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Book Review: The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature
the Globe and Mail
January 13 2012
Left vs. right in the Hollywood film industry
the Canadian Jewish News
January 4 2012
Conventional wisdom has it that the Hollywood film industry has always been a bastion of the political left, a claim that was probably perpetuated by the FBI, which as early as 1918 dispatched secret agents to Los Angeles to maintain close surveillance over suspected radicals. The notion that Hollywood was a nest of leftists was reinforced by the so-called Red Scare during the Cold War.
The Beer Frontier: Best brew books of 2011
the National Post
December 31, 2011
It's been another banner year for craft beer across Canada, with new breweries opening, a more robust showing at festivals at home and abroad, and a surprising but well-earned win by a New Brunswick brewer as brewery of the year at the Canadian Brewing Awards.
REVIEW: Heinrich Himmler
the Canadian Jewish News
December 16 2011
In Heinrich Himmler (Oxford University Press), Peter Longerich has produced an exhaustive and intriguing biography of a sinister and idiosyncratic manipulator who moulded the SS in his own image.
REVIEW: The Oxford Companion to Beer
Macleans
by Mike Doherty Friday December 9 2011
A bumper crop of books has followed the recent proliferation of craft breweries, and this hefty tome is designed to loom over them all. Weighing in at nearly two kilograms—about as much as two pints of ale—it’s a one-stop resource for defining terms, historicizing styles and contextualizing beer business and culture, as well as a new way to settle arguments at the pub.
Invading the motherland
Literary Review of Canada
By Tim Cook December 2011
The Canadian civilian-soldiers of the two world wars went overseas by the hundreds of thousands to project the British Empire and Canada from Germany and its allies. As men and women from the northern Dominion, they already had a reputation as rough-and–tumble colonials, which was cultivated through plays, poems and public perception. The Canadians saw themselves as unique compared to the British, even though they came from the same stock.
Maple Leaf Empire: Canada, Britain, and Two World Wars
Quill and Quire
By Jonathan F. Vance December 5, 2011
Historian Jonathan Vance would like to examine a little-known part of Canada’s past: our British roots. This may seem a bit strange at first, but our ties to the “Mother Country” can be considered uninteresting when compared to our rich multicultural history. Vance, however, believes that our national identity is intertwined with that of Britain, and his new book is an examination of just how deeply these roots reached in the first half of the 20th century.
Our reviewers’ Top 100 books of 2011. What’s yours?
The star
December 2, 2011
Now you can check their lists to lineup the best reads of the holiday season. Needless to say, many selected the same titles (spoiler alert: The Stranger’s Child was recommended by four of our reviewers), so in this case 11 times 10 does not necessarily add up to 110! But it does add up to a great read.
Dr. David Wright and the history of Down Syndrome
CBC
November 24, 2011
There was a time, not so very long ago, when doctors used to refer to people, whom we now call mentally challenged, as imbeciles, cretins or morons. And we hid them away in places like The Institution for Feeble Minded Children or the National Asylum for Idiots.
The most common reason that thousands of children were locked away in those asylums and institutions, was that they had what we now call Down Syndrome — a condition that results from having an extra copy of chromosome 21. But before the world learned of the genetic causes of Down, just over 50 years ago, it was universally known as Mongolism, and the people with the condition, Mongoloids. They were shunned, ridiculed, locked up and often sterilized. .Read more...
Understanding why we embrace Royal.
Winnipeg Free Press
By Graeme Voyer November 5, 2011
RECENTLY, the Canadian government announced that the prefix "Royal" would once again be attached to the names of the various branches of the Canadian Armed Forces.
This decision was widely popular among veterans, a reflection of a deep-seated appreciation for our British cultural heritage.
Those who believe Canada was never entirely British should read this academic press study that documents the interaction between Canada and Britain, beginning just after Confederation and continuing through the Second World War.Read more...
The Globe and Mail calls Maple Leaf Empire "very readable…this book will touch your heart."
