Search results for ""Baraka Books""

As a third-generation logger, a life in the bush is all Joe Adler has ever known. He works, he hunts; he provides. But when a man dies on his watch, and his wife abandons their young family for writing school in Toronto, Joe must face the consequences of his hard-living ways. Left alone to care for his seven-year-old daughter, he enlists the help of Jenny Lacroix, the wife of the man whose death he might be responsible for. Resentful and angry, and his conscience over Jenny's husband far from clear, Joe threatens to spiral down the path of fury, booze, and violence that did his father in. What follows is a stunning tale of love and redemption, hatred and forgiveness, set amid the desolate cutovers, crystalline lakes, and rolling black spruce forests north of Lake Superior, and in a small logging town called Black River, once mighty and now derelict, in its final throes of existence. Things Worth Burying is a novel set in a region that is rarely written about, the small resource-based communities that exist along the Trans-Canada Highway and its tributaries, from Sault Ste. Marie to Thunder Bay, the land north of Superior, a land of miners and loggers living a life in the bush, making ends meet, making do with the rise and fall of market economies that determine so much of their fate. Drawing upon his Northern Ontario upbringing, Mayr brings us a single story pulled from a working-class people who in the face of disappearing jobs and shrinking populations make the difficult choice to stay because the land, the life, is in their blood.

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Girls and women played an important role in the industrialization of Canada—particularly in the cotton textile industry concentrated in Quebec. Until the end of World War I, they accounted for more than half of the workers who toiled in the province’s cotton mills. Contrary to conventional wisdom that women were most often quiescent, short-term workers who undercut unions’ organizing efforts, female cotton workers demonstrated remarkable levels of labor activism and militancy across time. Through their participation and their changing roles within working-class families, these girls and women were instrumental in helping to transform Quebec into the increasingly modern industrial society associated with the Quiet Revolution. Central to the author’s research are 84 oral interviews with women workers who were employed in two important manufacturing centers, Valleyfield and Magog. Complementing the rich body of information obtained from the interviews, the author has used an array of primary and secondary sources to explore the textile companies’ motivation for employing girls and women, their recruiting methods, the demographic composition of the labor force, and working conditions. Patterns of continuity and change are examined within the context of prevailing economic conditions, cultural and social attitudes, and technological developments. Through The Mill, one of few in-depth studies of the lives of women industrial workers in Canada, is an invaluable contribution to feminist labor history.

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The year is 1684. Twelve-year-old Eustache Bréman leaves behind a life of misery begging on the streets of France for a second chance in the New World with his mom, his sweetheart Marie-Élisabeth, and Marie-Élisabeth's family. But life is tough, with plenty more tragedy and disappointment to come on De La Salle's ill-fated expedition to the Mississippi. Join Eustache as he comes of age in Louisiana, all in a sparkling English translation that's every bit as modern and playful as Camille Bouchard's original French. Squabbling leaders, bloodthirsty freebooters, and a hostile Karankawa nation make for heartbreaking adventure--and occasional proof that "all sorrows end up diluted in the concerns of everyday life." This action-packed young adult novel weaves real historical events and important themes into the day-to-day concerns of a young boy. It is written simply and well, posing some troubling questions along the way. Will God answer Eustache's prayers or punish him for his actions? Will young love conquer all? Or will the men's true nature be revealed and bring about their downfall?

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Based on true events, this novel recounts the early history of North America in modern accessible language. The third installment of the series continues Radisson's adventures with the Jesuits and the Iroquois. Radisson's skills in diplomacy are tested, as he tempers the ardour of the Jesuits and calms the arrogant and distrustful French traders, and cultivates friendships with the Iroquois who favour peace. Courage, diplomacy, love, and conspiracy make for an action-packed adventure in a little-known past.

