with a tumultuous history and an uncertain future.
DAW 1051 .P67 2010
E - History. Americas
"I thought Pocahontas was a movie" edited by Carol Schick and James McNinch
This book examines the challenges and resistance found within professional groups working with Aboriginal and racial minority peoples. For teachers, social workers, healthcare providers and professors the greatest barriers to working across difference may be themselves and their assumptions about what the nature of the "problem" of difference is considered to be. The authors in this volume advocate, question & critique the uses of what are often considered to be binaries of race and/ or culture.
Shortlisted for the Saskatchewan Book Awards Scholarly Writing Award and Publishing in Education Award in 2010.
FC - History. Canada
Our friendly local terrorist by Mary Jo Leddy
Our Friendly Local Terrorist tells the story of the fourteen-year struggle of Suleyman Goven, a Kurd accused by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service of being a terrorist. Mary Jo Leddy was "accidentally" present at Suleyman's first interview with CSIS. During that eight-hour ordeal he was propositioned: you work for us as a spy and you'll get your papers; otherwise-there are no guarantees. Mary Jo continued to be a witness to this bizarre and painful process over the following years at judicial and semi-judicial hearings, which finally ruled that Suleyman ought to be given his papers.
This moving personal story explores the efficacy of the immigration and security clearance systems in the Canadian government. It also provides an entry into the (often-complex) political dynamics and pressures within Kurdish communities in Canada and elsewhere in the diaspora, and reveals Turkey's role and influence in international relations when the tender of huge business contracts is at stake.
FC3097.26 .G29 L43 2010
H - Social Sciences
Nomad by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
In her powerful new memoir, the #1 bestselling author of Infidel tells the stirring story of her search for a new life as she tries to reconcile her Islamic past with her passionate adherence to democracy and Western values. A unique blend of personal narrative and reportage, moving, engaging, wryly funny at times, Nomad gives us an inside view of her battle for equality in the face of considerable odds.
Ayaan captured the world's attention with Infidel, the eye-opening memoir of her childhood in Africa and Saudi Arabia, and her escape to Holland en route to a forced marriage in Canada.
Nomad is the story of what happened after the Dutch director with whom she made a documentary about the domestic abuse of Muslim women was murdered by a radical Islamist and death threats forced her into hiding; of her bid to start a new life in America; of her renewed contact with her family on her father's death; and of her attempts to live by her adopted principles. With deep understanding, and through vivid anecdotes, and observations of people, cultures, and the political debacles that are engulfing the world, she takes us with her on an illuminating, unforgettable journey.
HQ1657.5 .A45 A3 2010
PS 8000 - Canadian Literature
Dust of just beginning by Don Kerr
Don Kerr knows prairie culture better than most-he knows it from the inside out. He has made us aware of ourselves through his numerous volumes of poetry, his fiction, his many plays, his histories, and his interest in heritage.
In this mature, accomplished collection, we can once again admire his unique prairie voice-minimalist, self-effacing, direct yet subtle and nuanced, immersed in his love of the vernacular language of this place. His line is muscular, his timing impeccable, his broad strokes with so few words exemplary.
Shortlisted for the 2010 Saskatchewan Book Awards Award for Poetry.
PS8571 .E77 D88 2010
Cool water by Dianne Warren
Winner of the 2010 Governor General's Award for Literary Fiction
Winner of the 2010 Saskatchewan Book Awards Regina Book Award
Shortlisted for 2010 Saskatchewan Book Awards Book of the Year Award and Fiction Award
Juliet, Saskatchewan, is a blink-of-an-eye kind of town--the welcome sign announces a population of 1,011 people--and it's easy to imagine that nothing happens on its hot and dusty streets. Situated on the edge of the Little Snake sand hills, Juliet and its inhabitants are caught in limbo between a century-old promise of prosperity and whatever lies ahead.
But the heart of the town beats in the rich and overlapping stories of its people: the foundling who now owns the farm his adoptive family left him; the pregnant teenager and her mother, planning a fairytale wedding; a shy couple, well beyond middle age, struggling with the recognition of their feelings for one another; a camel named Antoinette; and the ubiquitous wind and sand that forever shift the landscape. Their stories bring the prairie desert and the town of Juliet to vivid and enduring life.
This wonderfully entertaining, witty and deeply felt novel brims with forgiveness as its flawed people stumble towards the future.
PS8595 .A778 C66 2010
Interruptions in glass by Tracy Hamon
This collection bites down on the metaphors memory stores, exploring perceptions of everyday exchanges, familial relationships, loves, and losses. Is the language of our aging hysterical or historical? These poems supply a manual of conversations, studying the present by peeling back the past, letter by letter. Snowmen, plays, rice and even disappointment are some of the images that provide places for readers to park and devour the connections. It talks us through the metallic moments we continue to consume on the journey. A subtly powerful collection that celebrates the shape and detail of a full life and its memories.
Shortlisted for 2010 Saskatchewan Book Awards Poetry Award and Regina Book Award.
PS8615 .A545 I58 2010
Fishtailing by Wendy Phillips
High School--four lives caught up in a game. The problem with games is that there are always winners--and losers. Teen violence, bullying and the burning quest to fit in are presented in the poems of four unforgettable high school students: Natalie, Kyle, Tricia, Miguel. Their stories unfold in this explosive new book, told in free verse. A story of teen angst like no other, it is based on fictional characters but is rooted in the realities of the teen experience. When Natalie moves to a new high school she befriends 3 unwitting victims into her spider-web of manipulations, lies and deceit.
Through the poetry and assignments of an English class we glimpse the world of the 4 teens. Natalie, whose alcoholic parents, years of neglect and ultimate rape by her father's friend has shaped her into a cruel and manipulative teen; Tricia, dealing with her blended family is drawn into Natalie's forbidden world of partying and rebellion; Kyle, a would-be musician is in love with Tricia and Miguel who lusts for Natalie while hiding the secrets of his family. The story weaves us through their poetry, their lives and culminates at a party where the four lives fishtail out of control. English class will never be the same.
Shortlisted for 2010 Saskatchewan Book Awards Publishing Award.
PS8631 .H57 F58 2010
Worst thing she ever did by Alice Kuipers
All Sophie wants is to forget what happened last summer. But that's not easy when people keep asking if she's okay, and her mother locks herself behind closed doors for hours at a time. And now her best friend, Abigail, cares more about parties and boys than hanging out with Sophie.
Lost in memories of the life she once had -- before that terrible day -- Sophie retreats into herself. But it's only so long before she must confront the tragedy of her past so she can face the future.
Kuipers addresses a handful of touch issues, from terrorism and panic attacks to eating disorders and alcoholism, but does so with a light enough touch that the story never becomes overwhelmingly bleak.
Shortlisted for the 2010 Saskatchewan Book Awards Young Adult Literature Award and Saskatoon Book Award.
PS8621 .U38 W67 2010
OCTOBER 2010 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
E--History. Americas
Commerce by a Frozen Sea: Native Americans and the European Fur Trade by Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis
Commerce by a Frozen Sea is a cross-cultural study of a century of contact between North American native peoples and Europeans. Drawing on more than seventy years of trade records from the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company, economic historians Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis critique and confront many of the myths commonly held about the nature and impact of commercial trade.
Commerce by a Frozen Sea shows that natives were industrious people who achieved a standard of living above that of most workers in Europe. Although they later fell behind, the eighteenth century was, for Native Americans, a golden age.
E 98 .C7 C375 2010
FC - History. Canada
A Few Acres of Snow (3rd Ed.): Documents in Pre-Confederation Canadian History by Thomas Thorner and Thor Frohn-Nielson
A Few Acres of Snow allows readers to experience early Canadian history in the words of those who first explored, created, and documented the nation. Providing coast-to-coast representation and featuring a diverse range of social groups, the editors offer a refreshing look at the major events leading up to and including Confederation. Throughout, they rely on a careful selection of personal, formal, and legal documents to tell the story, including early travel narratives, literary writings by Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Trail, government reports on slavery in Canada, official letters on Irish immigration, and newspaper articles and speeches on the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867.
In this new edition, each document is introduced with biographical information about the creator. Brand new chapters discuss the Loyalists in Nova Scotia, the War of 1812, and the Beothuk. Also new is a guide to critically reading and engaging with historical documents.
FC 18 .F49 2009
Newfoundland and Labrador: a History by Sean T. Cadigan
Published to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of Newfoundland and Labrador joining Canada, Sean T. Cadigan has written the book that will surely become the definitive history of one of North America's most distinct and beautiful regions.
The site of the first European settlement by Vikings one thousand years ago, a former colony of England, and known at various times as Terra Nova and Newfoundland until its official name change to Newfoundland and Labrador in 2001, this easternmost point of the continent has had a fascinating history in part because of its long-held position as the gateway between North America and Europe.
Examining the region from prehistoric times to the present, Newfoundland and Labrador is not only a comprehensive history of the province, but an illuminating portrait of the Atlantic world and European colonisation of the Americas.
FC 2161 .C33 2009
Women of Service for the Glory of God: Ursulines of Bruno by Maureen Maier OSU
The story of the Ursulines of Bruno and their work in the church, notably in St. Peter's Abbacy, has never before been told.
For nearly 100 years the Sisters' unique and valued service in culture, education and religion has had a wide influence, an influence that has been multiplied enormously through the ongoing contribution of those whom they taught. Handing on their story serves as a memorial to the past, an inspiration to the present and a beacon to the future.
Research for this book was enriched by some 200 letters obtained from the archives of the founding convent of Haselunne in Germany. For the first time many events and details of the earliest years have been brought to light for further enhancement of an already fascinating story.
FC 3519 .M35
H - Social Sciences
Eau Canada: The Future of Canada's Water by Karen Bakker
Canadians love our vast and beautiful expanses of water but know next to nothing about them. Eau Canada is a myth-busting, fact-based, comprehensive collection on all facets of our water that every Canadian should own. Without the knowledge contained in this book, we could lose the right to control our water in an increasingly thirsty world.
HD 1696 .C2 E28 2007
Last Call: the Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent
Last Call is a fascinating history of America's most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America's favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages.
Writing with both wit and historical acuity, Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces: the growing political power of the women's suffrage movement, which allied itself with the antiliquor campaign; the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities; the anti-German sentiment stoked by World War I; and a variety of other unlikely factors, ranging from the rise of the automobile to the advent of income tax.
It's a book rich with stories from nearly all parts of the country. Okrent's narrative runs through smoky Manhattan speakeasies, where relations between the sexes were changed forever; California vineyards busily producing "sacramental" wine; New England fishing communities that gave up fishing for the more lucrative rum-running business; and in Washington, the halls of Congress itself, where politicians who had voted for Prohibition drank openly and without apology.
Last Call stands as the most complete history of Prohibition to date.
HV 5089 .047 2010
N - Fine Arts
The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine by Rozsika Parker
Rozsika Parker's now classic re-evaluation of the reciprocal relationship between women and embroidery has brought stitchery out from the private world of female domesticity into the fine arts, created a major breakthrough in art history and criticism, and fostered the emergence of today's dynamic and expanding crafts movements.
The Subversive Stitch is now available again with a new Introduction that brings the book up to date with exploration of the stitched art of Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, as well as the work of new young female and male embroiderers. Rozsika Parker uses household accounts, women's magazines, letters, novels and the works of art themselves to trace through history how the separation of the craft of embroidery from the fine arts came to be a major force in the marginalization of women's work.
Beautifully illustrated, her book also discusses the contradictory nature of women's experience of embroidery: how it has inculcated female subservience while providing an immensely pleasurable source of creativity, forging links between women.
NK 9206 .P36 2010
P - Language and Literature
Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language by Robert McCrum
A small island in the North Atlantic, colonized by Rome, then pillaged for hundreds of years by marauding neighbours, becomes the dominant world power in the 19th century. As its power spreads, its language follows. Then, across the Atlantic, a colony of that tiny island grows into the military and cultural colossus of the 20th century. These centuries of empire-building and war, international trade and industrial ingenuity will bring to the world great works of literature and extraordinary movies, cricket pitches and episodes of Dallas, the printing press and the internet. But what happens next is quite unprecedented.
While the global dominance of Anglo-American power appears to be on the wane, the English language has acquired an astonishing new life of its own. In Robert McCrum's analysis, the cultural revolution of our times is the emergence of English, a global phenomenon as never before, to become the world's language. In the 21st century English + Microsoft = Globish.
Globish takes us on a riveting and enlightening journey of the spread of a global English, from the icy swamps of pre-Roman Saxony to the shopping malls of Seoul, from the study of 'Crazy English' TM in China to crowds of juvenile wizards mobbing bookshop tills across the world.
PE 1075 .M27 2010
Solar by Ian McEwan
Solar is an engrossing, satirical and very funny new novel on climate change.
Michael Beard is in his late fifties; bald, overweight, unprepossessing - a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. An inveterate philanderer, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her.
When Beard's professional and personal worlds are entwined in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself, a chance for Beard to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster.
With a global scope, Solar is a comedy dealing directly with the crises of today.
PR 6063 .C4 S6 2010
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own.
This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event.
In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires.
What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.
For this mosaic of modern Australian life, Tsiolkas won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
PR 9619.3 .T786 558 2009
Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou
Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter reveals Maya Angelou's path to living well and living a life with meaning.
Told in her own inimitable style, this book transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.
Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and fortitude: how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward, six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son.
Whether she is recalling such lost friends as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a "lifelong endeavor," or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice-Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family.
PS 3551 .N464 Z468 2008
PS 8000 - Canadian Literature
A Hunter's Confession by David Carpenter
A Hunter's Confession tells the story of hunting - both its history and the role it has played in David Carpenter's own life, including the reasons he once loved it and the dramatic hunting incident that made him give up hunting for good.
Winding through this narrative is Carpenter's exploration of the history of hunting, subsistence hunting versus hunting for sport, trophy hunting, and the meaning of the hunt for those who have written about it most eloquently. Are wild creatures somehow our property? How is the sport hunter different from the hunter who must kill game to survive? Is there some bridge that might connect Aboriginal to non-Aboriginal hunters? Carpenter ponders questions like these as he describes what hunting has meant to him and to others throughout history and in our own time.
Carpenter beautifully evokes the sensual pleasure of holding a gun, the inherent spirituality among hunters, the intense relationship between the animals and their pursuers, and the transcendent joy of hunting. Finally, he conveys poignantly how for him animals have been transformed from objects of hunting to objects of wonder.
PS 8555 .A76 Z46 2010
Love Outlandish by Barry Dempster
In Love Outlandish, Barry Dempster undoes all the clichés that have barnacled our love lives and, with the zest and courage typical of his work, explores their torrents and eddies afresh. As in his previous books, Dempster responds to D.H. Lawrence's plea that we should discover and articulate what the heart really wants rather than some idealized version of it.
Thoughtful, passionate, full of humour and self-aware wit, Love Outlandish delivers, again and again, the shock of recognition that permits us to laugh at, and with, the very emotions it probes. This is a book to relish for its energy and cherish for its wisdom.
PS 8557 .E4827 L58 2009
Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel
When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this stranger and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey-named Beatrice and Virgil-and the epic journey they undertake together.