Globe and Mail
By doug grant November 13, 2011
On Remembrance Day, I remember my Uncle Jack. I never actually met him. His plane was shot down over Belgium in 1944, years before I was born. My memories consist of old photos of a handsome pilot, an elegant condolence letter from King George, and most importantly, his widow and son. Much later, they became close friends and fostered in me an affection for things English. Read more...
Beer’s faithful now have their bible.
Globe and Mail
By BEPPI CROSARIOL November 9, 2011
Ben Franklin is reputed to have said, "Beer is proof that God loves us." Probably apocryphal in its attribution, the bumper-sticker classic captures the fun-loving passion with which many people approach the planet's most popular alcoholic beverage. Now, beer's faithful have their bible. The Oxford Companion to Beer, a formidable 920-page volume, chronicles the drink's history, from its birth more than 5,000 years ago in the grasslands of ancient Iraq to the modern craft-beer movement. Read more...
BEER History of beer, part one.
Toronto Sun
By Jordan St. John October 30, 2011
For all of the historical research that goes on in the field of beer, there are relatively few watershed moments.
The rise of India Pale Ale is relatively clearly documented. There are a number of sources pointing to various moments in time where hops might have first been used in Britain. Can we say without a shadow of a doubt that any of these dates are accurate? Read more...
THE SHAW FESTIVAL: The First Fifty Years.
Oxford University Press
by L. W. Conolly
In the early sixties, Niagara-on-the-Lake was a quiet, sleepy town with a drugstore, a five-and-dime store, shoe store, and hardware store. Apart from large homes for the very rich, its principal features were a golf course, church, and lake. Some visitors thought it was seedy and rundown, its grand old estates decaying and collapsing. Christopher Newton (who was a member of one of its early acting ensembles and who would eventually become the longest-reigning Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival) remembers it as a town that "had not come to life, that it was sort of drifting around in some other world." He and other actors would head to Buffalo and Niagara Falls for excitement. Calvin Rand, an American citizen and philosophy professor at the University of Buffalo, lived in the town and he believed a "torpor" had overcome it. There were no steamers from Toronto anymore, no trains, and the military presence (regimental camps each summer on the Commons) had diminished. He, his neighbour Brian Doherty (a lawyer and retired RCAF wing commander), and a group of other citizens met in 1962 to discuss how to enliven the town. Doherty's passion was theatre: his comedy, Father Mulcahy's Miracle, had run on Broadway in 1937-38 for 125 performances, and in the 40s he had produced shows in New York, helped found the Red Barn Theatre at Jackson's Point, Ontario, and the New World Theatre Company in Toronto. He had also served as adjudicator for the DDF. His sudden brain wave was to stage Shaw in N-O-L, and, so, was born the Shaw Festival, whose first season opened on June 29, 1962 with a literal reading of Don Juan in Hell by four amateur actors seated on stools and reading from lecterns on a bare stage. The small audience (fewer than 200) had to deal with a stiflingly hot night, and at the end, patrons burst through the exit doors, gasping and choking. Only in the third season was an air-conditioning system installed. Read more...
REVIEW: Maple Leaf Empire: Canada, Britain, and Two World Wars.
Macleans
by Brian Bethune be October 19, 2011
Maple Leaf Empire makes Macleans Magazine's Top 10 Bestseller list
Read more...
Cast Your Vote: Roy MacGregor's Picks
CBC
October 6, 2011
There are a lot of great Canadian true stories out there. How is the regular reader going to sift through all of them? Recall the non-fiction classics? Unearth the much-loved but overlooked small press memoir? It's a difficult task. Which is why we aren't going to leave you to do it alone. We asked people from all across the publishing spectrum — booksellers, bloggers, publishers and more — to build their dream Canada Reads: True Stories list. We will roll these lists out through the Top 40 campaign. They can be a source of inspiration and a fantastic reading list, and they give these books an extra bump to make it to the next round in this year's debates. But you also get to have your say.
Read more...
REVIEW: Maple Leaf Empire: Canada, Britain, and Two World Wars.