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Shane Bearskin, a young Cree man from James Bay, and Theresa Wawati, an Algonquin woman from northern Quebec, are united by a profound love for each other and a visceral attachment to their heritage. As children, both experienced the challenges that face so many young people from indigenous communities.They are now studying in universities in Montreal. Theresa is determined to become a lawyer to defend her Algonquin nation whose lands and way of life are constantly encroached upon. When Theresa is diagnosed with terminal leukemia and given a year to live, they decide to live out their dream of returning to live in the bush like their ancestors and also have a baby. With Speak to Me in Indian, David Gidmark has captured the aching beauty of life and the passionate longing for freedom that, despite all odds, breathe hope in human beings worldwide.

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Quebec's Eastern Townships are home to a higher concentration of artists than anywhere else in Canada. With his starting and finishing point being Frederick Coburn (1871–1960), arguably Canada's best-known painter at the peak of his career, author Nick Fonda sets out to revisit his work and provide new insights and facts into Coburn's life and surroundings. To better understand the man, he also introduces other accomplished artists living and working in the same area—not all landscape painters—who have followed quite unusual paths as they responded to the same muse that moved Coburn a century ago.Based on interviews with neighbours and Coburn aficionados and Nick Fonda's own thorough understanding of the milieu in which Coburn grew up, lived, and worked, Hanging Fred and a Few Others is a lively and fascinating story of an important artist but also a reflection on the role of place—the Eastern Townships—in an artist's life.In addition to being a biography of Coburn, Nick Fonda's book provides brief biographical sketches of other artists including Minnie Gill, Denis Palmer, Mary Martin, Stuart Main, France Jodoin, and Kevin Sonmor.

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Claude Lacaille witnessed up close the oppression and poverty in Haiti, Ecuador, and Chile where dictators and predatory imperialists ruled. Like other advocates of Liberation Theology, he saw it as his duty to join the resistance, particularly against Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet. But the dictators were not alone, as they often enjoyed the support of the Vatican, sometimes tacit, but then brazenly open under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. He began writing this book in Chile where thousands shed blood simply because they defended victims of dictatorship, opposed rapacious policies and economic doctrines, consoled the downtrodden, and breathed new hope and courage into a people who desperately needed it. These men and women remain an inspiration for those who still believe in a better world. This is the story of Claude Lacaille's experience from 1965 through 1986 in the slums and squats in the Caribbean and South America and also what it really means to have a preferential option for the poor. His book shows how liberation theology and spirituality enkindled the life and the work of an ordinary Quebec missionary.

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Angry and hilarious, this collection of satirical essays about Barack Obama confronts the racial tensions that have dogged the president during his campaign and first year in office. Some of the pieces include ""Ma and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man,"" ""Crazy Rev. Wright,"" and ""Obama Scolds Black Fathers, Gets Bounce in Polls."" Previously unpublished material also addresses the controversies around Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Tiger Woods.

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Patriots, Traitors and Empires is an account of modern Korean history, written from the point of view of those who fought to free their country from the domination of foreign empires. It traces the history of Korea’s struggle for freedom from opposition to Japanese colonialism starting in 1905 to North Korea’s current efforts to deter the threat of invasion by the United States or anybody else by having nuclear weapons. Koreans have been fighting a civil war since 1932, when Kim Il Sung, founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, along with other Korean patriots, launched a guerrilla war against Japanese colonial domination. Other Koreans, traitors to the cause of Korea’s freedom, including a future South Korean president, joined the side of Japan’s Empire, becoming officers in the Japanese army or enlisting in the hated colonial police force. From early in the 20th century when Japan incorporated Korea into its burgeoning empire, Koreans have struggled against foreign domination, first by Japan then by the United States. Some protests were peaceful; others involved riots, insurrection and sustained guerrilla war. After the US engineered political partition of their country in 1945, the Koreans fought a conventional war, from 1950-1953. Three million gave their lives. When the Japanese Empire collapsed in 1945, Koreans erupted in joy, quickly organizing an independent state, the Korean People’s Republic. Joy turned to bitterness when the US refused to recognize the new republic, and soon declared war on it. Hungering for self-determination, land reform, and an economy directed to local needs, Koreans turned to communists as leaders, who had established great moral authority in the anti-colonial struggle for freedom. They looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration. But a communist Korea, a Korea that handed control of the country’s land, resources, and factories to farmers, cooperatives and state-owned enterprises, clashed with the aspirations of US policy planners, mainly Wall Street lawyers and bankers. The latter sought a world in which US corporations and investors would be free to scour the globe in search of lucrative trade and investment opportunities. Patriots, Traitors and Empires, The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom is a much-needed antidote to the jingoist clamor spewing from all quarters whenever Korea is discussed.