This novel takes the reader on a haunting odyssey and on the way Martel asks profound questions about life and art, truth and deception, responsibility and complicity.
PS 8576 .A7651 B43 2010
The Day is a Cold Grey Stone by Allan Safarik
Allan Safarik is a poet who is driven by the love of language as much as by the external world. By discovery and singing he brings us a world we identify with and rejoice in. Always peculiar, always imaginative, these poems echo the language and concerns of poets like Newlove and Birney. Here is the world of the imagination and the world of the rugged and beautiful West Coast landscape.
The Day is a Cold Grey Stone brings together new and selected poems set in and inspired by the West Coast. With this book Safarik's poetic journey has come full circle. Very few Canadian poets have written with such confidence and strength on two distinct regions of our country. He is one of very few who lay poetic claim to both the West Coast and the Prairies.
PS 8587 .A245 D39 2010
Aphelion by Jenna Butler
Aphelion is about distances, simultaneously belonging to two countries but being rooted in neither.
In her first collection, poet Jenna Butler fluently explores this rift, sounding out the meaning of home from the perspective of a British-born Canadian. Written in experimental free verse and containing a selection of anti ghazals, Aphelion's subject matter, physical appearance on the page, and the way it is read aloud all reflect these elemental distances.
PS 8603 .U844 A65 2010
R - Medicine
I Shall Not Hate: a Gaza Doctor's Journey by Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish
Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish - now known simply as "the Gaza doctor" captured hearts and headlines around the world in the aftermath of horrific tragedy: on January 16, 2009, Israeli shells hit his home in the Gaza Strip, killing three of his daughters and a niece.
By turns inspiring and heartbreaking, hopeful and horrifying, this is Abuelaish's account of a Gazan life in all its struggle and pain. A Palestinian doctor who was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, Abuelaish is an infertility specialist who lived in Gaza but plied his specialty in Israeli hospitals. From the strip of land he calls home, the Gaza doctor has been crossing the lines that divide the region for most of his life, as a physician who treats patients on both sides of the border and as a humanitarian who sees the need for improved public health and education for women as the way forward in the Middle East.
But it was Abuelaish's response to the loss of his children that made news and won him humanitarian awards around the world. Instead of seeking revenge or sinking into hatred, in this personal account of his life, Izzeldin Abuelaish is calling for the people of the Middle East to start talking to each other. His deepest hope is that his daughters will be the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
R 644 .P3 A28 2010
SEPTEMBER 2010 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
D - History. General and Old World
Russia: a history by Gregory L. Freeze
In this heavily illustrated volume, English, American, and German scholars gather to discuss the development of Russia from its medieval founding in the face of Mongol invasions to the election of Boris Yeltsin. The authors are not reluctant to discuss unpleasant truths, such as the officially tolerated famine of the 1930s and the rise of totalitarianism. They also offer controversial theories, such as the view that Lenin, had he lived, would not have supported the cult of personality that surrounded him after his death.
The authors take a generally positive view of Russia's democratic future, noting that the present spectre of decline and stagnation ignores the fact that much of Russia's economy is kept in the shadows, presumably to avoid taxation, and that with more state intervention, not less, the economy will grow as the Russian state rebuilds itself.
DK 40 .R848 2009
China in the 21st century: what everyone needs to know by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
The need to understand this global giant has never been more pressing: China is constantly in the news, yet conflicting impressions abound. Within one generation, China has transformed from an impoverished, repressive state into an economic and political powerhouse. In China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, Jeffrey Wasserstrom provides cogent answers to the most urgent questions regarding the newest superpower and offers a framework for understanding its meteoric rise.
Focusing his answers through the historical legacies - Western and Japanese imperialism, the Mao era, and the massacre at Tiananmen Square - that largely define China's present-day trajectory, Wasserstrom introduces readers to the Chinese Communist Party, the building boom in Shanghai, and the environmental fall-out of rapid Chinese industrialization. He also explains unique aspects of Chinese culture such as the one-child policy, and provides insight into how Chinese view Americans.
Wasserstrom reveals that China today shares many traits with other industrialized nations during their periods of development, in particular the United States during its rapid industrialization in the 19th century. Finally, he provides guidance on the ways we can expect China to act in the future vis-a-vis the United States, Russia, India, and its East Asian neighbours.
DS779.4 .W376 2010
E - History. Americas
Encounters on the passage: Inuit meet the explorers by Dorothy Harley Eber
Inuit elders who grew up in camps on the shores of Frobisher Bay can tell you what happened when Martin Frobisher arrived with his vessel in 1576: "He fired two warning shots into the air. So right away there were some grievances." Frobisher's shots were the opening salvos in the search for the Northwest Passage, a search that lasted for more than four hundred years and riveted the Western world, particularly in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In Encounters on the Passage, present day Inuit tell the stories that have been passed down from their ancestors of the first encounters with European explorers.
In many of these stories the old cosmogony is still in place, with shamans playing starring roles opposite "the strangers intruding on the Inuit lands." Dorothy Harley Eber presents stories told to her about the expeditions of Sir Edward Parry, Sir John Ross, Sir John Franklin, and the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, and sets them squarely in historical context. In the case of the disastrous Franklin expedition, new information opens up another fascinating chapter on the Franklin tragedy. Collected over twelve years on visits to communities in Nunavut, these remarkable stories of expeditionary forces and their dealings with native peoples will be new and exciting reading for those interested in the search for the Northwest Passage, the Franklin tragedy, and traditions of oral history.
E99 .E7 E335 2008
F - History. Americas
Lost city of Z by David Grann
In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called "The Lost City of Z."
In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett's quest for "Z" and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century.
F2546 .G747 2009
G - Geography. Anthropology. Recreation
Humans who went extinct: why Neanderthals died out and we survived by Clive Finlayson
Just 28,000 years ago, the blink of an eye in geological time, the last of Neanderthals died out in their last outpost, in caves near Gibraltar. Thanks to cartoons and folk accounts we have a distorted view of these other humans - for that is what they were. We think of them as crude and clumsy and not very bright, easily driven to extinction by the lithe, smart modern humans that came out of Africa some 100,000 years ago. But was it really as simple as that? Clive Finlayson reminds us that the Neanderthals were another kind of human, and their culture was not so very different from that of our own ancestors. In this book, he presents a wider view of the events that led to the migration of the moderns into Europe, what might have happened during the contact of the two populations, and what finally drove the Neanderthals to extinction. It is a view that considers climate, ecology, and migrations of populations, as well as culture and interaction.
GN285 .F54 2009
M - Music and Books on Music
Canuck rock: a history of Canadian popular music by Ryan Edwardson
The Guess Who. Gordon Lightfoot. Joni Mitchell. Neil Young. Stompin' Tom Connors. Robert Charlebois. Anne Murray. Crowbar. Chilliwack. Carole Pope. Loverboy. Bryan Adams. The Barenaked Ladies. The Tragically Hip. Céline Dion. Arcade Fire. K-oS. Feist. These musicians are national heroes to generations of Canadians. But what does it mean to be a Canadian musician? And why does nationality even matter? Canuck Rock addresses these questions by delving into the myriad relationships between the people who make music, the industries that produce and sell it, the radio stations and government legislation that determine availability, and the fans who consume it and make it their own.
An invaluable resource and an absorbing read, Canuck Rock spans from the emergence of rock and roll in the 1950s through to today's international recording industry. Combining archival material, published accounts, and new interviews, Ryan Edwardson explores how music in Canada became Canadian music.
ML3484 .E265 2009
N - Fine Arts
Vermeer, Rembrandt and the golden age of Dutch art: masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum by Ruud Priem
From one of the world's finest museums comes a spectacular introduction to the greatest masters and masterpieces of Dutch art.
The art of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, called the Golden Age, is among the most popular ever created. The sumptuous paintings, drawings and decorative arts in this book were created at time when the Dutch Republic had reached unprecedented power. Banking and the first truly global trade routes had generated staggering levels of new wealth that, coupled with political and religious freedom, created a vibrant atmosphere in which the arts flourished. Celebrated portraitists such as Hals and Rembrandt painted haunting images of the country's new civic leaders and wealthy patrons, while genre painters such as Vermeer created richly detailed scenes of daily life and artists such as Cuyp, de Witte and Heda captured the Dutch countryside and its prosperous new cities and created intricate still lifes rich in symbolism. The book also features a selection of Delft pottery, glassware and silver that attests to the luxurious refinement of this Golden Age.
Vermeer, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art is a stunning companion to a major show at the Vancouver Art Gallery in the summer of 2009, the first chance ever to see major works by either Vermeer or Rembrandt within Canada.
OVERSIZE N6946 .P75 2009
R - Medicine
Wasted: a memoir of anorexia and bulimia by Marya Hornbacher
"I fell for the great American dream, female version, hook, line, and sinker," Marya Hornbacher writes. "I, as many young women do, honest-to-God believed that once I Just Lost a Few Pounds, suddenly I would be a New You, I would have Ken-doll men chasing my thin legs down with bouquets of flowers on the street, I would become rich and famous and glamorous and lose my freckles and become blond and five foot ten." Hornbacher describes in shocking detail her lifelong quest to starve herself to death, to force her short, athletic body to fade away.
This gritty, bluntly honest personal account tracks Hornbacher's downward spiral from bulimia at age nine to life-threatening anorexia requiring five lengthy hospitalizations. Interwoven with the remarkably vivid chronicle of this struggle is an adept examination of the complex causes of eating disorders. While accepting that a troubled, chaotic family life and the relentless bombardment of cultural messages exhorting thinness played a role, the author acknowledges that her underlying neurotic intensity and perfectionism contributed to the problem; she concludes that she is "a victim, primarily, of myself, which makes victim status very uneasy and ultimately ridiculous."
RC552 .A5 H67 2006
T - Technology
Txtng: the gr8 db8 by David Crystal
This book takes a long hard look at the text-messaging phenomenon and its effects on literacy, language, and society. Young people who seem to spend much of their time texting sometimes appear unable or unwilling to write much else. Media outrage has ensued. "It is bleak, bald, sad shorthand," writes a commentator in the UK Guardian. "It masks dyslexia, poor spelling, and mental laziness."
Exam answers using textese and reports that examiners find them acceptable have led to headlines in the tabloids and leaders in the qualities. Do young people text as much as people think? Do adults? Does texting spell the end of literacy? Is there a panic in the media? David Crystal looks at the evidence. He investigates how texting began and who uses it, why and what for. He shows how to interpret its mix of pictograms, logograms, abbreviations, symbols, and wordplay, and how it works in different languages. He explores the ways similar devices have been used in different eras and discovers that the texting system of conveying sounds and meaning goes back a long way, all the way in fact to the origins of writing - and he concludes that far from hindering literacy, texting may turn out to help it.
TK5015.73 .C79 2008
Tomorrow's table: organic farming, genetics, and the future of food by Pamela C. Ronald and Raoul W. Adamchak
Written as part memoir, part instruction, and part contemplation, Tomorrow's Table argues that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture--genetic engineering and organic farming--is key to helping feed the world's growing population in an ecologically balanced manner.
Pamela Ronald, a geneticist, and her husband, Raoul Adamchak, an organic farmer, welcome us into their lives for roughly a year, allowing us to look over their shoulders and see what geneticists and organic farmers actually do. We learn how the couple, who share the goal of a sustainable agriculture, work together to tackle such issues as that of farmers trying to produce higher yields without resorting to environmentally hazardous chemicals--a problem that will loom larger as the world's population increases. A colourfully written, insightful look at genetic engineering and organic farming, this book will interest consumers, farmers, and policy makers.
TP248.65 .F66 R66 2009
U - Military Science
A soldier first: bullets, bureaucrats and the politics of war by Rick Hillier
In the summer of 2008, General Rick Hillier retired as Chief of the Defense staff of the Canadian Forces. You could almost hear the sigh of relief in Ottawa as Canada's most popular, and most controversial, military leader since the second World War left a role in which he'd been as frank, unpredictable and resolutely apolitical as any of his predecessors.
Born and raised in Newfoundland, Hillier joined the military as a young man and quickly climbed the ranks. It was his role as General Rick Hillier, Canada's Chief of the Defense staff, that defined him as a Canadian icon.
In Afghanistan, Canada faced its first combat losses since the Korean War, with every casualty becoming front page news. A country formerly ambivalent, or even angry, about its role in the conflict suddenly became gripped by the drama unfolding not only in a war zone halfway around the world but in unfriendly conference rooms in Ottawa. There, as everywhere, Hillier pulled no punches, demanding more funding, more troops and more appreciation for the women and men fighting a war on foreign soil. This hard-hitting, honest account of Hillier's role -- told in his own words -- will be one of the most important books published in Canada this decade.
U55 .H49 A3 2009
JULY/AUGUST 2010 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
FC - History. Canada
Lakeland by Allan Casey
More than just a place, Lakeland is a state of mind in this ode to Canada's abundant freshwater systems. The story begins at Emma Lake, Saskatchewan, site of writer Allan Casey's family cabin, built by his parents in 1960 for $2,500. From there, we embark on a journey through ten of Canada's seldom-celebrated but beautiful and increasingly fragile lakes in this extraordinary piece of writing celebrating one of Canada's iconic natural features.
More than 60 percent of the world's five million lakes are crammed into this one northern country. Endless pure lakes are the defining and unifying symbol of the Canadian landscape, making us the envy of a thirsty world. Casey, an award-winning journalist, takes us on a journey of these lakes, from log cabins to lakeside mansions, from the semi-desert of Okanagan Lake to the ponds of western Newfoundland, and over the language barrier to Lac Saint-Jean, Quebec. Across the sprawling, hard-to-define land called Canada, the language of lakes is spoken.
Lakeland, suggests Casey, is a place, a state of mind, and perhaps even a new synonym for Canada. Despite problems of overdevelopment, these lakes remain the heartland of this country, and the place where our relationship with wilderness itself begins.
FC 223 .L35 C38 2009
G - Geography. Anthropology. Recreation
Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever
From avalanches to glaciers and seals to snowflakes, from igloos to icebergs, permafrost to hoarfrost, Streever unearths the consistent, ongoing influence of cold on the planet.
Guiding us through the natural history that has shaped our planet and our culture, Streever shows us the cold that remains and what's been left in its absence. He visits an underground Cold War-era tunnel where preserved remains mingle with new machinery and gear and describes how refrigeration evolved from world-wide ice shipping to the chemical coolants we know today.
G608 .S69 2009
H - Social Sciences
Heavy Burdens on Small Shoulders: the Labour of Pioneer Children of the Canadian Prairies by Sandra Rollings-Magnusson
The phrase "child labour" carries negative undertones in today's society. However, only a century ago on the Canadian prairies, youngsters laboured alongside their parents-working the land, cleaning stovepipes, and chopping wood. By shouldering their share of the chores, these children learned the domestic and manual labour skills needed for life on a prairie family farm.
Rollings-Magnusson uses historic research, photographs, and personal anecdotes to describe the kinds of work performed by children and how each task fit into the family economy.