Macleans
by Brian Bethune
At first glance, it seems a familiar story: Canada, as a loyal child of the British Empire, punches above its weight in two world conflicts while chafing under imperial condescension, develops a sense of nationalism and disengages from the motherland. Yes, but . . . as Vance compellingly argues, Canada's wartime loyalty was due more to common allegiance to ideals (democracy, the rule of law) that the British Empire was held to represent than to unthinking obedience. And moreover, this nation brought its own influence to the Old Country: close to a million Canadians arrived there during the wars, the founders of our own maple leaf empire. Read more...
Review of Hitler's First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War.
Wilfrid Laurier University
by Andrew Iarocci
Thinking back on our high school history, some of us may recall mention of Adolf Hitler's experience as a brave 'corporal' in the First World War, as well as the impact of that conflict on rank and file German soldiers like him. The story usually goes something like this: Hitler, like millions of young Germans, went enthusiastically to war in 1914. Like millions of others, Hitler served as a front line soldier, bled for his nation, was highly decorated, was brutalized by the intensity of modern warfare, and became disillusioned by the defeat of Imperial Germany and the ignominy of the Treaty of Versailles. According to the meta-narrative, each of these developments is instrumental in explaining the rise of Nazism and the outbreak of the Second World War. This story is significant not only for what is says about Hitler's war experience, but also because it implies that the war radically shaped the worldview of many other German soldiers, just as it did for Hitler. Read more...
The Shaw Festival, with a little less Shaw.
Macleans
by Jaime Weinman September 12, 2011
Is George Bernard Shaw box-office poison? The Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake , Ont., announced that its 2011-12 season won't feature any of its namesake's plays in its main Festival Theatre, instead putting two of his works in smaller venues. Richard Ouzounian wrote in the Toronto Star that the current Festival Theatre production of Shaw's Heartbreak House "has been reportedly playing to houses as low as 30 per cent." Jackie Maxwell, artistic director of the festival, told Maclean's that while some Shaw plays have been "hugely popular" on the smaller stages, the playwright can't carry big, expensive shows every year: "What I'm finding strategically," she says, "is that the notion of always having a Shaw play that can hit it big on the Festival stage is unrealistic." That's why she says "being the Shaw Festival is frankly a lot more than doing Shaw plays." Read more...
What is love?
CBC
August 31, 2011
What is love? Since the dawn of time, this daunting question has preoccupied history's greatest thinkers and artists, from the Chinese philosopher Confucius to William Shakespeare to '90s dance-pop sensation Haddaway.
However, University of Toronto philosophy professor and author Tom Hurka has his own take on the subject.
"The best things in life are the things that make life worth living: pleasure, happiness, achievement, knowledge and understanding," Hurka told Fresh Air guest host Karen Gordon in a recent interview. Read more...
Christine Sismondo's American history lesson, on the rocks
National Post
by Adam McDowell August 31, 2011
It's almost like a parlour trick — a bar game," Christine Sismondo says midway through a creamy Ramos gin fizz. "Take me back to any historical event and I'll take you back to a bar."
In the American context, the trick works every time. Take the Salem witch trials, the earliest of which were held in a tavern. They can be read as a particularly nasty chapter in a feud between urban and rural residents of the Salem area, with each camp drinking at its own watering hole. Read more...
Professor takes the stage with new book on Shaw Festival
University Affairs
by Léo Charbonneau August 17, 2011
Shaw scholar Leonard Conolly has written a book, The Shaw Festival: The First Fifty Years, to mark this year’s 50th anniversary of the famed festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Published by Oxford University Press and launched in late May, the book is a narrative account of the festival’s colourful history both on and off the stage.Read more...
Barkeep, a few more like this one, please
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition
By Tom Oleson August 13, 2011
Sometime around the year 1620, America walked into a bar. It's still in there.
But as Toronto writer Christine Sismondo makes clear in this delightfully erudite exploration of one the most peculiar byways of American history, what has emerged from that bar in the centuries since has shaped the United States and changed the world.Read more...
‘Thinking’ theatre
The Ottawa Citizen
By Jamie Portman, Postmedia News August 11, 2011
Lavish new history celebrates Shaw Festival
Read more...