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Connected via the fictional town of St Anne's, a community along Nova Scotia's western shore, each story takes its title from the children's rhyme Counting Crows. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a message, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told. Within each tale an individual (often from the same family, always from the same town) will note the number of crows in their midst and recall the poem as it relates to the prophecy and the story at hand. Between the last century and the current one, the characters (for the most part, women) walk a shifting landscape carved out by war, poverty, and patriarchal expectations. Beneath the gaze of a small town and these intelligent birds whose memories are unforgiving, we are as close as a heartbeat to the souls upon these pages.

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Robert Poirier reveals an exceptional skill at bringing to life the people with whom he lives and the land he inhabits and loves. In five stories and one novella, readers escape the city, live in the wilds, and experience the challenges of nature, including human nature, in all its complexity. Be it love lost on a canoe trip; conflicting values and naked conflict between natives and newcomers; the dangers, excitement, and solitude of winter traveling and camping with dogsleds; or the barroom and prison enforcer straight out of a Johnny Cash song, Poirier writes brilliantly about what he knows best.

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Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga was teaching history in Kigali, Rwanda, when he was forced to flee to the neighbouring Congo with his wife and three children. Thus began a harrowing five-year voyage of survival during which they travelled thousands of miles on foot from one refugee camp to another. Lacking food and water, they were often robbed, sometimes raped, and constantly pursued and bombed by shadowy armed soldiers with sophisticated weapons and aerial surveillance information. This brilliant and touching book is the story of one family among the more than 300,000 refugees—many of whom did not survive. For those wishing to understand the war in the Congo, this must-read will restore the humanity and the right to mourn for hundreds of thousands of Rwandans dispersed throughout the world.

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A comprehensive analysis, this book examines all the justifications and myths about the war on Libya and methodically dismantles them. It delineates the documentary history of events, processes, and decisions that led up to the war while underscoring its resulting consequences. Arguing that NATO’s war is part of a larger process of militarising U.S. relations with Africa—which sees the development of the Pentagon’s AFRICOM as being in competition with Pan-African initiative—this account shows that Western relations with a “rehabilitated” Libya were shaky at best, mired in distrust, and exhibiting a preference for regime change.

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In this, her third and least-known book, first published in 1980, Jane Jacobs examines not only the particular question of Quebec and Canada, but also the larger issue of sovereignty and autonomy in general. Using Norway as a model, Jacobs details that country's campaign of peaceful persistence that led to breaking ties with Sweden—and suggests that Canada and Canadians should be inspired by the example. An essential component of Jacobs's urban activism, this new edition of the book incorporates and expands the 1979 Massey Lectures, Canadian Cities and Sovereignty-Association, commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Also included is a previously unpublished exclusive interview with Jane Jacobs in her Toronto home in 2005, 25 years after the book appeared and 10 years after the 1995 Quebec referendum. In these musings, she reasserts and updates her thoughts on Separatism—and addresses new issues such as tar sand development in Alberta, the finance of gambling, and the future of the Euro and of Europe.