HD6250 .C32 R64 2009
N - Fine Arts
From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual by David Levi Strauss
How does a vision - an image in the mind, in the imagination - get from the head to the hand, and out into the world? The passage can take a lifetime or happen almost instantaneously in the works of painters and sculptors. In this concise, pithy study, art critic David Levi Strauss makes an argument for the continued relevance of art made by hand.
A wide variety of examples are under consideration: the works of individual sculptors and painters; 'exotic' practitioners, such as the West coast Haida and the poet Cecilia Vicuna; curatorial figures and critical thinkers; the distinction between labour and poetics, and more. The author's core concern is an ongoing inquiry into the relation of art-making to the present cultural and political ethos, which Strauss asserts as a necessary connection. This larger claim is kept in focus by the specificity of his accounts, an often remarkable tracing of fact, response, perception, and thought. Strauss' resistance to (intellectual and aesthetic) fashion makes for a rewarding exchange between aesthetic theory, art historical knowledge, and independent thought.
N71 .S879 2010
PS 8000 - Canadian Literature
Cabin Fever: the Best New Canadian Non-Fiction by Banff Centre-Literary Journalism Program, Moira Farr, and Ian Pearson
Drawn primarily from the program's second decade, this anthology includes essays on a strikingly original and global range of topics by some of the best non-fiction writers in the country: Tara Grescoe goes in search of "pure" absinthe; Jeff Warren examines the way whales think; Megan Williams takes driving lessons in Rome; Bill Reynolds writes about the joys and dangers of riding a bicycle; Charlotte Gill gives us the dirt on her eighteen years as a tree planter; John Vigna confronts his relationship with a troubled brother; Margaret Webb takes a sexy road trip to find oysters; Jaspreet Singh ruminates on life in Kashmir in the age of plutonium; Jeremy Klaszus gets to know his grandfather, a Nazi resister who is obsessed with Google Maps; Deborah Ostrovsky explores bilingualism and the "grammar of relationships" after she marries into a Quebecois family; Jonathan Garfinkel goes to Israel to find a house occupied by an Arab and a Jew; Penney Kome writes about a family friend in Chicago who helped invent the atomic bomb; and Andrew Westoll gives up love in order to hunt for a rare blue frog in Surinam.
Unique, engaging, and enriching, Cabin Fever is a testament to the literary talents of each individual contributor and a tribute to the longevity and excellence of Banff Centre's Literary Journalism program over the past twenty years.
PS8365 .C33 2009
Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
From internationally acclaimed author Joseph Boyden comes an astonishingly powerful novel of contemporary aboriginal life, full of the dangers and harsh beauty of both forest and city.
When beautiful Suzanne Bird disappears, her sister Annie, a loner and hunter, is compelled to search for her, leaving behind their uncle Will, a man haunted by loss. While Annie travels from Toronto to New York, from modelling studios to A-list parties, Will encounters dire troubles at home. Both eventually come to painful discoveries about the inescapable ties of family.
Winner of the 2008 Giller prize, Through black spruce is an utterly unforgettable consideration of how we discover who we really are.
PS8553 .O9999 T49 2008
Seal Intestine Raincoat by Rosie Chard
After a severe winter storm and extended power failure, thousands become trapped in their homes during one of the coldest weeks of the year. For one small group of people, thrown together by catastrophe, a state of anxiety and claustrophobia follows as they discover no precautions have been made for a disaster of this magnitude. When the dark and cold continues, endurance turns to despair and plans for survival begin to emerge as Fred, a fifteen-year-old boy from England, is forced to take charge in unpredictable ways.
Alongside its bleak portrayal of social instability during economic collapse, Seal Intestine Raincoat unearths the powerful human instincts that convert helpless fear into the desire to adapt.
PS8605 .H3667 S42 2009
R - Medicine
Viruses, Plagues, and History: Past, Present and Future Revised and Updated Edition by Michael B. A. Oldstone
The story of viruses and humanity is a story of fear and ignorance, of grief and heartbreak, and of great bravery and sacrifice. Michael Oldstone tells all these stories as he illuminates the history of the devastating diseases that have tormented humanity, focusing mostly on the most famous viruses.
Oldstone begins with smallpox, polio, and measles. Nearly 300 million people were killed by smallpox in this century alone and the author presents a vivid account of the long campaign to eradicate this lethal killer. Oldstone then describes the fascinating viruses that have captured headlines in more recent years: Ebola, Hantavirus, mad cow disease (a frightening illness made worse by government mishandling and secrecy), and, of course, AIDS. And he tells us of the many scientists watching and waiting even now for the next great plague, monitoring influenza strains to see whether the deadly variant from 1918--a viral strain that killed over 20 million people in 1918-1919--will make a comeback.
For this revised edition, Oldstone includes discussions of viruses like SARS, bird flu, virally caused cancers, chronic wasting disease, and West Nile, and fully updates the original text with new findings on particular viruses. Viruses, Plagues, and History paints a sweeping portrait of humanity's long-standing conflict with our unseen viral enemies. Oldstone's book is a vivid history of a fascinating field, and a highly reliable dispatch from an eminent researcher on the front line of this ongoing campaign.
RC114.5 .O37 2010
Madness: a Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher
At age twenty-four, Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type 1 rapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolar disease there is. In Madness, in her trademark wry and utterly self-revealing voice, Hornbacher tells her story.
Through scenes of astonishing visceral and emotional power, she takes us inside her own desperate attempts to control violently careening mood swings by self-starvation, substance abuse, and self-mutilation. How Hornbacher fights her way up from a madness that all but destroys her, and what it is like to live in a difficult and sometimes beautiful life and marriage-where bipolar always beckons-is at the heart of this brave and heart-stopping memoir.
Madness delivers the revelation that Hornbacher is not alone: there are millions of people struggling with a variety of disorders that may mask their true diagnosis of bipolar. Also, Hornbacher's fiercely self-aware portrait of her own bipolar as early as age four will powerfully change the current debate on whether bipolar in children exist. This storm of a memoir will provoke, educate, and move.
RC516 .H67 2008
S - Agriculture
Trauma Farm: a Rebel History of Rural Life by Brian Brett
This book is an irreverent and illuminating journey through a day in the life of the affectionately named Trauma Farm, with numerous side trips into the natural history of farming.
Brett moves from the tending of livestock, poultry, orchards, gardens, machinery, and fields to the social intricacies of rural communities and, finally, to an encounter with a magnificent deer in the silver moonlight of a magical farm field. Brett understands both tall tales and rigorous science as he explores the small mixed farm-meditating on the perfection of the egg and the nature of soil while also offering a scathing critique of agribusiness and the horror of modern slaughterhouses. Whether discussing the uses and misuses of gates, examining the energy of seeds, or bantering with his family, farm hands, and neighbours, he remains aware of the miracles of life, birth, and death that confront the rural world every day.
Trauma Farm tells a story that's poetic, passionate, practical, and frequently hilarious, providing an unforgettable portrait of one farm and our separation from the natural world, as well as a common-sense analysis of rural life.
S522 .C2 B74 2009
JUNE 2010 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
D - History.General and Old World
Barbarism and Civilization: a History of Europe in Our Time by Bernard Wasserstein
Barbarism and civilization have been inextricably intertwined in 20th-century Europe, says University of Chicago historian Wasserstein. Taking WWI as his starting point, Wasserstein details how some of history's greatest achievements (increased democracy, widespread wealth and longevity) have been accompanied by tremendous violence-two vicious world wars, government-instigated famine in the Soviet Union, genocide in the Balkans and terrorism in the name of Islam.
Wasserstein focuses on politics and the economy, moving smoothly from Britain to Germany to Russia to Turkey and back, with a clear command of all the historical material. Cultural and gender issues receive occasional attention, as in his discussions of the status of women in the 1930s and 1960s. Wasserstein even takes his story up to the present, covering changes Muslim immigration has brought to the Continent.
D 424 W38 2009
At the Sharp End by Tim Cook
At the Sharp End covers the harrowing early battles of World War One when tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, died, before the generals and soldiers found ways to break the terrible stalemate of the front. It provides both an intimate look at the Canadian men in the trenches and an authoritative account of the slow evolution in tactics, weapons, and advancement.
Featuring never-before-published photographs, letters, diaries, and maps, this recounting of the Great War through the soldiers eyewitness accounts is moving and thoroughly engrossing.
D547 .C2 C555 2007
Shock Troops Canadians Fighting the Great War 1917-1918 by Tim Cook
Shock Troops follows the Canadian fighting forces during the titanic battles of Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, Passchendaele, and the Hundred Days campaign. Through the eyes of the soldiers who fought and died in the trenches on the Western Front, and based on newly uncovered Canadian, British, and German archival sources, Cook builds on Volume I of his national bestseller, At the Sharp End. The Canadian fighting forces never lost a battle during the final two years of the war, and although they paid a terrible price in the killing fields of the Great War, they were indeed, as British Prime Minister David Lloyd George exclaimed, the shock troops of the Empire.
D547 .C2 C557 2008
G - Geography. Anthropology. Recreation
World Heritage Sites: a Complete Guide to 878 UNESCO World Heritage Sites
In 1959, UNESCO launched an international campaign to safeguard the world's most important sites, which led to the first World Heritage List.
Covering 148 countries, the World Heritage List has proved to be a valuable tool in the battle to preserve much of the world's cultural and natural heritage. Its strict criteria result in only the world's most spectacular and extraordinary sites making it onto the list, including the Rideau Canal in eastern Ontario and Waterton Glacier International Peace Park, the world's first international peace park, which straddles the US-Canada border.
G140.5 .W68 2009
H - Social Sciences
The World Is Flat by Thomas L Friedman
Friedman's thesis is that connectedness by computer is levelling the playing field, giving individuals the ability to collaborate and compete in real time on a global scale. While the author is optimistic about the future, seeing progress in every field from architecture to zoology, he is aware that terrorists are also using computers to attack the very trends that make progress plausible and reasonable.
HM 846 .F74 2006
How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through Media Influence by Karen E. Dill
It's a common belief that the stories we encounter through mass media--whether in video games, action movies, or political comedy skits on Saturday Night Live--are just entertaining fantasies that have no tangible impact on our everyday lives, attitudes, and choices. Not so, says Karen Dill in this lively and provocative book. As much as we may want to deny it, the images, sounds, and narratives that bombard us daily have ample power to alter our realities.
Dill, the author of the single-most-cited study on the effects of video-game violence, draws on extensive research in social psychology to show not only the myriad ways--for good and ill--that media influence us, but also why we resist believing they do. Packed with eye-opening examples from everyday life, her wide-ranging analysis encompasses everything from gender and racial stereotyping to social identity, domestic violence, and presidential politics. She discusses the ways that super-thin models and actresses have altered women's self-images, dissects the manipulative strategies of advertising aimed at children and medical consumers, and explains how the "fake news" of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report may offer more authentic and incisive coverage than the cable channels and network newscasts.
She also assesses the growing importance of "new media" like text-messaging, blogs, and Facebook in how we communicate and process information. In a media-saturated society, Dill argues, understanding precisely how these powerful forces affect us and learning how to deal with them are vital to the very way we function as citizens. How Fantasy Become Reality shows what we can do to move from the passenger's seat to the driver's seat as media consumers.
HM1206 .D55 2009
A Force More Powerful: A Century of Non-Violent Conflict by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall
"In a contest of violence against violence," the philosopher Hannah Arendt observed, "the superiority of the government has always been absolute." When confronted with nonviolent resistance on the part of the downtrodden, however, governments have often crumbled--witness the fall of South Africa's apartheid regime and the ousting of Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia.
The worldwide spread of democracy in the 20th century, documentary writers Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall maintain, "would not have come to pass without the power of ordinary people who defied oppressive rulers not by force of arms, but by nonviolent action." By way of example, they cite the collapse of the Argentine military regime following peaceful protests by the mothers of men and women who had been murdered by the secret police; the eventual undermining of the Polish Communist regime by the nonviolent Solidarity labour movement; the refusal of the Danish people to comply with the laws of their Nazi occupiers during World War II; and the exemplary work done in India (and, earlier, South Africa) by Mohandas Gandhi, who took pains to emphasize that nonviolence does not imply passivity.
HM 1281 .A25 2001
P - Language and Literature
Abu Al-Hasan Al-Shushtari: Songs of Love and Devotion by Michael A. Sells and Lourdes Maria Alvarez (Classics of Western Spirituality series)
Sensuous, spiritual, and ethereal, this selection of works by the prominent Andalusian Sufi mystic and poet Abū al-Hasan al-Shushtarī (1212-1269) will delight everyone, whether or not they are devotees of Islamic literature.
PJ 7755 .S45 A2 2009
PS 8000 - Canadian Literature
The Great Karoo by Fred Stenson
The Great Karoo begins in 1899, as the British are trying to wrest control of the riches of South Africa from the Boers, the Dutch farmers who claimed the land. The Boers have turned out to be more resilient than expected, so the British have sent a call to arms to their colonies - and an a great number of men from the Canadian prairies answer the call and join the Canadian Mounted Rifles: a unit in which they can use their own beloved horses. They assume their horses will be able to handle the desert terrain of the Great Karoo as readily as the plains of their homeland. Frank Adams, a cowboy from Pincher Creek, joins the Rifles, along with other young men from the ranches and towns nearby - a mix of cowboys and mounted policeman, who, for whatever reason, feel a desire to fight for the Empire in this far-off war.
PS 8587 .T356 G42 2008
Aloha, Candy Hearts by Anthony Bidulka
From the calm Pacific to the storm-tossed prairie, a teasing puzzle turns into a frightening game of cat and mouse for PI Russell Quant. Russell can't be sure whether a dead man's surprising last gift will take him on a treasure hunt or a treacherous game of life or death. With a series of clues spanning decades - from a shocking modern-day murder to Saskatoon's dark, hidden past - he revisits the harsh realities of early homesteading, investigates the blackmail of one of the literary world's most esteemed writers, and digs for clues at the site of a never-forgotten scourge. As past reveals future, the hunter becomes the hunted. Racing to keep up with his latest case, Russell must balance his professional life with the demands of a wedding, a memorial, and at least one home-cooked meal at Mom's. With the Hawaiian sand barely shook free from his hair, Russell is confronted, professionally and personally, with the harsh consequences of indecision. Saying aloha is not always easy.
PS8553 .I319 A64 2009
MAY 2010 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
B - Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
The Case for God by Karen Armstrong
From the author of A History of God and The Great Transformation comes a balanced, nuanced understanding of the role religion plays in human life and the trajectory of faith in modern times.
Why has God become incredible? Why is it that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God in a way that veers so profoundly from the thinking of our ancestors?
Moving from the Paleolithic Age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the lengths to which humankind has gone to experience a sacred reality that it called God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. She examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith.
With her trademark depth of knowledge and profound insight, Armstrong elucidates how the changing world has necessarily altered the importance of religion at both societal and individual levels. And she makes a powerful, convincing argument for structuring a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age.
BL473 .A76 2009
Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love by Carl Anderson & Eduardo Chavez
In Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love, Anderson & Chavez trace the history of Our Lady of Guadalupe from the sixteenth century to the present discuss of how her message was and continues to be an important catalyst for religious and cultural transformation.