America Walks Into a Bar by Christine Sismondo
From The Toronto Star
By Nicholas Pashley July 30, 2011
America Walks Into a Bar is, by anyone’s standards, a serious historical study, but there is no doubt where the author’s sympathies lie. She is on the side of the topers and the tipplers. Americans have long had conflicted feelings about drinking, but they’ve certainly done a lot of it. And they wasted no time getting down to it.Read more...
Book Review: America Walks into a Bar, by Christine Sismondo
The Afterword - Special to National Post
By Andrew Allentuck July 15, 2011
In America Walks Into A Bar, Christine Sismondo, a lecturer in the humanities at York University and a specialist in booze lore, has produced a delicious concoction of social history and mixology. She traces America’s love/hate relationship with beer and spirits from colonial times to Prohibition, its repeal and the gentrification of bars that, once closed to women and African-Americans, now welcome them.
Read more...
Words and Music: Our 60 Favorite Music Books
From Pitchfork Media
By Mark Richardson July 11, 2011
People I know who love this book lament the title: It was doubtless chosen because it read like a provocation, daring you to pick up this book and see what this guy has against the most popular band of the modern era. But the Beatles aren't even mentioned until the last chapter, and most of the book is an exploration of how popular music developed from the 1920s through the 50s, with particular focus on jazz, country & western, vocal pop, and rhythm & blues.Read more...
Cocktails and (beer) dreams: Using suds to create a new drink requires a deft touch
From The Toronto Sun
By Jordan St. John, Special to QMI Agency July 3, 2011
Brewers often talk about distinctive flavours in their beer: Aromas of citrus, pine and tropical fruit from different varieties of hops. Cereal and caramel sweetness from different malts. Even flavours from additions to the brewing process from coriander and orange peel to strawberries or coffee.Read more...
Happiness is often a component of a good life. But it’s not the only one
From the University of Toronto Magazine
By Andrew Mitrovica June 16, 2011
U of T philosophy professor Thomas Hurka’s pocket-sized book, The Best Things in Life: A Guide to What Really Matters (Oxford University Press), tackles life’s big concerns. It explores and offers answers to questions such as: How should we live? What brings us the most joy? What makes a life “good?Read more...
Anne Whitelaw discovers you can come home again
From The Concordia Journal
May 16, 2011
For Anne Whitelaw, appointed last May as associate professor of Canadian art history, returning to Concordia proves you can go home again. She laughs as she describes what it's like to move back temporarily into her parents' Beaconsfield home. Whitelaw will spend the summer writing in Edmonton, and return to Montreal for the fall term. Read more...
What Causes Social Inequality?
From The Literary Review of Canada
April 13, 2011
In Power and Inequality : A Comparative Introduction, Gregg Olsen examines three "Nordic" countries - Finland, Norway and Sweden- and three "Anglo" countries-Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States - through the lens of social inequality. Readers with an allegry to footnotes or definitions or statistics should be warned from start:this book is not an easy, or a superficial, read. Read more...
On the Night Table of Tim Cook
From the Canada's History
March 28, 2010
I am always reading four or five books at a time, which seems neurotic but allows me to read for pleasure and to do research for upcoming writing projects.Charlotte Gray’s fast-paced Gold Diggers captures brilliantly the excitement, danger, and thrill of the North, and the thousands who rushed there to find their fortune. I’m awed by her storytelling skills.I’ve also been dipping into J.L. Granatstein and Dean Oliver’s The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History, where entries are written with expertise, clarity, and verve. Experts and amateurs alike will profit from a read. Read more...
Fulford: William Toye's book smarts
From National Post Book Review
March 15, 2011
In 1948, when William Toye was about to graduate from the University of Toronto, what he wanted most in the world was a job in Canadian book publishing. This was an outlandish career plan, since Canadian publishing barely existed. We had few publishers and they produced few books. They spent much of their time importing whatever the Americans and the British published. They kept afloat by selling Bibles, dictionaries and schoolbooks. Was this any way for a bright young man to start out? Read more...