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A 2019 Italian BestsellerSurgically, but with wit, Francesco Filippi demolishes each and every myth that has taken root about Mussolini and fascism in an uplifting handbook for political and intellectual self-defense. No stones are left unturned, including the colonial devastation of Libya and Ethiopia.Legend would have it that Mussolini put roofs over Italians’ heads, developed the economy, had trains running on time, stood up for justice and against the mafia, protected the Jews from Nazi Germany, was a feminist, and put Italy on the map as a respected power. The founder of fascism’s only mistake was allying with Hitler.Though this is entirely false, it didn’t prevent Antonio Tahani, president of the European Union, from declaring in 2019 that “if we must be honest, he [Mussolini] did positive things to realize infrastructures … he reclaimed many parts of our Italy.” In fact, only 6 percent of the improvements referred to were done during the 21 years of fascist rule.Though written first for Italians, this book is relevant and timely for North Americans. Through a study of Mussolini and Italy, Filippi shows how such legends are built on webs of lie, manipulation of History, and constant uncontested repetition, explaining at the same time why so many people fall victim to the propaganda.

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1949: Milne Lowell, a Canadian writer, moves to London to edit a magazine dedicated to cultural freedom. His colleagues include Marguerite Allard, a French-Canadian anarchist, Eric Felmore, an American novelist, and Carson Ward, a British poet. Initially, the group is enthusiastic about the championship of freedom; however, uncertainty grows as unsettling encounters begin to unfold and the peripheral violence of the Cold War closes in.Foxhunt is an atmospheric exploration of passivity, loyalty, and literature in times of political upheaval. Firmly entrenched in the literary milieu of the era, it carries the reader through shell-shocked streets with suspense and intrigue.

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In this hard-hitting anthology, Ishmael Reed and Carla Blank have invited a diverse group of informed and accomplished writers, both women and men, who are rarely heard to comment on the long-standing bigotry on Broadway towards many different ethnic minorities.How do intellectuals and scholars feel about how members of their ethnic groups are portrayed on Broadway? How would we know? Very few of them have the power to rate which plays and musicals are worthy and which are flops, and above all, be heard or read. The American critical fraternity is an exclusive club.In this hard-hitting anthology, Ishmael Reed and Carla Blank have invited a diverse group of informed and accomplishes writers, both women and men, who are rarely heard to comment on the long-standing bigotry on Broadway towards many different ethnic minorities.Contributors include Lonely Christopher, Tommy Curry, Jack Foley, Emil Guillermo, Claire J. Harris, Yuri Kageyama, Soraya McDonald, Nancy Mercado, Aimee Phan, Betsy Theobald Richards, Shawn Wong, David Yearsley, and the editors.Under review are Madame Butterfly, the Irving Berlin songbook, Oklahoma, South Pacific, Miss Saigon, Flower Drum Song, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, The Color Purple, The Book of Mormon, West Side Story and Hamilton.

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The third Nurse Annie Linton/Det. Sgt. Gilles Bellechasse Mystery.A mysterious doctor is wandering the halls of the Emergency Department of the Gursky Memorial Hospital, providing medication to patients suffering from dementia. Annie is suspicious of his motives and is determined to identify the man. Her search kicks into high gear when some of the dementia patients die unexpectedly. Gilles is assigned to investigate the murder of a doctor who is in charge of a research lab at the Gursky. A serial killer is stalking the streets of Montreal, killing people apparently at random. Gilles and Annie team up to uncover the clues that link all the crimes and ultimately to solve them.

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While on vacation with her family in Valencia, Claire Halde witnesses a shocking event that becomes the catalyst for a protracted downward spiral and a profound personal unravelling as she struggles to come to grips with her role in the incident. This haunting novel, which unfolds across three timelines set in as many decades, takes the reader on a dark journey through the minds of three women whose pasts, presents and futures are decided by a single encounter on a scorching summer afternoon.