Looking at Our Lady of Guadalupe as a model of the Church and Juan Diego as a model for all Christians who seek to answer Christ's call of conversion and witness, the authors explore the changing face of the Catholic Church in North, Central, and South America, and they show how Our Lady of Guadalupe's message was not only historically significant, but how it speaks to contemporary issues confronting the American continents and people today.
BT660 .G8 A3 2009
FC - History. Canada
The Island of Canada: How Three Oceans Shaped Our Nation by Victor Suthren
Canada has the longest coastline of any nation on earth, together with the world's largest lake and river system.
In fact, bounded on three sides by oceans, and with a lake and river system that crosses the entire country east to west, Canada can be thought of as an island nation. Now, Victor Suthren, one of Canada's most articulate historians and an expert on maritime history, has written the first history that shows how the oceans and lakes of Canada have shaped our nation.
From the earliest days of Inuit and Aboriginal hunters, the Norse, Basque, Spanish, and French adventurers and fishermen to the explorers of the Pacific coast and the Arctic, the royal fleets of Britain and France, privateers, pirates, and merchantmen, the fur trade, and the great Age of Sail, here is a sweeping history that traces the development of the Canadian psyche as it has been shaped by its waters.
The Island of Canada is an extraordinary story about a sea-going nation informed by an examination of the mentality, which has made Canadians, inhabitants of an enormous land mass, nonetheless islanders in their unique character and heritage.
There is no nation on earth with a greater physical connection to the sea than Canada. Canada is the most astonishing of aquatic nations an here is its first truly national maritime history.
FC179 .S88 2009
True Patriot Love by Michael Ignatieff
In his prize-winning memoir, The Russian Album, Michael Ignatieff chronicled the fortunes of his father's family in Russia and in Canada . Now, in True Patriot Love, Ignatieff turns to his mother's family, the Grants. Over three generations the Grants conducted a spirited public argument about what Canada was and should be. True Patriot Love is both a tribute to and a reckoning with that inheritance.
In 1872, the author's great-grandfather George Monro Grant, set out with Sandford Fleming to map out the railway line that would link Canada from ocean to ocean. His grandfather William Lawson Grant fought at the Somme in World War I and came home believing that Canada had earned the right to call itself a fully independent nation. His son George Grant, author of Lament for a Nation, believed that Canada had gone from colony to nation and back to colony-of the United States.
Michael Ignatieff retells the history of his ancestors as a story of one family's search for Canada. He has turned a family memoir into a history of their love of country.
FC 501 .I35 2009
N - Fine Arts
Art in Turmoil: The Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966-76 by Richard King
Forty years after China's tumultuous Cultural Revolution, this book revisits the visual and performing arts of the period - the paintings, propaganda posters, political cartoons, sculpture, folk arts, private sketchbooks, opera, and ballet - and examines what these vibrant, militant, often gaudy images meant to artists, their patrons, and their audiences at the time, and what they mean now, both in their original forms and as revolutionary icons reworked for a new market-oriented age.
Chapters by scholars of Chinese history and art and by artists whose careers were shaped by the Cultural Revolution offer new insights into works that have transcended their times.
NX583 .A1 A78 2010
P - Language and Literature
My Abandonment: a Novel by Peter Rock
A 13 year old girl and her father live in Forest Park, the enormous nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. There they inhabit an elaborate cave shelter, bathe in a nearby creek, store perishables at the water's edge, tend a garden, and even keep a library of sorts. But one small mistake allows a backcountry jogger to discover them, which derails their entire existence, ultimately provoking a deeper flight.
Inspired by a true story and told through the voice of its young narrator, Caroline, the book is a riveting journey into lives lived at the margins and a mesmerizing tale of survival and hope.
PS3568 .O327 M9 2009
Q - Science
620 Wild Plants of North America by Tom Reaume
Naturalists, birders, students, teachers, conservationists, environmental consultants, wildlife biologists and botanists-amateur and professional alike-will find this picture book of plant anatomy to be an invaluable reference alongside local floras and field guides.
620 Wild Plants of North America describes, in beautiful detail, the characteristic features of 89 families of vascular plants-including trees, shrubs, vines, wildflowers, grasses, sedges, horsetails, and club-mosses-using labeled ink drawings, text and range maps. The author's drawings are from plants in the field and freshly picked specimens. The text outlines habitat, flowers, fruit, seeds, leaves and stems. The range maps cover central North America from the three Prairie Provinces south to northern Texas and from Iowa west to Idaho. With its detailed, labeled drawings, 620 Wild Plants opens the door to understanding the unique morphological features of plants in all of the major families represented in the flora of central North America.
Includes: over 5,000 detailed, labeled line drawings; scientific names, including synonyms, and common names; detailed descriptions of habitat, flowers, leaves and stems; range maps for the northern Great and Central Plains; glossary, reference list and index.
OVERSIZE QK110 .R436 2009
R - Medicine
Enter Mourning: a Memoir on Death, Dementia, and Coming Home by Heather Menzies
Heather Menzies led a fairly normal life sandwiched between a demanding career and a busy family typical of her baby-boomer generation.
Then the ground shifted.
Her aging widowed mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
Menzies chronicles the transformative journey with her mother as words fail and the very nature of communication is redefined. Family dynamics among sisters and brothers come to the fore as the roles and responsibilities of the parent shift to the children: from moving their mother to a seniors` residence to signing a medical power of attorney to the matriarch`s physical decline, to her safe passage into death. Menzies and her siblings experience growing old--and growing up--in touching and heart-wrenching ways.
Grounded with personal, intimate photos, Enter Mourning balances poetic and practical sensibilities in its tale of a mother losing her grip on reality and a daughter coming to grips with her own.
RC523 .M46 2008
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells-taken without her knowledge-became one of the most important tools in medicine.
The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta's family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits.
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
RC265.6 .L24 S55 2010
S - Agriculture
Tips on container gardening by Stuart Robertson
Nearly everybody who gardens grows something in a container. It is often the first introduction a person has to growing plants either to look at or to eat. This book is for anyone who wants to grow things without a garden, whether it's on a third-floor balcony or a back deck, the only real alternative is to do it in some sort of container. Growing plants in containers involves a few methods and situations that are different from ground-level gardening, and this book details these differences and their solutions. It always refers to techniques that use organic principles, and is suitable for all types of gardeners in Canada and the northern United States.
SB 418 .R62 2008
Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper by C. Marina Marchese
Honeybee is one woman's charming and personal account of abandoning the rat race to live blissfully as a beekeeper and honey entrepreneur plus everything you'd ever want to know about bees.
Ten years ago, Marina Marchese fell in love with bees during a tour of a neighbour's honeybee hives. Surprised to find that allowing docile honeybees to crawl across her hands instilled a serene tranquility and comfort, Marina quit her job, acquired her own bees, built her own hives, harvested honey, earned a certificate in apitherapy, studied wine tasting in order to transfer those skills to honey tasting, and eventually opened her own business. Today, Red Bee Honey sells artisanal honey and honey-related products to shops and restaurants all over the country.
Honeybee is not only a warm and inspiring story of one woman's intimate experience with honeybees, but it is also bursting with fascinating and practical information about all aspects of bees, beekeeping, and honey, including life inside the beehive and the role of the queen, drones, and workers; how bees make honey; pollination and its importance in sustaining life; building a beehive; hiving and keeping honeybees; harvesting honey and comb; healing with honey and the practice of apitherapy; and much, much more. Recipes for food, drink, and personal care products are included throughout. Also included is a detailed appendix of 75 different varieties of honey.
SF 523.82 .M37 A3 2009
Z - Library Science
What Is Stephen Harper Reading?: Yann Martel's Recommended Reading for a Prime Minister and Book Lovers of All Stripes by Yann Martel
"I know you're very busy, Mr. Harper. We're all busy. But every person has a space next to where they sleep, whether a patch of pavement or a fine bedside table. In that space, at night, a book can glow. And in those moments of docile wakefulness, when we begin to let go of the day, then is the perfect time to pick up a book and be someone else, somewhere else, for a few minutes, a few pages, before we fall asleep."
From the author of Life of Pi comes a literary correspondence-recommendations to Canada's Prime Minister of great short books that will inspire and delight book lovers and book club readers across our nation.
Every two weeks since April 16th, 2007, Yann Martel has mailed Stephen Harper a book along with a letter. These insightful, provocative letters detailing what he hopes the Prime Minister may take from the books - by such writers as Jane Austen, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Stephen Galloway - are collected here together. The one-sided correspondence (Mr. Harper's office has only replied once) becomes a meditation on reading and writing and the necessity to allow ourselves to expand stillness in our lives, even if we're not head of government.
Z 1035.9 .M37 2009
APRIL 2010 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
B - Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
Just Policing, Not War: an Alternative Response to World Violence by Drew Christiansen, Ivan Kauffman, and Gerald W. Schlabach
For decades, the Catholic Church and historical peace churches such as the Mennonites have come together in ecumenical discussions about war and peace. The dividing point has always been between pacifism, the view held by Mennonites and other peace churches, and the just war theory that dominates Catholic thinking on the issue.
Given the transformation of global relations over this period-increased interdependency and communication as well as the fall of the Soviet Union, emerging nationalism movements, and the slow development of international courts-the time is right to rethink the Christian response to war.
BT 736.4 .J88 2007
D - History. General and Old World
The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
Ackerman tells the remarkable WWII story of Jan Zabinski, the director of the Warsaw Zoo, and his wife, Antonina, who, with courage and coolheaded ingenuity, sheltered 300 Jews as well as Polish resisters in their villa and in animal cages and sheds.
Using Antonina's diaries, other contemporary sources and her own research in Poland, Ackerman takes us into the Warsaw ghetto and the 1943 Jewish uprising and also describes the Poles' revolt against the Nazi occupiers in 1944. She introduces us to such varied figures as Lutz Heck, the duplicitous head of the Berlin zoo; Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, spiritual head of the ghetto; and the leaders of Zegota, the Polish organization that rescued Jews. Ackerman reveals other rescuers, like Dr. Mada Walter, who helped many Jews pass, giving lessons on how to appear Aryan and not attract notice.
D 804.66 .Z33 A25 2007
E - History. Americas
Bloody Falls of the Coppermine: Madness, Murder, and the Collision of Cultures in the Arctic, 1913 by Mckay Jenkins
An obscure Arctic tragedy-the brutal killing of two Catholic priests by two Eskimos-gives Jenkins an opportunity to "explor[e] a moment in history in which two remarkably different cultures violently intersected." The clergymen began a mission to a remote group of Eskimos in 1911, but poor planning and an almost criminal underestimation of the challenges involved doomed the effort from the start. Jenkins has mastered the art of conveying his themes with telling and memorable details-for example, since the Eskimos had no concept of God, the beginning of the Lord's Prayer was translated as " 'Our boat owner, who is in heaven.'"
Tensions arising from the struggle to survive the brutal environment led to the killings. Eventually, the murderers were captured by the Mounties in a remarkably efficient search of the vast wilderness. The trial, with the defendants' questionable ability to truly understand what is transpiring, affords the author further opportunities to illuminate a culture clash with resonances beyond its particular time and place.
E 99 .E7 J46 2005
FC - History. Canada
Dark Storm Moving West by Barbara Belyea
The fur trade was the impetus for much of the exploration and discovery of North America. The expanding enterprise of the fur trade moved relentlessly west to explore the furthest reaches of the continent. From Hudson Bay, Lake Superior, and the Mississippi River, European and American explorers and traders followed a web of waterways north to the rich fur region of Lake Athabaska, farther north to the Arctic Ocean, and west to the Rocky Mountains and on to the Pacific Ocean.
The essays in Dark Storm Moving West trace three phases of westward exploration: naval and fur trade ventures on the Pacific coast; traders' progress along interior rivers and lakes; and, the transcontinental Lewis and Clark expedition, which used maps based on fur trade surveys. The author poses challenging questions about the rapid expansion, its effects on Native populations, European versus Native cartography, cultural definitions of space, and communication of traditions. Belyea also introduces Peter Fidler as an important documentary source for exploration studies during the fur trade expansion, incorporating into her own study Fidler's journals, maps, and reports, most of which are previously unpublished.
FC 3212 .B44 2007
G - Geography. Anthropology. Recreation
Bothered By My Green Conscience by Franke James
You've changed all your light bulbs and switched to cloth bags at the grocery store. You recycle cans and bottles and you don't print out that e-mail unless you absolutely have to. What's next?
Using her signature style of lively drawings mixed with photos and hand drawn text, artist Franke James shows how we can meet the global warming challenge with imagination and creativity. Five vibrant, dynamic, full-color visual essays present refreshing and insightful ideas that make climate change personal.
GE 195.7 .J36 2009
L - Education
Columbine by Dave Cullen
On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their goal was simple: to blow up their school, Oklahoma-City style, and to leave "a lasting impression on the world." Their bombs failed, but the ensuing shooting defined a new era of school violence-irrevocably branding every subsequent shooting "another Columbine."
When we think of Columbine, we think of the Trench Coat Mafia; we think of Cassie Bernall, the girl we thought professed her faith before she was shot; and we think of the boy pulling himself out of a school window -- the whole world was watching him. Now, in a riveting piece of journalism nearly ten years in the making, comes the story none of us knew. In this revelatory book, Dave Cullen has delivered a profile of teenage killers that goes to the heart of psychopathology. He lays bare the callous brutality of mastermind Eric Harris, and the quavering, suicidal Dylan Klebold, who went to prom three days earlier and obsessed about love in his journal.
The result is an astonishing account of two good students with lots of friends, who came to stockpile a basement cache of weapons, to record their raging hatred, and to manipulate every adult who got in their way. They left signs everywhere, described by Cullen with a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of police files, FBI psychologists, and the boy's tapes and diaries, he gives the first complete account of the Columbine tragedy.
LB 3013.33 .C6 C84 2009
P - Language and Literature
My Father's Tears and Other Stories by John Updike
John Updike's first collection of new short fiction since the year 2000, My Father's Tears finds the author in a valedictory mood as he mingles narratives of his native Pennsylvania with stories of New England suburbia and of foreign travel.
"Personal Archaeology" considers life as a sequence of half-buried layers, and "The Full Glass" distills a lifetime's happiness into one brimming moment of an old man's bedtime routine. High-school class reunions, in "The Walk with Elizanne" and "The Road Home," restore their hero to youth's commonwealth where, as the narrator of the title story confides, "the self I value is stored, however infrequently I check on its condition." Exotic locales encountered in the journeys of adulthood include Morocco, Florida, Spain, Italy, and India. The territory of childhood, with its fundamental, formative mysteries, is explored in "The Guardians," "The Laughter of the Gods," and "Kinderszenen." Love's fumblings among the bourgeoisie yield the tart comedy of "Free," "Delicate Wives," "The Apparition," and "Outage."
In sum, American experience from the Depression to the aftermath of 9/11 finds reflection in these stories of observation, remembrance, and imagination.
PS 3571 .P4 M9 2009
Half broke horses by Jeannette Walls
Half broke horses is the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls's magnificent, true-life novel based on her no-nonsense, resourceful, hard working, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, all alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car and fly a plane, and, with her husband, ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle.
Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy. She bristled at prejudice of all kinds -- against women, Native Americans, and anyone else who didn't fit the mold.
PS3623 .A3644 H35 2009
PS 8000 - Canadian Literature
Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
Joseph Boyden's first novel is the story of two Cree friends, Xavier and Elijah, who leave their pristine northern country to end up in the horrific trenches of World War I. Loosely based on the real life of a famous Canadian sniper, the story is told from two first-person views: those of Xavier and his old aunt and only living relative, Niska. After the war, Niska is taking her wounded nephew back home north to the bush in a canoe. Their trip is the three-day road of the title, which also refers to the journey taken after death. The story of the war is told in flashbacks on this journey as Xavier recovers from morphine addiction. Niska also relates various stories to Xavier, believing there is "medicine in the tale."
Boyden is a natural storyteller. Both the Native tales of the north and the grim accounts of the war in France and Belgium have the ring of truth. His images can be subtly appropriate--raiders who go over the top are "eaten by the night"--and his characterizations are excellent, especially the three main players and Xavier's Canadian trenchmates. Eventually, Elijah seems to feed on the death all around him, becoming a "windigo," while Xavier begins to question the sanity of the war and his friend's growing madness, realizing "we all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy, the one facing what we do to the enemy." Not for the squeamish reader, this is a powerful novel that takes a new angle on a popular subject, "the war to end all wars."
PS 8553 .O9999 T4 2005
The Girls by Lori Lansens
In 29 years, Rose Darlen has never spent a moment apart from her twin sister, Ruby. She has never gone for a solitary walk or had a private conversation. Yet, in all that time, she has never once looked into Ruby's eyes. Joined at the head, "The Girls" (as they are known in their small Ontario town) are the world's oldest surviving craniopagus twins. While some writers might be tempted to play up the grotesque aspects of life as a conjoined twin, Lansens treats her so-called freaks with sensitivity and respect. The result is an extraordinarily moving narrative about human connectedness that questions the very meaning of "normal."
PS8573 .A5866 G57 2006
S - Agriculture
The War on Weeds in the Prairie West: an Environmental History by Clinton L. Evans
This book spans four centuries of weed history from sixteenth-century England to mid-twentieth century Canada. Evans looks at topics such as weed biology/ecology, environmental history, herbicide development, noxious weed legislation, and the emergence of weed science as a distinct field of scientific inquiry. He provides an in-depth chronicle of the war on weeds that raged in Western Canada between 1800 and 1950 and the evolution of the relationship between humans and weeds. Evans draws on extensive primary sources and considers the delicate connection between human culture and the natural world.
The book is particularly timely because of debates on the use of pesticides and herbicide resistance crops, such as canola and fills a need for a detailed survey of agricultural development and settlement on the Prairies. In this provocative book, Evans suggests that herbicides have simply prolonged the war on weeds, and that by breeding herbicide resistance into crops, agrochemical companies are attempting to secure long-term herbicide and genetically-modified seed sales by forcing farmers to continue to fight a war that can never be won.
SB 613 .C3 E94 2002
T - Technology
The Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore: An Illustrated History of Railway Stations in Canada by Ron Brown
Despite the "green" benefits of rail travel, Canada has lost much of its railway heritage. Across the country stations have been bulldozed and rails ripped up. Once the heart of communities large and small, stations and tracks have left little more than a gaping hole in Canada's landscapes.
This book revisits the times when railways were the country's economic lifeline, and the station the social centre. Here was where we worked, played, listened to political speeches, or simply said goodbye to loved ones never knowing when they would return. The landscapes which grew around the station are also explored and include such forgotten features as station hotels, restaurants, gardens and the once common railway YMCA. Railway companies often hired the world's leading architects to design grand station buildings which ranged in style from chateau-esque to art deco. Even small town stations and wayside shelters displayed an artistic flare and elegance. Although most have vanished, the book celebrates the survival of that heritage in stations which have been saved or indeed remain in use. The book will appeal to anyone who has links with our rail era, or who simply appreciates the value of Canada's built heritage.
TF 302 .C3 B76 2008
MARCH 2010 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
B - Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
What Jesus said and why it matters now by Timothy D. Fallon
Flowing out of author Timothy D. Fallon's lifelong spiritual journey, What Jesus Said and Why It Matters Now incorporates insights gained from his experiences in church ministry, the business world and family life as husband, stepparent and grandparent.
Fallon uses a wide range of contemporary examples--everything from MAD Magazine and Washington Post articles to Saving Private Ryan and Steve Martin's Shopgirl film--to help readers experience how God touches us in our own lives.
With seven Gospel accounts, What Jesus Said and Why It Matters Now demonstrates a method readers can apply to make each story a vital part of their lives. Fallon says three fundamental questions lie at the heart of personalizing the Gospels: What's the experience of this story? How does this story touch me? How does this story call me to live?
BS 2555.6 .C48 F35 2006
Thomas Merton: prophet of renewal by John Eudes Bamberger
Like Bernard of Clairvaux, whose last act was to leave his cloister to mediate--successfully--between two nobles and prevent bloodshed, Thomas Merton found in the monastic life of prayer a source of strength, empathy, and understanding. To understand Merton, one must first know him as a Prophet of Monastic renewal.
BX3403 .B36 2005
FC - History. Canada
The Frog Lake Reader by Myrna Kostash
Non-fiction authority Myrna Kostash merges the past and the present in The Frog Lake Reader, which offers a startlingly objective perspective on the tragic events surrounding the Frog Lake Massacre of 1885. By bringing together eyewitness accounts and journal excerpts, memoirs and contemporary fiction, and excerpts from interviews with historians, Kostash provides a panoramic perspective on a tragedy often overshadowed by Louis Riel's rebellion during the same year.
The history is contentious and its interpretation unresolved, but The Frog Lake Reader, with its broad survey of vital historical accounts and points of view, offers the most comprehensive and informative narrative on the Frog Lake Massacre to date.
FC 3215 .F765 2009
H - Social Sciences
Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose--Doing Business by Respecting the Earth by Ray Anderson
"America's greenest CEO" and the hero from the award-winning documentary The Corporation makes the urgent, compelling case that sustainable business pays.
His story is now legend. In 1994, after reading The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken, Ray Anderson felt a "spear in the chest": the founder of Interface, Inc., a billion-dollar carpeting manufacturer, realized that his company was plundering the environment and he needed to steer it on a new course. Since then, Interface has cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 82%, and the goal is to reach zero environmental footprints by 2020.
Thoughtful and winning, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist shows how Anderson revolutionized his company, in the process bringing costs down, improving quality, making it one of Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" - and driving up profits.
HD 30.255 .A53 2009
N - Fine Arts
Legacy of stone: Saskatchewan's stone buildings by Margaret Hryniuk and Frank Korvemaker
Legacy of stone features the images and stories of some of Saskatchewan's most impressive stone buildings, along with historical notes on some of the builders who made them.
In words and stunning colour pictures, this book tells the history and the current reality of over 50 fieldstone buildings in Saskatchewan. The book includes an introduction by Bernie Flaman, the provincial Heritage Architect, a historical overview, and profiles of several of Saskatchewan's most prominent stonemasons. The balance of the book is made up of stories of the buildings farmhouses, homes in urban communities, places of worship, public buildings and ruins.
Margaret Hryniuk uses her years of experience in journalism to present factual yet fascinating accounts of the buildings and what is known of the people who put them there. Larry Easton's spectacular photographs bring these beautiful stone buildings to life, and Frank Korvemaker examines the dimensions and differences of the fieldstone that inhabits the Saskatchewan landscape.
Winner of the Saskatchewan Book Awards Book of the Year Award 2009
NA746 S3 H79 2008
P - Language and Literature
Shadowplay: the Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare by Clare Asquith
In 16th century England many loyal subjects to the crown were asked to make a terrible choice: to follow their monarch or their God. The era was one of unprecedented authoritarianism. This age of terror was also the era of the greatest creative genius the world has ever known: William Shakespeare. How, then, could such a remarkable man born into such violently volatile times apparently make no comment about the state of England in his work?
He did. But it was hidden. Revealing Shakespeare's sophisticated version of a forgotten code developed by 16th-century dissidents, Clare Asquith shows how he was both a genius for all time and utterly a creature of his own era: a writer who was supported by dissident Catholic aristocrats, who agonized about the fate of England's spiritual and political life and who used the stage to attack and expose a regime which he believed had seized illegal control of the country he loved.
Shakespeare's plays offer an acute insight into the politics and personalities of his era. And Clare Asquith's decoding of them offers answers to several mysteries surrounding Shakespeare's own life, including most notably why he stopped writing while still at the height of his powers. An utterly compelling combination of literary detection and political revelation, Shadowplay is the definitive expose of how Shakespeare lived through and understood the agonies of his time, and what he had to say about them.
PR 3017 .A75 2005
PS 8000 - Canadian Literature
Born With a Tooth by Joseph Boyden
Almost a decade after its original publication, award winner and Governor General Literary Award nominee Joseph Boyden's classic book of short stories is finally being reissued.
Born With A Tooth, Boyden's debut work of fiction, is a collection of thirteen beautifully written stories about aboriginal life in Ontario. They are stories of love, unexpected triumph, and a passionate belief in dreams. They are also stories of anger and longing, of struggling to adapt, of searching but remaining unfulfilled. The collection includes 'Bearwalker', a story that introduces a character who appears again in Boyden's novel Three Day Road. By taking on a new voice in each story, Joseph Boyden explores aboriginal stereotypes and traditions in a most unexpected way. Whether told by a woman trying to forget her past or by a drunken man trying to preserve his culture, each story paints an unforgettable and varied image of modern aboriginal culture in Ontario. An extraordinary first book, Born with a Tooth reveals why Joseph Boyden is a writer worth reading.
PS 8553 .O9999 B6 2008
Man Reading "Woman Reading in Bath" by John Livingstone Clark
In Man Reading "Woman Reading in Bath", John Livingstone Clark creates a series of poetic meditations as responses to the work of Anne Szumigalski: specifically the poem entitled "Woman Reading in Bath", in the book that shares the same name. Clark's inspiration for this project was a question posed by the elder poet several times in her last few years: "Why do so many of my book titles have water in them?" For Clark, the poem "Woman Reading in Bath" reflects a number of major themes in her work, and by writing individual poems in relation to single lines (occasionally a couplet), the `mythopoesis' of her work could be opened up in a book of poetry.
Within this textual framework, Clark's poems are dominated by the metaphor of a swimmer enveloped in a series of states and environments. The swimmer is a lonely man, but he accepts it as part of the rite of passage we must all make: moving from solid ground and social activity, to the beach with its visionary views, and finally the stage when one actually enters the water and moves out into a seemingly infinite ocean, beneath a tangibly infinite sky.
From the personal to the universal, this collection is an ode to the harmonics of mind, body, and spirit.
PS 8555 .L37185 M35 2009
The Horse Knows the Way by Dave Margoshes
The Horse Knows the Way is Margoshes' fourth collection of poetry and 13th book overall and resembles his earlier collections but also marks a new direction.
In addition to the Margoshes formula of love poems intermingled with voice poems and occasional poems, poems about being in Saskatchewan, Banff, and Emma Lake and poems about the weather, Margoshes is, for the first time, looking back to childhood.
PS 8576 .A724 H67 2009
Too much happiness by Alice Munro
This stunning collection of ten new stories demonstrates once again why Alice Munro is celebrated as a pre-eminent master of the short story. While some of the stories are traditional, set in "Alice Munro Country" in Ontario or in B.C., dealing with ordinary women's lives, others have a new, sharper edge. By way of astonishing variety, the title story, set in Victorian Europe, follows the last journey from France to Sweden of a famous Russian mathematician. This daring, superb collection proves that Alice Munro will always surprise you.
PS8576 .U57 T66 2009
The Shack by William P. Young
Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever.
In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant The Shack wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him.
PS8647 .O865 S53 2007
PT - Swedish Literature
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Cases rarely come much colder than the decades-old disappearance of teen heiress Harriet Vanger from her family's remote island retreat north of Stockholm, nor do fiction debuts hotter than this European bestseller by Swedish journalist Larsson. At once a strikingly original thriller and a vivisection of Sweden's dirty not-so-little secrets (as suggested by its original title, Men Who Hate Women), this first of a trilogy introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable superhacker. Hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger, who wants to find out what happened to his beloved great-niece before he dies, the duo gradually uncover a festering morass of familial corruption--at the same time, Larsson skilfully bares some of the similar horrors that have left Salander such a marked woman. Larsson died in 2004, shortly after handing in the manuscripts for what will be his legacy.
PT 9876.22 .A6933 M3613 2008
Q -- Science
Science: a four thousand year history by Patricia Fara
Science: A Four Thousand Year History rewrites science's past. Instead of focussing on difficult experiments and abstract theories, Patricia Fara shows how science has always belonged to the practical world of war, politics, and business. Rather than glorifying scientists as idealized heroes, she tells true stories about real people--men (and some women) who needed to earn their living, who made mistakes, and who trampled down their rivals in their quest for success.
Fara sweeps through the centuries, from ancient Babylon right up to the latest hi-tech experiments in genetics and particle physics, illuminating the financial interests, imperial ambitions, and publishing enterprises that have made science the powerful global phenomenon that it is today. She also ranges internationally, illustrating the importance of scientific projects based around the world, from China to the Islamic empire, as well as the more familiar tale of science in Europe, from Copernicus to Charles Darwin and beyond. Above all, this four thousand year history challenges scientific supremacy, arguing controversially that science is successful not because it is always right--but because people have said that it is right.
Q125 .F27 2009
S-Agriculture
Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto--the promises and perils of the biotech harvest by Peter Pringle
Biotechnology inspires hope in some and horror in others. A complex topic, it invokes many contemporary concerns--third world famine, biodiversity, corporate responsibility, the ethics of corporate ownership of the processes of life itself-and involves a bewildering array of interrelated national and international legal, political, scientific, and economic forces. Public discourse is polarized with scaremongering on one side and arrogance on the other, and it is difficult for the non-specialist to arrive at an informed opinion.
Here, in readable, journalistic fashion, Pringle provides what has been missing: facts and explanations, reasoned argument, and common ground. He reveals many dimensions of several controversies that will be familiar to most readers from media coverage, yet remain poorly understood: Is the monarch butterfly endangered by pesticide-laced corn? Are we throwing away our heritage of biodiversity? Are plant hunters cultural pirates? As the title indicates, Pringle points out the danger of a few large and poorly regulated corporations owning and controlling so much of the world's agriculture and genetic technology, but he doesn't demonize. Rather than simplifying a complicated subject, he accomplishes the more difficult task of presenting the complexities of genetic science, academic politics, corporate strategies, or international treaties in such a clear and interesting manner that readers come to appreciate and understand them. This is a book to satisfy curiosity and engender concern.
S494.5 .B563 P74 2005
FEBRUARY 2010 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
B - Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
Have A Little Faith: A True Story by Mitch Albom
Have a Little Faith is Albom's first true-life story since Tuesdays with Morrie, and like that classic tale, this book explores life through a unique journey: Mitch searches for the right words to eulogize a Man of God.