Substance abuse in Canada review
From the Journal of Counselling
February 25, 2011
This book was written for those who have been impacted directly or indirectly by addiction. Myths and assumptions from personal experience and the media are challenged. Tobacco, nicotine, and illicit drugs such as opioids and cannabis are explored in terms of assessment and evidence-based treatment, and from cultural and legal perspectives. Personal choice is compared and contrasted within a biopsychosocial framework when discussing policy development at the federal and provincial level. Canada’s drug policy and evolution is detailed and addiction is firmly placed within a Canadian and international context. Read more...
The Magic of L. M. Montgomery: Her Life and Works
From the Children's Literature
February 23, 2011
In the wake of the 2008 centennial of the publication of L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, critical and popular interest in the novel has never been greater. The two new books reviewed here, however, also look closely at Montgomery herself alongside her fiction, illuminating both her life and her works. These studies are significant additions to the newest development in Montgomery scholarship, which now focuses as much on Anne's creator as on Anne herself. Read more...
The story behind the iconic Warsaw Ghetto photo
From the Canadian Jewish news
February 11, 2011
A black-and-white photo of a young boy wearing a hat and a coat, his hands raised above his head in surrender. He is at the foreground of a group of people being led out of a bunker in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Who is the boy? Who is the young woman standing on his left looking back, perhaps at the SS man, his rifle in hands. Who is the little girl? What were the circumstances that led them to this moment in time?.... Read more...
Quick hits: Four books worth a look
From the Global and Mail
January 22, 2011
Self-help books make the road to the good life seem easy and direct. Thomas Hurka is a University of Toronto philosopher who knows that it's not so simple: The best things in life have to be about more than making money fast, shedding unwanted pounds or snagging the corner office. His short and thoughtful guide to the fundamental questions of existence neatly blends the everyday with the eternal.... Read more...
What Freud didn't know about being gay
From the Global and Mail
January 10, 2010
Sigmund Freud got many things wrong. In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), he argued that gay sons are the result of dominant mothers and absent or hostile fathers. He got things backward. There is now a huge amount of evidence that, as boys, many gay men show behaviour and interests more characteristic of girls – playing with dolls etc. The kids brought on the reactions by the parents, rather than conversely... Read more...
Stittsville resident co-authors book on Canadian military history
From the Stittsville News
November 28, 2010
Stittsville resident Dean Oliver has co-authored with fellow historian Jack Granatstein a book that has everything that you might ever want to know about Canadian military history. But they took pains that this newly published book, "The Oxford Companion to Canadian History," would appeal to the average reader and not just to historians... Read more...
Author's book debunks Private Hitler's experiences in WWI
From The Jewish Tribune
Nov. 5, 2010
The historian Thomas Weber was at Ben McNally Books in Toronto recently to launch his third book, Hitler's First War. His new book is a meticulous examination of previously unknown documents, which reveal that almost everything published about Private Adolf Hitler's wartime experiences was based on deliberate falsehoods. Weber met with the Jewish Tribune to discuss his findings.Read more...
The Times Literary Supplement calls The Oxford Companion to Canadian Military History "fascinating."
From The Times Literary Supplement
Nov. 5, 2010
Usually, Oxford University Press take a committee approach to their Companions. For Canadian military history, however, they have chosen two well-known historians, so that, like the original Fowler's English Usage. Read more...
Energy use answers can be found in a cubic mile of oil
From the Global and Mail
Oct. 06, 2010
For the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China built the world's biggest sports arena – the idiosyncratic Bird's Nest Stadium. Twenty-five storeys high, the stadium has an official volume of 4.9 million cubic metres. Fill this stadium with crude oil 850 times, and you equal annual global oil consumption. How best express this much oil? Forget billions of barrels. Try a cubic mile... Read more...
Converging on the green highway
From Canadian Geographic
October 2010 issue
Have you ever wondered why Canada's emission levels not only have failed to meet our pledge under the Kyoto Protocol but have actually increased by 20 to 25 percent? How greenhouse gases work? What effects global warming could have on your region? People hungry for answers need look no further than this digestible duo.... Read more...
