The Border: Canada, the U.s. and Adventures Along the 49th Parallel

Things have been a little defensive along both sides of “the world’s longest undefended border” of late. According to Toronto political scientist and journalist James Laxer, that’s hardly a novel situation, and it’s unlikely to ... Read More »

November 19, 2003 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Prairie People: A Celebration of My Homeland

By Robert Collins

Veteran journalist Robert Collins has compiled a kind of field guide to the prairie provinces that is both homage and mythology. The book consists of short pieces that are collected in chapters with such titles ... Read More »

November 19, 2003 | Filed under: History

Transient Dancing

By Gale Zoë Garnett

Transient Dancing, Gale Zoë Garnett’s follow-up novel to her much-acclaimed Visible Amazement, opens in 1995 with a brawl between the only two black men on a small Greek island. The men are Johnny Reed, an ... Read More »

November 19, 2003 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Weapons of Mass Distraction: Soft Power and American Empire

By Matthew Fraser

Weapons of Mass Distraction ends with the words “yes, things really do go better with Coke.” That sentence sums up both the thesis and the moral of National Post editor Matthew Fraser’s most recent book. ... Read More »

November 11, 2003 | Filed under: History

The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson

By David Silcox

Coffee-table books dedicated to the works of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven have been something of a Canadian cottage industry for decades now. It’s hard to imagine at this point, but as David ... Read More »

November 11, 2003 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

The Naked Truth: The Untold Story of Sex in Canada

By Chris Gudgeon

No topic elicits a broader array of responses than that of sex. From prim-lipped silence to raunchy histrionics, perhaps no nation embodies these differing attitudes more than Canada. Or at least that is the tack ... Read More »

November 11, 2003 | Filed under: Reference

Making a Killing: How and Why Corporations Use Armed Force to Do Business

By Madelaine Drohan

In a story unlikely to endear her to editors of the business pages, journalist Madelaine Drohan tackles the growing corporate use of mercenary armies to protect their business interests. Making a Killing focuses on Africa, ... Read More »

November 11, 2003 | Filed under: History

★ Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

By Roméo Dallaire

Between April and August 1994, while the international community looked on, 800,000 people were systematically murdered in a small African country. In Shake Hands with the Devil, Canadian Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire, the former Force ... Read More »

November 11, 2003 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Last Cowboy

By Lee Gowan

The word “cowboy” comes freighted with so many different meanings. For immigrants from Europe, Asia, or Africa, it can be romance personified, a somewhat updated version of the medieval knight, out riding the range, communing ... Read More »

November 11, 2003 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Bill Reid: The Making of an Indian

By Maria Tippett

So many catalogues and coffee table books have been published on the art of Bill Reid that it is hard to believe that this scholarly text by Maria Tippett is the first complete biography on ... Read More »