Albom takes his readers on a mission to honour a last request and send a beloved rabbi off to heaven the way the cleric had done for so many before him. Along the way, Albom--who walked away from a deeply religious background as a young man--rekindles his own faith by sitting with and caring for the wise, funny, but slowly decaying man of the cloth. Together, they explore the things that pull us apart about faith, as well as the universal beliefs that pull us together: God, heaven, doubt, war, atheism, intermarriage, the "us" versus "them" of religion.
Meanwhile, as Albom crafts his cleric's final send off, he accidentally engages with an inner-city pastor of a crumbling church, one that houses the homeless and collects no dues--as far from Albom's religious upbringing as possible. Skeptical at first, Albom begins to admire the pastor and his impoverished congregation. And as his own beloved cleric slowly lets go, Albom discovers that a faithful heart comes in many forms and from many places.
BM729 .F35 A496 2009
Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman by Sheema Khan
In these thoughtful essays, Sheema Khan-Canadian hockey mom and Harvard PhD-gives us her own pointed insights on the condition of being a modern and liberal, yet practising Muslim, especially in Canada. Tackling a host of issues, such as terrorism, human rights, Islamic law, women's rights, and the meaning of hijab, she explains Islam to the greater public while calling for mutual understanding and tolerance. She tells us "Why Muslims are angry," and "You can't pigeonhole 1.2 billion Muslims" (post 9/11), while calling on Muslims to "acknowledge the rise of fanaticism."
BP161.3 .K4365 2009
Virgin Trails: a Secular Pilgrimage by Robert Ward
Part travelogue and part anthropological study, Virgin Trails is an account of Ward's visits to several sites of Marian devotion in Europe. The result is hilarious, moving, thoughtful and delightfully written.
As for the Virgin Mary and her alleged miracles, Ward refuses to sneer. Instead, he makes the case that what it's really all about is a persistent faith in the idea of mercy and the very real and ancient human need to believe in the possibility that there is a greater kindness out there somewhere.
BT652 .E85 W37 2002
Prayer as Joy, Prayer as Struggle by Mark Braaten
Braaten explores many types of prayer, including thanksgiving, confession, praise, wrestling, petition, intercession, listening, and hope. He also explores what it means when the answer to prayer is no and how we experience prayer in doubt and in confidence. In each chapter, he uses an extended biblical example of prayer and also provides the text of prayers we can use in our own practice.
For all who seek joy in prayer, even as we struggle, Braaten offers an engaging personal and pastoral reflection on the ways we pray.
BV210.3 .B73 2008
John Paul II: Man of History by Edward Stourton
John Paul was, famously, a bundle of paradoxes; he defied every attempt to put him in an ideological box, and he was equally bewildering to his admirers and his detractors. Edward Stourton unravels John Paul's life, his beliefs, his actions and ultimately places him in context within the Catholic Church of the 20th and 21st Century.
A wonderfully, insightful, involving and rewarding look at the life of a man who was not only one of the most important men of the last thirty years of the 20th century but who became, in his last days, a living symbol of the Christian response to suffering and an inspiration to billions.
BX1378.5 .S767 2006
D - History.General and Old World
What the Thunder Said: Reflections of a Canadian Officer in Kandahar by Christie Blatchford and Lieutenant-Colonel John Conrad
What the Thunder Said, Lt.-Col. John Conrad's account of his six-month tour in Kandahar, introduces us to new perspectives on the Canadian experience in Afghanistan, and contains the foundations of a better understanding of that experience. Conrad was the commander of the logistics battalion supporting Canada's Kandahar-based Task Force Orion during the hard-fought summer of 2006. Every day, he and his 300 soldiers ran the harrowing gauntlet of IEDs and ambushes to deliver ammunition, fuel, food, repairs, and a myriad of other supplies to the Task Force.
Although a logistics officer's perspective on these matters is unique in Canadian military writing, what truly elevates this particular book from other, similar works is Conrad's startling ability to capture the many layers of dissonance inherent in being a Canadian at war in Afghanistan. Conrad recalls being "shocked" by news of the aggressive deployment to war-ravaged Kandahar, and reflects that Canada's dreams for Afghanistan are "almost un-Canadian in their boldness." He and his soldiers find themselves in an environment utterly alien, fighting a war fundamentally different from the 20th century world view of the Canadian Forces.
DS371.413 .C66 2009
FC - History. Canada
Marie-Anne: The Extraordinary Life of Louis Riel's Grandmother by Maggie Siggins
Marie-Anne Lagimodière is an excellent subject for a biography: she was the first white woman to follow her coureur de bois husband into the bush, she witnessed the war between the Hudson's Bay Company and the North Western Company, and she was the grandmother of Louis Riel. She accompanied her fur trapper husband to the uncharted wilderness of western Canada. The year was 1807, and no European woman had yet ventured west of the Great Lakes region. For the next thirty years, she would live among the native people or at fur-trading forts from Pembina to Edmonton House, leading an undoubtedly difficult life but one with freedoms unknown to women in western societies of her time.
Drawing from primary sources, Siggins paints a vivid portrait of life in the West, from survival on the plains and bison hunts to the tribal warfare triggered by the fur-trade economy. Through it all, Marie-Anne survived and thrived, living to 96, the matriarch of a large and diverse family whose descendants still live in Manitoba.
FC3213.1 .L34 S44 2008
G - Geography. Anthropology. Recreation
The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World by Wade Davis
In The Wayfinders, the 2009 instalment of CBC's Massey Lectures, Davis describes several groups he has come to know, peoples who live so closely with the natural world that they can hardly discern a border between the human and the non-human, animate and inanimate. Their art and myths afford outsiders a glimpse of an alternative to the dominant social paradigm that began with Cartesian thought in Europe and eventually spread around the globe. Today, this way of seeing the world is so pervasive that most people probably aren't aware alternatives exist at all. Such ignorance could prove damaging to the future of life on this planet. If biodiversity and the peoples best equipped to understand it disappear, alternative sustainable lifestyles may vanish along with them. The earth's ongoing viability requires a spectrum of wildlife and a wide range of human perception.
Davis argues persuasively that our current patterns of thought and behaviour could do with input from elsewhere. He urges us to assimilate some valuable lessons from the planet's ancient cultures before it is too late.
GN378 .D37 2009
What People Wore When by Melissa Leventon
What People Wore When combines the studies of two classic nineteenth-century illustrators Auguste Racinet and Friedrich Hottenroth for the first time. Their works are presented first by chronology and then by subject, so that illustrators, historians, and students alike can choose to follow the path of fashion through the centuries, or study in detail the contrasting styles of individual clothing and accessories. Silhouettes reveal the shape of style through the ages, detailed cross-references draw attention to recurring motifs, and navigation bars help the researcher to travel the complex chronology of costume.
With authoritative narrative from leading experts in the history of costume, extraordinary contemporary quotes that reveal the impact of style in its day, detailed annotation, and an extensive glossary, the book provides a magnificent study of the rich vocabulary of style through the ages.
GT511 .L474 2008
Playing with Fire by Theo Fleury
Theo Fleury at 5'6" made a name for himself in a game played by giants. A star in junior hockey, he became an integral part of the Calgary Flames' Stanley Cup win in 1989. Fleury's talent was such that despite a growing drug habit and erratic, inexplicable behaviour on and off the ice, Wayne Gretzky believed in him. He became a key member of the gold medal-winning men's hockey team at the 2002 Olympics.
In Playing with Fire, Theo Fleury takes us behind the bench during his glorious days as an NHL player to his darkest days, haunted by addiction, marital breakups, brushes with the law and a suicidal night of drinking. He talks about growing up devastatingly poor and in chaos at home. Driven by anger and guilt, he eventually found redemption in his family and freedom by burying the ghosts of his past.
GV848.5 .F66 A3 2009
N - Fine Arts
Independent Spirit: Early Canadian Women Artists by A K. Prakash
Independent Spirit celebrates women artists in Canada from the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Drawing on rarely seen paintings in private collections, as well as exquisite pieces from public galleries, A.K. Prakash offers a unique and inspired selection of work by women artists who changed the face of Canadian art.
In Part I, seventy-seven works of art by thirty-six artists are presented in detail, each with a stunning full-page colour image and an incisive analysis and appreciation of the work. In Part II, in-depth biographies feature additional full-colour images and details of the artwork to illustrate each artist's approach and distinctive technique.
The first definitive book on the subject, Independent Spirit includes an annotated index of 564 early Canadian women artists and a comprehensive bibliography, with selected resources for each of the thirty-six artists profiled in Parts I and II. Invaluable to collectors and scholars alike, this unrivalled resource will be essential reading for anyone interested in Canadian art.
OVERSIZE N6548 .P735 2008
P - Language and Literature
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages.
Wolf Hall explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage.
Winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize
PR6063 .A438 W65 2009
PS 8000 - Canadian Literature
Welcome to Canada by David Carpenter
Welcome to Canada brings together a fine selection of Carpenter's stories, with their combination of light and sombre moments. What often begins as a comedy can frequently veer into fierceness, farce, regret or indignation. On these unpredictable journeys we meet an amorous Texas millionaire and his native fishing guide, a cow named Turkle, a farm girl who talks to bears, a kokum who communes with departed spirits, a German scholar with a taste for Saskatoon berries and more.
Get out of the house, get out of town, go west, go north, head for the wilderness and suffer like a true Canadian. David Carpenter will take you there.
PS8555 .A76 W45 2009
Small Beneath the Sky by Lorna Crozier
A volume of poignant recollections by one of Canada's most celebrated poets, Small Beneath the Sky is a tender, unsparing portrait of a family and a place.
Lorna Crozier vividly depicts her hometown of Swift Current, with its one main street, two high schools, and three beer parlours-where her father spent most of his evenings. She writes unflinchingly about the grief and shame caused by poverty and alcoholism. At the heart of the book is Crozier's fierce love for her mother, Peggy. The narratives of daily life-sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking-are interspersed with prose poems. Lorna Crozier approaches the past with a tactile sense of discovery, tracing her beginnings with a poet's precision and an open heart.
PS8555 .R72 Z476 2009
Book of Negroes: Illustrated Edition by Lawrence Hill
Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle--a string of slaves--Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. But years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and registering her name in the historic "Book of Negroes". This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the US for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own.
Aminata's eventual return to Sierra Leone--passing ships carrying thousands of slaves bound for America--is an engrossing account of an obscure but important chapter in history that saw 1,200 former slaves embark on a harrowing back-to-Africa odyssey.
This full-colour edition of the The Book of Negroes, shares with readers the many photos, works of art and documents that inspired Lawrence Hill to create his award-winning work. It adds to the novel more than 150 images: early maps and documents, archival photos, period paintings and never before-published pages from the original handwritten ledger from which the novel draws its name. Readers will travel with Aminata Diallo from a West African village to an indigo plantation in South Carolina, through the tough streets of New York City and the harsh climate of Nova Scotia to the coast of Sierra Leone, and finally to an abolitionist's home in London.
PS8565 .I437 B66 2009
The Girls by Lori Lansens
In 29 years, Rose Darlen has never spent a moment apart from her twin sister, Ruby. She has never gone for a solitary walk or had a private conversation. Yet, in all that time, she has never once looked into Ruby's eyes. Joined at the head, "The Girls" (as they are known in their small Ontario town) are the world's oldest surviving craniopagus twins.
In her second novel, Lori Lansens (author of Rush Home Road) ventures into the strange world of physical abnormality. While some writers might be tempted to play up the grotesque aspects of life as a conjoined twin, Lansens treats her so-called freaks with sensitivity and respect. The result is an extraordinarily moving narrative about human connectedness that questions the very meaning of "normal."
PS8573 A5866 G57 2006
JANUARY 2010 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
B - Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
Care for Creation: A Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth by Ilia Delio, Keith Douglass Warner, and Pamela Wood
Three Franciscan authors combine good science with solid theology and practical applications to develop a Franciscan spirituality of the earth following in the footsteps of Jesus with the guidance of St. Francis of Assisi.
Four sections highlight the distinct relationships creation has with the world: incarnation, community, contemplation and conversion. The authors propose ways in which we can all understand our own roles in relationship to the earth and ways in which we can make it better.
BT 695.5 .D3785 2008
Inquisition: the Reign of Fear by Toby Green
Everybody has heard of the Inquisition. Today the word implies dread, fear, and a withheld threat of torture.
But who were its targets? Why did it provoke such fear? How and where did it operate? Why was it founded, and why did it last for so long? Toby Green's book brings an extraordinary 350 year period vividly to life by focusing on the hitherto untold stories of individuals from all walks of life and every section of society.
Because the Inquisition touched every aspect of society, it changed the world. With a secret police and a thought police, the Inquisition produced a permanent state of fear. This history, though filled with stories of terror and the unspeakable ways in which human beings can treat one another, is also one of hope and ultimately of the resilience of the human spirit. Instead of being cowed by their fear, countless people rebelled in small and big ways, paving the way for a more inclusive society. The story of the Inquisition is not, then, one to be hidden and avoided; it deserves to be told in all its human richness and complexity.
BX 1735 .G74 2009
Silence transformed into life: the testament of his final year by John Paul II
In this moving collection of writings from his final year in this world, we hear John Paul II's voice again as he calls us to build a society that recognizes universal human rights, to listen to our neighbour's cry for help, and to share in one another's gifts. Also included here is the pope's Spiritual Testament.
BX2350.3 .J613 2006
E - History. Americas
Legends of Our Times: Native Cowboy LIfe by Morgan Baillargeon and Leslie H. Tepper
Throughout the world, the cowboy is an instantly recognized symbol of the North American West. Legends of Our Times breaks the stereotype of 'cowboys and Indians' to show an almost unknown side of the West. It tells the story of some of the first cowboys -- Native peoples of the north Plains.
By the mid-nineteenth century, Native people were highly valued for their skills in horse breeding and herding, and could take advantage of new economic opportunities in the emerging ranching industry. Faced with limited resources, competition for land, and control by governments and Indian agents, many Native people still managed to develop their own herd or to find work as cowboys.
As the ways of the Old West changed, new forms of entertainment and sport evolved. Impresarios such as Buffalo Bill Cody invented the Wild West show, employing Native actors and stunt performers to dramatize scenes from the history of the West and to demonstrate the friendly competitions that cowboys enjoyed at the end of a long round-up or cattle drive.
Today, Plains and Plateau peoples proudly continue a long tradition of cowboying. Legends of Our Times is a celebration of their rich contribution to ranching and rodeo life.
OVERSIZE E 78 .P7 B35 1998
FC - History. Canada
Citizen of the World: the Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau: 1919-1968 by John English
One of the most important, exciting biographies of our time: the definitive, major two-volume biography of Pierre Elliott Trudeau - written with unprecedented, complete access to Trudeau's enormous cache of private letters and papers.
Bestselling biographer John English gets behind the public record and existing glancing portraits of Trudeau to reveal the real man and the multiple influences that shaped his life, providing the full context lacking in all previous biographies to-date.