The Unknown Country: Canada and Her People
From the Global and Mail
September 15, 2010
Legendary political journalist Hutchison (1901-1992) won one of his three Governor-General's Awards for this work, which was published in 1942 as Canada was engaging in the Second World War, for the first time as an independent nation. Thoughtful and filled with anecdotes, this book remains one of the most evocative portraits of Canada ever written... Read more...
Eavesdropping: An Intimate History
From National Post Book Review
by Steve Silberman, San Francisco Chronicle July 24, 2010
That eavesdropping has meaning, value and even a history is the premise of linguistics professor John Locke's intermittently compelling study of the topic. Drawing on psychological, anthropological and animal behaviour studies, he argues that eavesdropping should be seen as an important adaptive strategy that has allowed mankind to glean vital information about the availability of food, sexual partners and help in the event of local skirmishes or battles: It's a way of getting ahead -- and also out of the way. Locke, though he mentions devices such as escutcheons and dumb waiters that rich people used to avoid the intrusion of household servants who might spy upon their affairs, doesn't talk much about technology. He should have. We upload reams of information about ourselves on to social networking sites and conduct mobile phone conversations in earshot of strangers. Eavesdropping has a future as well as a history, but it's a rapidly evolving and wholly unpredictable one..... Read more...
A Body in Uniform: Derring-do doesn't get much more daring than this World War Two tale.
From Literary Review of Canada Book Review
by William Stevenson September, 2010
On the dusty shelves of World War Two movies, there is a 1956 Clifton Webb spy thriller called The Man Who Never Was, which tells a sanitized version of an extraordinary 1943 plot known as Operation Mincemeat, wherein British intelligence was able to pass misleading information to Hitler's generals that led them down the garden path to an Allied victory in Sicily and to Germany's ultimate defeat. With documents recently made available, historian Denis Smyth has been able to tell the whole "untold" story in his new book, Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat.. .... Read more...
Can Sociology Save Us?
From Literary Review of Canada Book Review
by Jeb Brugmann September, 2010
The Sense of Sociability: How People Overcome the Forces Pulling Them Apart is a sweeping, ambitious book that attempts to synthesize insights from generations of sociological analysis, and thus to provide the tools we can use to help "humans live together more happily and more effectively." With years of introductory lectures in sociology at the University of Toronto under his belt, Lorne Tepperman is able to present his findings in an easily digestible style, admirably suited for a popular audience unschooled in the social sciences. His book attempts to harness the insights of social research in order to improve human social life—turning theory into practice. The Sense of Sociability is subtler than most such works. Although his project is to bring people together, Tepperman repeatedly emphasizes the central conundrum present in such a project: every divisive force—race, class, religion, nationality—is on some level a uniting force as well. He quotes Immanuel Kant: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.". .... Read more...
The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi makes it on Maclean's book reviews.
From Maclean Book Review
August 4, 2010
f Hannah Arendt hadn't already coined totalitarianism's epitaph—the banality of evil—Bruce, a historian at the University of Waterloo, could have said as much. He makes it clear there is good reason why East Germany was the most stable of the U.S.S.R.'s satellites: just about everyone in the country was in on its maintenance. The ruling regime established the most extensive police state in human history: one Stasi (secret police) officer for every 186 inhabitants (a ratio that dwarfs even Stalin's enforcers during the Soviet Great Terror of the 1930s), and 200,000 informants at any given time. By some reckonings, when all the casual informants are included, the total reaches one informer for every seven East Germans. And when the regime crumbled, along with the Berlin Wall, in November 1989, the Stasi possessed approximately 180 km of shelved archives. Terrified Stasi officers started taking files from their offices to shredders, to the coal furnaces in their basements, to forests and rivers for disposal... Read more...
Review: The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century
From the Global and Mail Book Review
July 22, 2010
The opening chapter introduces the founding art galleries, art societies and artist-run centres in Canada's major cities that established the country's visual arts culture. Both the National Gallery of Canada and Royal Canadian Academy were founded in 1880, followed by the establishment in the 1920s and 1930s of city art galleries in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver. The exhibition and collecting policies of these institutions, together with artist-run centres, art magazines and cultural policy, have played a central role in "defining and re-defining what can be described as 'Canadian art,'" writes editor/contributor Anne Whitelaw... Read more...