As prime minister between 1968 and 1984, Trudeau, the brilliant, controversial figure, intrigued Canadians and attracted international attention as no other Canadian leader has ever done. Volume One takes us from his birth in 1919 to his election as leader in 1968.
Volume One ends with his entry into politics, his appointment as Minister of Justice, his meeting Margaret and his election as leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister of Canada. There, his genius and charisma, his ambition and intellectual prowess, his ruthlessness and emotional character and his deliberate shaping of himself for leadership played out on the national stage and, when Lester B. Pearson announced his retirement as prime minister in 1968, there was but one obvious man for the job: Pierre Trudeau.
FC626 .T78 E53 2006 v.1
Just Watch Me: the Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau: 1968-2000 by John English
This second volume, written with exclusive access to Trudeau's private papers and letters, sweeps us from sixties' Trudeaumania to his final days when he debated his faith.
His life is one of Canada's most engrossing stories. John English reveals how for Trudeau style was as important as substance, and how the controversial public figure intertwined with the charismatic private man and committed father. He traces Trudeau's deep friendships (with women especially, many of them talented artists, like Barbra Streisand) and bitter enmities; his marriage and family tragedy.
He illuminates his strengths and weaknesses - from Trudeaumania to political disenchantment, from his electrifying response to the kidnappings during the October Crisis, to his all-important patriation of the Canadian Constitution, and his evolution to influential elder statesman.
FC626 .T78 E53 2006 v.2
G - Geography. Anthropology. Recreation
They Call Me Chief: Warriors on Ice by Don Marks
They Call Me Chief tells the fascinating stories of native athletes who overcame tremendous obstacles to star in the National Hockey League. From Fred Sasakamoose (Chief Running Deer on Skates), the first Indian to play in the NHL who overcame the abuse of Canada's residential school system, to Reggie Leach (The Riverton Rifle) whose battle with the bottle kept him out of the Hockey Hall of Fame, They Call Me Chief chronicles the journeys of North America's most famous "warriors on ice" as they battle racism, culture shock, isolation and other roadblocks to success. They Call Me Chief is essential reading not only for fans of Canada's national game, but for anyone interested in North American culture and history.
The book includes a foreword by CBC's Don Cherry and favourable comments from Indian notables such as Phil Fontaine, Elijah Harper and Adam Beach. In this collection of very different stories about very different men, we can appreciate how human beings can be authors of their own stories.
GV848.5 .A1 M36 2008
L - Education
The Way It Was: Vignettes form My One-Room Schools by Edith Van Kleek and Thelma Jo Dobson
The Way It Was chronicles Edith Van Kleek's experiences as a student and teacher in one-room schools in rural Alberta. From her first year attending school in the High Prairie country in 1916, to the closure of her last rural schoolhouse in 1961, Edith Van Kleek recalls a bygone era in educational history.
LA 2325 V36 A3 2007
P - Language and Literature
Death with Interruptions: a Novel by Jose Saramago
Saramago's philosophical page-turner hinges on death taking a holiday. For reasons initially unclear, people stop dying in an unnamed country on New Year's Day.
Shortly after death begins her break (death is a woman here), there's a catastrophic collapse in the funeral industry; disruption in hospitals of the usual rotational process of patients coming in, getting better or dying; and general havoc. There's much debate and discussion on the link between death, resurrection and the church, and while the clandestine traffic of the terminally ill into bordering countries leads to government collusion with the criminal self-styled maphia, death falls in love with a terminally ill cellist.
Saramago adds two satisfying cliffhangers-how far can he go with the concept, and will death succumb to human love? The package is profound, resonant and-bonus-entertaining.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
PQ 9281 .A66 16813 2008
PS 8000 - Canadian Literature
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
The long-awaited new novel from Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood is a brilliant visionary imagining of the future.
Adam One, the kindly leader of God's Gardeners - a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion - has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have been spared. Have others survived?
By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and witty, The Year of the Flood unfolds Toby's and Ren's stories during the years prior to their meeting again. The novel not only brilliantly reflects to us a world we recognize but poignantly reminds us of our enduring humanity.
PS 8501 .T86 Y43 2009
Suddenly by Bonnie Burnard
A phone call in the night, an unexpected diagnosis suddenly, life can change forever.
Sandra, Colleen and Jude have been friends for nearly a lifetime. They share secrets, decorating tips, counsel on marriage, even a hairdresser. Despite their differences and occasional snarls, the friendship only grows stronger over time, and their partners, Jack, Richard and Gus, go along with it, letting this union shape their lives. Now, with Sandra's crisis, everyone must find a way to endure the present and imagine the future.
Sweeping through and beyond the second half of the 20th century from men in space to 9/11 the novel creates an astonishingly intimate portrait of three women balanced on the knife edge of middle age.
PS 8553 .U55 S84 2009
Q - Science
620 Wild Plants of North America by Tom Reaume
620 Wild Plants of North America describes, in beautiful detail, the characteristic features of 89 families of vascular plants -- including trees, shrubs, vines, wildflowers, grasses, sedges, horsetails, and club-mosses -- using labelled ink drawings, text and range maps.
The author's drawings are from plants in the field and freshly picked specimens. The text outlines habitat, flowers, fruit, seeds, leaves and stems. The range maps cover central North America from the three Prairie Provinces south to northern Texas and from Iowa west to Idaho. With its detailed, labeled drawings, 620 Wild Plants opens the door to understanding the unique morphological features of plants in all of the major families represented in the flora of central North America.
QK110 .R436 2009
NOVEMBER 2009 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
This month's edition of Recent Acquisitions will be devoted to a selection of the 2009 Saskatchewan Book Awards winners and nominees.
FC - History. Canada
Immigration & Settlement, 1870-1939 edited by Gregory P. Marchildon
Immigration and Settlement, 1870-1939 is the second volume in the new "History of the Prairie West Series" launched by the Canadian Plains Research Center.
It includes chapters on early immigration patterns including transportation routes and ethnic blocks as well as the policy of containing First Nations on reserves.
Other chapters grapple with the various identities, preferences and prejudices of settlers and their complex relationships with each other as well as the larger polity.
Nominated for the Publishing in Education Award
FC3242.9 .I4 I55 2009
(The Library also has volume one in this series-The Early Northwest edited by Gregory P. Marchildon. FC3206 .E37 2008)
Saskatchewan Politics: Crowding the Centre edited by Howard Leeson
In his first volume on Saskatchewan Politics (2001), Leeson observed that vast changes were underway in the Saskatchewan polity. He predicted that the familiar politics of the past would look jarringly antiquated in the future.
In Saskatchewan Politics: Crowding the Centre he and his authors come to the conclusion that much of this process of change is largely complete. Together with authors Raymond Blake and David McGrane, Leeson concludes that all political parties in the province have crowded closer and closer to the ideological centre. Without the fulcrum of ideological division, politics in the province appears to be more and more about personal and administrative clashes and less and less about substantive differences as to how the economy and society should be organized. In short, left and right are increasingly being left out of politics.
Included with the book is a DVD of the 2006-08 throne and budget debates between NDP leader Lorne Calvert and Saskatchewan Party leader Brad Wall.
Nominated for the Publishing in Education Award.
FC3528.2 .S268 2008
L - Education
Selling Out: Academic Freedom and the Corporate Market by Howard Woodhouse
In a powerful defense of the values that define education, Howard Woodhouse uses concrete and vivid examples to show how universities in Canada have been engulfed by the market model of education and how administrators have done little to resist this trend. Selling Out demonstrates that the logics of value of the market and of universities are not only different but opposed to one another.
By introducing the reader to a variety of cases, some well known and others not, Woodhouse explains how academic freedom and university autonomy are being subordinated to corporate demands and how faculty have attempted to resist this subjugation.
He argues that the mechanistic discourse of corporate culture has replaced the language of education - subject-based disciplines and the professors who teach them have become 'resource units', students have become 'educational consumers', and curricula have become 'program packages'. Graduates are now 'products' and 'competing in the ‘global economy' has replaced the search for truth.
Challenging the current orthodoxy that the market model is the only way forward, Woodhouse argues that governments have a responsibility to fund universities, recognizing that they are the only places in society where the critical search for knowledge takes precedence.
2009 Saskatchewan Book Awards nominee for the Scholarly Writing Award
LB2329.8 .C2 W66 2009
N - Fine Arts
About Pictures by Terry Fenton
Pictures of one kind or another surround us in our everyday lives, so much so that we assume they been with us forever. Not so. In this readable and witty account, Terry Fenton takes the reader on a journey through the history and characteristics of this omnipresent aspect of our art and culture.
Over thirty colour images many drawn from the collections of great museums bring depth and understanding to various art periods, styles and genres. As the title suggest, About Pictures is about pictures: what they are, where and when they arose, how to use them, and how to sort them out.
Nominated for the Saskatoon Book Award
ND1143 .F45 2009
Sighting, citing, siting [multimedia]
In August and September 2006, dozens of artists came together at the Claybank Brick Plant National Historic Site in south western Saskatchewan to present Crossfiring/Mama Wetotan. The community-based event included a sound and installation exhibit featuring the work of over 20 artists and a large-scale site-specific performance involving 30 more artists. Together, they considered the imagined and actual communities that have historically encircled the site.
Included is a DVD of artist interviews and performances describing the interaction of a range of site-specific practices focusing on collaboration and interdisciplinarity.
Nominated for the Scholarly Writing Award and the Award for Publishing.
NX460.5 .S57 S53 2009
PS 8000 - Canadian Literature
Taking back our spirits: Indigenous literature, public policy, and healing by Jo-Ann Episkenew
From the earliest settler policies to deal with the "Indian problem," to contemporary government-run programs ostensibly designed to help Indigenous people, public policy has played a major role in creating the historical trauma that so greatly impacts the lives of Canada's Aboriginal peoples.
Taking Back Our Spirits traces the link between Canadian public policies, the injuries they have inflicted on Indigenous people, and Indigenous literature's ability to heal individuals and communities.
Episkenew examines contemporary autobiography, fiction, and drama to reveal how these texts respond to and critique public policy, and how literature functions as "medicine" to help cure the colonial contagion.
Winner of the Scholarly Writing Award and nominated for the Non-Fiction Book Award and First Book Award
PS8089.5 .I52 E65 2009
Soul to Touch by Anne Campbell
Soul to Touch is the long awaited fifth collection from Regina poet Anne Campbell. Here is a buoyant poetic voice that relishes in an unfettered spiritual engagement with her world, both light and dark. Campbell brings a gentle touch to poems that open our sensibilities to new ways of thinking about language, thought and the choices we make each day.
Campbell explores the intimate and startling project of being alive, of growing older, and of being open in the face of a world where human intimacy is in decline. With her vivid imagination and wry sense of humour we are all the more grateful for her insight into wild and vulnerable acts of being human.
Forged from the small but significant frictions of lived experience Campbell is driven to write of self as if through a lens wiped clean of ego, a self prepared to journey through and among life's impermanences.
Nominated for the Publishing Award
PS8555 .A46 S69 2009
Niceman cometh by David Carpenter
Niceman Cometh is set in Saskatoon and would be classed as a love story/human nature novel. It tells the story of Glory who lives in Saskatoon and covers a year in Glory's life. We see the ups and downs of Glory's life as she struggles with day to day living, her 6 yr old son Bobby and the men who pass by and through her life.
Carpenter captures both the bleakness and the unexpected joys of life. Filled with moments of high homour but grounded by the sense of defeat and rejection we all face, this novel provides an insight into the human condition, its foibles, its delights and its lunacy.
Winner of the Saskatoon Book Award and nominated for the Fiction Award
PS8555 .A76 N52 2008
14 Tractors by Gerald Hill
Hill has been a regular participant at the Saskatchewan Writers Guild retreats at St. Peter's Abbey. Hill encountered Brother Bernard Lange, who was the manager of the Abbey farm. Hill casually asked, "You must have, what, five or six tractors out here?" to which Brother Bernard replied: "We've got 14 tractors." That comment helped set in motion a project that included photographs of all the tractors by fellow participants Shelley Sopher and Brenda Schmidt, plus ones by Hill himself. To these he added stories of tractors and farming from Brother Bernard, along with those of other writers and artists at the abbey, and from farmers he knew.
Winner of the Poetry Award and nominated for the Regina Book Award
PS8565 .I436 F68 2009
Life in the Canopy by Bruce Rice
The "canopy" in the title refers to the tree-lined streets of Rice's Regina neighbourhood but through his piercing specificity we learn more about "place", in the first decade of a new century.
Rice's poems speak eloquently of our connection to the natural world, including the forests and landscapes we have created within our cities. With a voice that speaks unflinchingly of its sources Life in the Canopy is an exploration of the history and bones of a modest city in the center of the continent. With a profound authority and honesty Rice examines how we live with each other and how the place we live in shapes our lives.
What is a city? Is it more than its public realm; the trees, parks and lake, railways and neighbourhoods? Is it more than the slow unrolling of human experience and event? Here are insightful, moving poems that take on difficult ethical and aesthetic questions.
Nominated for the Book of the Year Award
PS8585 .I128 L54 2009
Witness by Robert Currie
In this sweeping collection of poems Robert Currie explores the intersections of societal change, and personal survival in our recent 20th Century history.
Robert Currie gives us his most compelling work to date in poems that thread together humanity, history and art. Ranging from the brief, lucid lyric to the long, narrative sequence, Currie's poems sing with hope as we look for home. Language, time, and the act of witnessing merge throughout this book as Currie writes about such diverse iconic figures as Auden, Elvis and Jackie Robinson.
Even as Currie writes of difficult and sometimes dark subjects he always imbues his poems with delight and solace. These new poems by Saskatchewan's Poet Laureate are not to be missed.
Nominated for the Book of the Year Award and the Poetry Award
PS8555 .U77 W58 2009
White Light Primitive by Andrew Stubbs
White Light Primitive is a first collection of poetry by Regina writer and University of Regina English Professor Andrew Stubbs. Stubbs was a student of Eli Mandel's and adheres to Mandel's claim that "memory is sacred".
The seed for this book was a collection of photographs that the author's father took during his service in World War II, including those taken at the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The searing sequence "War" opens the book and breaks new poetic ground as he delves into outer and inner reaches of the human condition. Stubbs explores unreliable, yet essential generational memories while at the same time weaves into his precise language how his parent's choices have influenced his own life. What emerges is a whole-hearted embrace of being, where his precise craft is in perfect sync with the powerful subject matter of war, memory and loss.
Nominated for the Poetry Award
PS8637 .T85 W55 2009
Q - Science
Grass, sky, song: promise and peril in the world of grassland birds by Trevor Herriot
In his remarkable new work, he draws on 20 years' experience as an observer of nature to reveal the spirit of the grassland world, and the uniqueness of its birds.
Facing the demise of the very creatures that he has always depended on for his sense of home, Herriot sets out to discover why birds are disappearing and what, if anything, we can do to save them. He takes us out to local pastures where a few prairie songbirds sing and nest, as well as to the open rangeland where doomed populations of burrowing owls and greater sage-grouse cling to survival.