Review: PLACE NAMES OF CANADA
From Canadian Geographic
July 21, 2010
The book has been revised and, in addition to more official place names, now includes the history behind them. Take Toronto, for instance, a city whose Mohawk-derived name actually means "trees standing in the water," not "place of meeting," as is oft repeated... Read more...
Review: BRIDGES
From Canadian Geographic
July 19, 2010
Vowing to teach its audience how to "read a bridge like a book," Bridges is an invitation for the curious generalists of the world to immerse themselves in the mechanics and history of the structures that connect societies physically and culturally. A professor emeritus in civil engineering at University of Bristol in England, David Blockley expertly describes the processes, relationships, materials and philosophies of engineering that give the world some of its most symbolic pieces of public infrastructure. Identifying the best practices and materials that are the cornerstones of bridge building, Blockley contemplates how a wobbly London Millennium Bridge and other errors have brought pioneering insights to the field of engineering. There are, indeed, few public projects as visible, costly and heavily scrutinized as the ones that fall upon the bridge builder's desk. Bridges will be appreciated by anyone interested in the design and construction of these structures and in how they withstand the elements, heavy use and aesthetic scrutiny to be more than the ground beneath our feet, even as we stand in mid-air.... Read more...
A Better Pencil
From Canadian Bookseller Magazine
June 03, 2010
A BETTER PENCIL review makes the Canadian Bookseller magazine. Read more...
On Monsters
From National Post
April 03, 2010
On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, by Stephen T. Asma (Oxford University Press; 288 pp.; $34.95). Throughout this fascinating, far-reaching and often witty study of what it is to be a monster, Asma, a professor of philosophy at Columbia College in Chicago, gives no compelling definition of the word. He relies on you to know one when you see it, literal or symbolic -- whether a mythical monster (the griffin and the gorgon); P.T. Barnum's human caterpillar, who with only a head and a torso had to move by wriggling on the ground; or anyone we might describe as having abdicated their humanity, whether a serial child killer or genocidal maniac. On Monsters is a terrific read, thought-provoking from start to finish. Read more...
The Oxford Companion to the Book
From National Post
April 24, 2010
A reference work cannot really tell a story, as it has to say something about everything. And this colossal new encyclopedic Companion does say something about almost everything that matters in the world of writing, printing, publishing and book-collecting. Yet it has a dynamic story contained within it -- the story of a succession of revolutions. Read more...
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage
From the Globe and Mail
March 26, 2010
Then he ransacked Henry Watson Fowler's guide to English usage in 1996, under the guise of preparing its third edition, R.W. Burchfield referred to Fowler's work as a "fossil." While "Fowler's name remains on the title page," he wrote of his updating of the 1926 volume, which had been lightly revised by Ernest Gowers in 1965, the book "has been largely rewritten." He called it a mystery why "this schoolmasterly, quixotic, idiosyncratic, and somewhat vulnerable book" has "retained its hold on the imagination of all but professional linguistic scholars." Read more...
What I Believe
From Winnipeg Free Press
March 27, 2010
Early in February, a Pakistani Imam issued a fatwa against terrorism by Muslims.
This kind of well-publicized opposition to violence in the name of "the religion of peace" has been a long time coming. However, one longtime advocate of improved relationships between Muslims and the West, British academic Tariq Ramadan, has been condemning Islamist terrorism for decades. Read more...
New in paperback: The Fraser
From the Globe and Mail
March 26, 2010.
Legendary Canadian journalist Hutchison (1901-1992) was a famous storyteller, and here he focuses on a great story: his own long history with the Fraser River -- he first hiked along its banks in the 1920s -- as well as the natural history of this great B.C. waterway, from its beginnings in ancient times through the fur trade and the gold rushes that define the Canadian West. Read more...
Review of Child Poverty in Canada
From the Prairie Journal