In a narrative that is at once profound, intimate and informative, we meet passionate bird researchers and travel in the footsteps of 19th-century botanist John Macoun, the last naturalist to see the Great Plains in its pre-settlement grandeur.
Beautifully illustrated with the author's own drawings, Grass, Sky, Song awakens our senses to the glory of all birds and calls for a renewed bond between culture and nature.
Winner of the Non-Fiction Award and Regina Book Award and nominated for Book of the Year Award
QL681 .H46 2009
OCTOBER 2009 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
B - Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
The cult of thinness by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber
Most American women have one thing in common--they want to be thin--or thinner. And they are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to get that way, even to the point of starving themselves. Hesse-Biber goes beyond traditional psychological explanations of eating disorders to level a powerful indictment against the social, political, and economic pressures women face in a weight-obsessed society--a society that is, ironically, becoming increasingly more fat while worshipping a progressively more thin ideal. Hesse-Biber examines the profit motives of corporate America that promote this paradox. Moreover, a new chapter on preteens, masculinity, ethnicity, gay and lesbian body image, and the globalization of body image issues align a refined cultural study of body image with the trends found in current research studies, demographic data, and popular culture.
BF697.5 .B67 H47 2007
Cruelty: human evil and the human brain by Kathleen Taylor
In this thoughtful exploration of a painful subject, Kathleen Taylor seeks to bring together the fruits of work in psychology, sociology, and her own field of neuroscience to shed light on the nature of cruelty and what makes human beings cruel. The question of cruelty is inevitably tied to questions of moral philosophy, the nature of evil, free will and responsibility. Little work has been done in this area and this wide-ranging discussion, considering the roles of emotion, belief, identity and 'otherizing'; evolved instincts and differences in brains; callousness and sadism; seeks to begin to identify how we might reduce or limit cruelty in our societies by a greater understanding of its causes, and the circumstances in which it can grow. Taylor draws in examples from history and literature in her study, making this a rich and multifaceted analysis that should be of interest to a wide readership, and provoke much thought, debate, and further research.
BJ1535 .C7 T38 2009
The monk and the book: Jerome and the making of Christian scholarship by Megan Hale Williams
Megan Hale Williams argues that Saint Jerome was the first to represent biblical study as a mode of asceticism appropriate for an inhabitant of a Christian monastery, thus pioneering the enduring linkage of monastic identities and institutions with scholarship.
Revisiting Jerome with the analytical tools of recent cultural history-including the work of Bourdieu, Foucault, and Roger Chartier-Williams proposes new interpretations that remove obstacles to understanding the life and legacy of the saint. Examining issues such as the construction of Jerome's literary persona, the form and contents of his library, and the intellectual framework of his commentaries, Williams shows that Jerome's textual and exegetical work on the Hebrew scriptures helped to construct a new culture of learning. This fusion of the identities of scholar and monk, Williams shows, continues to reverberate in the culture of the modern university.
BR65 .J476 W55 2006
Memory and identity: conversations at the dawn of a millennium by Pope John Paul II
The pope's 1994 book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, sold some 20 million copies in more than 30 languages. Both that book and this one grew out of interviews conducted in the early 1990s. Most of the book is devoted to rigorous discussion-laced with quotations from the Bible, documents of Vatican II and his own poetry-about the nature of evil, especially as seen in Nazi and Communist regimes; the nature of freedom, with its concomitant responsibilities; and the challenges facing post-Enlightenment, secular Europe. Praising the medieval church and Thomist philosophy, condemning Cartesian self-sufficiency and modern "unbridled capitalism," the pope upholds tradition (memory) as the basis for individual, religious and national identity.
BX1378.5 .J583713 2005
D - History. General and Old World
The last days of the Romanovs: tragedy at Ekaterinburg by Helen Rappaport
On the sweltering summer night of July 16, 1918, in the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg, a group of assassins led an unsuspecting Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra, the desperately ill Tsarevich, and their four beautiful daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, into a basement room where they were shot and then bayoneted to death. This is the story of those murders, which ended three hundred years of Romanov rule and set their stamp on an era of state-orchestrated terror and brutal repression.
The Last Days of the Romanovs counts down to the last, tense hours of the family's lives, stripping away the over-romanticized versions of previous accounts. The story focuses on the family inside the Ipatiev House, capturing the oppressive atmosphere and the dynamics of a group-the Romanovs, their servants, and guards-thrown together by extraordinary events. Telling the story in a compellingly new and dramatic way, The Last Days of the Romanovs brings those final tragic days vividly alive against the backdrop of Russia in turmoil, on the brink of a devastating civil war.
DK258 .R35 2009
FC - History. Canada
The cabin: a search for personal sanctuary by Hap Wilson
One hundred years ago, a young doctor from Cleveland by the name of Robert Newcomb, travelled north to a place called Temagami. It was as far north as one could travel by any modern means. Beautiful beyond any simple expletive, the Temagami wilderness was a land rich in timber, clear-water lakes, fast flowing rivers, mystery and adventure. Newcomb befriended the local Aboriginals - the Deep Water People - and quickly discovered the best way to explore was by canoe. Newcomb had a remote cabin built overlooking one of her precipitous cataracts. The cabin remained unused for decades, save for a few passing canoeists; it changed ownership twice and slowly began to show its age. The author discovered the cabin while on a canoe trip in 1970. Like Newcomb, Hap Wilson was lured to Temagami in pursuit of adventure and personal sanctuary. That search for sanctuary took the author incredible distances by canoe and snowshoe, through near death experiences and Herculean challenges. Secretly building cabins, homesteading and working as a park ranger, Wilson finally became owner of The Cabin in 2000.
FC3099 .T425 Z49 2005
N - Fine Arts
Women between: construction of self in the work of Sharon Butala, Aganetha Dyck, Mary Meigs and Mary Pratt by Verna Reid
Author Verna Reid explores the evolving perceptions of "self" in the work of four Canadian women - visual artists Aganetha Dyck and Mary Pratt, and writers Sharon Butala and Mary Meigs. All four came into prominence in middle age, doing their most significant work in their mature years. They, along with the author, are members of a transitional generation of women, occupying the space between the traditional world of their mothers and the postmodern world of their daughters. The multiple roles they have played are reflected in the strong autobiographical content present in their work. Applying feminist and autobiographical theory, Reid considers the work of Butala, Dyck, Meigs, and Pratt in light of the influences that have shaped their senses of identity. As a contemporary of her subjects, Reid was able to interview all four women for this project, infusing her exploration of their lives and work with a sense of intimacy and immediacy. Reproductions of pieces by Aganetha Dyck and Mary Pratt are also included.
NX513 .Z8 R43 2008
P - Language and Literature
The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini
The "kite runner" of Khaled Hosseini's deeply moving fiction debut is an illiterate Afghan boy with an uncanny instinct for predicting exactly where a downed kite will land. Growing up in the city of Kabul in the early 1970s, Hassan was narrator Amir's closest friend even though the loyal 11-year-old with "a face like a Chinese doll" was the son of Amir's father's servant and a member of Afghanistan's despised Hazara minority. But in 1975, on the day of Kabul's annual kite-fighting tournament, something unspeakable happened between the two boys.
Narrated by Amir as a 40-year-old novelist living in California, The Kite Runner tells the gripping story of a boyhood friendship destroyed by jealousy, fear, and the kind of ruthless evil that transcends mere politics. Running parallel to this personal narrative of loss and redemption is the story of modern Afghanistan and of Amir's equally guilt-ridden relationship with the war-torn city of his birth. The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner begins in the final days of King Zahir Shah's 40-year reign and traces the country's fall from a secluded oasis to a tank-strewn battlefield controlled by the Russians and then the trigger-happy Taliban. When Amir returns to Kabul to rescue Hassan's orphaned child, the personal and the political get tangled together in a plot that is as suspenseful as it is taut with feeling.
PS3608 .O77 K58 2004
PS 8000 - Canadian Literature
Payback: debt and the shadow side of wealth by Margaret Atwood
In her wide ranging, entertaining, and imaginative approach to the subject, Atwood proposes that debt is like air - something we take for granted until things go wrong. And then, while gasping for breath, we become very interested in it.
Payback is not a book about practical debt management or high finance, although it does touch upon these subjects. Rather, it is an investigation into the idea of debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies. By investigating how debt has informed our thinking from preliterate times to the present day through the stories we tell each other, through our concepts of "balance," "revenge," and "sin," and in the way we form our social relationships, Atwood shows that the idea of what we owe one another - in other words, "debt" - is built into the human imagination and is one of its most dynamic metaphors.
PS8501 .I86 Z463 2008
The origin of species by Nino Ricci
Montreal during the turbulent mid-1980's: Chernobyl has set geiger counters thrumming across the globe, HIV/AIDS is cutting a deadly swath through the gay population worldwide, and locally, tempers are flaring over the language laws of Bill 101. Hiding out in a seedy apartment near the Concordia campus is Alex Fratarcangeli, a somewhat oafish 30-something grad student. Though tender and generous at heart, Alex leads a life devoid of healthy relationships, ashamed in particular of the damage he has done to the women with whom he has been romantically entangled. Plagued by the sensation that his entire life is a fraud, Alex attends daily sessions with a lackluster psychoanalyst in an attempt to shake off the demon of depression. Scarred by a distant father and a dangerous relationship with his ex Liz, and consumed by a floundering dissertation linking Darwin's theory of evolution with the history of human narrative, Alex has come to view love and other human emotions as "evolutionary surplus, haphazard neural responses that nature had latched onto for its own insidious purposes."
When he receives a letter from Ingrid, a woman he knew years ago in Sweden, notifying him of the existence of his five year old son, Alex is gripped by a paralytic terror.
PS8585 .I126 O74 2008
Boys in the trees by Mary Swann
Newly arrived to the countryside, William Heath, his wife, and two daughters appear the picture of a devoted family. But when accusations of embezzlement spur William to commit an unthinkable crime, those who witnessed this affectionate, attentive father go about his routine of work and family must reconcile action with character. A doctor who has cared for one daughter, encouraging her trust, examines the finer details of his brief interactions with William, searching for clues that might penetrate the mystery of his motivation. Meanwhile the other daughter's teacher grapples with guilt over a moment when fate wove her into a succession of events that will haunt her dreams.
In beautifully crafted prose, Mary Swan examines the volatile collisions between our best intentions--how a passing stranger can leave an indelible mark on our lives even as the people we know most intimately become alienated by tides of self-preservation and regret.
Shortlisted for the Giller prize in 2008
PS8587 .W344 B69 2008
Q - Science
The canon: a whirligig tour of the beautiful basics of science by Natalie Angier
Pulitzer-winning science writer Angier (Woman: An Intimate Geography) distills everything you've forgotten from your high school science classes and more into one enjoyable book, a guide for the scientifically perplexed adult who wants to understand what those guys in lab coats on the news are babbling about, in the realms of physics, chemistry, biology, geology or astronomy. More important even than the brief rundowns of atomic theory or evolution are the first three chapters on scientific thinking, probability and measurement. These constitute the basis of a scientific examination of the world. Understand these principles, Angier argues, and suddenly, words like "theory" and "statistically significant" have new meaning.
Angier focuses on a handful of key concepts, allowing her to go into some depth on each. Angier eloquently asks us to attend to the universe: to really look at the stars, at the plants, at the stones around us. This is a pleasurable and nonthreatening guide for anyone baffled by science.
Q162 .A59 2008
R - Medicine
Remembering our childhood: how memory betrays us by Karl Sabbagh
In this fascinating and sometimes disturbing book, the well-known writer Karl Sabbagh looks at psychologists' present understanding of the nature of memory, especially recollections of childhood, and how, in cases of so-called 'recovered memories', the unreliability and flexibility of memory has led to tragic consequences, destroying the lives of whole families.
In the first part of this book, Sabbagh begins gently with examples he has collected from many interviews of earliest memories, and goes on to look at psychologists' and neuroscientists' understanding of memory. It becomes clear that, whatever individuals might claim, memories of the first two years or so of our lives are simply not accessible to us, while later memories are fragile, yielding to suggestion and our inclination towards a neat story. All too often, our 'memory' of an event arises from what we have been told by a relative.
Sabbagh here puts the story in the wider perspective of our growing scientific understanding of memory, and argues strongly for the critical role of scientific evidence in cases involving the memory of witnesses.
RC455.2 .F35 S33 2009
Halloween Reading List 2009
Looking for some reading to get you in the mood for Halloween? At St. Peter's Library we have a scary selection of contemporary and traditional fiction that should be a real treat and some frighteningly good non-fiction to get you started.
Try a little Stephen King:
Bag of bones. PS3561 .I483 B34 1998
Cell. PS3561 .I483 C38 2006 - Find out what cell phones REALLY do to you...
Christine. PS3561 .I483 C5
Cujo. PS3561 .I483 C8
Dreamcatcher. PS3561 .I483 D77 2001
The Eyes of the dragon. PS3561 .I483 E9 1988
From a Buick 8 : PS3561.I483 F76 2003
It. PS3561 .I483 I8 1986
The Mist. PS3561 .I483 M5 2007
The Shining. PS3561 .I483 S5
The Stand. PS3561 .I483 S7
Tommyknockers. PS3561 .I483 T66 1987
Or some Anne Rice:
Interview with the vampire. PS3568 .I265 I5
Memnoch the Devil. PS3568 .I265 M46 1997
Queen of the damned PS3568 .I265 Q44 1989
Vampire Armand, The PS3568 .I265 V25 1998
Vampire Lestat, The PS3568 .I265 V3 1986
Along the more traditional lines:
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. House of the seven gables. PS1861 .A2 A5
Irving, Washington. Legend of sleepy hollow. PS2068 .A1 1960
Poe, Edgar Allan. Murders in the Rue Morgue. PS2617 .A2 R6
Poe, Edgar Allan. Poe's tales of mystery and imagination. PS2612 .A1 1962
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein. PR5397 .F7 1994
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. PR6585 .A1 1961
Updike, John. Witches of Eastwick. PS3571 .P4 W5
Wilde, Oscar. The picture of Dorian Gray included in The best known works of Oscar Wilde. PR5811 .B5 1927
Non-fiction:
Anson, Jay. The Amityville horror. BF1517 .U6 A57 (Now largely considered a hoax, it'still a creepy read)
Briggs, Robin. Witches & neighbors: the social and cultural context of European witchcraft. BF1584 .E9 B75 1996
Carus, Paul. History of the devil and the idea of evil, from the earliest times to the present. BF1505 .C37 1974
Clark, Stuart. Thinking with demons: the idea of witchcraft in early modern Europe. BF1584 .E9 C53 1997
Huxley, Aldous, Devils of Loudun. BF1517 .F5 H8 1971
Martin, Malachi. Hostage to the devil: the possession and exorcism of five living Americans. BX2340 .M35
Michelet, Jules. Satanism and witchcraft. BF1569 .M613 1939
Rose, Elliot. Razor for a goat . BF1584 .E9 R6 2003
Savage, Candace. Witch: the wild ride from wicked to wicca. BF1566 .S32 2000
Thurston, Robert W. Witch hunts. BF1584 .E9 T5 2007