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A 32-year-old man diagnosed with mental illness puts an end to his life. Questions spring to mind. Could he have been saved? What health services did he get? Were they sufficient? Helpful? Empathetic? What led to the tragedy? How can it be avoided in the future? Is our mental health system up to modern challenges? Why is it taboo to talk about psychosis, schizophrenia, suicide? Have antipsychotics developed over the past 70 years helped? Or are they just another straitjacket to keep the mentally ill out of the way?Ferid Ferkovic, the author's son, committed suicide a few days after being refused admission to the psychiatric ward of a Montreal hospital. From the very first symptoms until his tragic end, Ferid and his family dealt with vague and changing diagnoses, antipsychotics with devastating side effects, insensitive and non-empathetic health care professionals, and a shocking lack of information about external resources. They quickly learned that their opinions and ideas were simply unwelcome. For Sadia Messaili, the suicide of her son, who immigrated to Canada with his family at the age of 12, is the starting point in this moving and challenging quest for truth about our failing mental-health system, justice, and above all better ways to rekindle hope for people suffering mental illness and for their families.'Ferid's death was not the end,' says Sadia Messaili. 'He has fought through me, and the fight is not over!'

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“Jean-Yves Soucy’s story and encounter with my Dad provides a charming glimpse into a changing world, for us all.”- Romeo Saganash.It’s 1963, Jean-Yves Soucy is 18 and dreams of being a fire warden scanning the boreal forest from a fire tower. But he ends up at an equipment depot between Val-d’Or and Chibougamau. To his delight, he is located near the Cree community of Wawanipi. With two Cree guides, including a man named William Saganash, he will be canoeing through the lakes and rivers of the region.On each encounter with the Crees, Jean-Yves expects to see a new world. Instead, he meets a different civilization, as different from his own as Chinese civilization. Yet he knows nothing about it.He wrote Waswanipi because Romeo Saganash, son of William, insisted: “You have to write that, Jean-Yves. About your relationship with my father and the others, how you saw the village. You got to see the end of an era.”Provides a Cree-English glossary.

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Michaela (Mickie) Bédard works at the Stevens, Bédard Investment Bank, a bank founded by her great grandfather. She is working on an Initial Public Offering for a technology company. Walking home one evening she suffers a severe asthma attack and The investigation leads Gilles to New York and to a network of shady characters operating in New York and in Montreal who are trying to steal the deal from Mickie. The investigation is further complicated by three more murders. King brilliantly combines the best elements of a cozy with a gritty police procedural in a novel full of twists and unexpected turns. Annie's clever insights are critical in solving the crimes. In the second Annie Linton, Gilles Bellechasse mystery novel, recovering bookseller Montrealer Richard King once again reveals his keen sense of metropolitan life in Montreal and New York City.

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Former bookseller Richard King has created two memorable characters in his mystery novel, A Stab at Life. Annie Linton, RN, is a nurse in the Emergency Department of the Gursky Memorial Hospital in Montreal and Gilles Bellechasse, a detective in the Major Crimes Division of the Montreal Police Force. Gilles is in charge of investigating a series of murders that have occurred in a park and the area surrounding the Gursky Memorial located in the Cote-des-Neiges area of the city. Suspects include members of a vigilante group devoted to getting drug dealers out of the park, a jealous husband, a mysterious woman of whom nude drawings turn up in one of the murder victim’s bedroom, and competing drug dealers. Annie’s excellent diagnostic skill play a critical role in solving the crime. King’s mysteries are reminiscent of the originators of the mystery genre, writers such as Agatha Christie and Rex Stout and modern writers such as Robert Goldsborough and Louise Penny. Margaret Cannon said of King in the Globe & Mail: “…he has talent, wit and Montreal.” A Stab at Life will delight fans of murder mysteries and have them waiting impatiently for the next novel in the series.

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When Preston Downs, Jr., alias Prez, slides down the emergency chute onto the frozen tarmac at the Montreal airport, little does he know that returning home to Washington D.C. or to his adopted city, Chicago, would now be impossible. Events had sped by after a dust-up with the Chicago police. With a new name and papers, he finds himself in a foreign city where people speak French and life is douce compared to the one he fled.Son of a World War II vet, Prez grows up in the 50s in D.C., a segregated Southern city, and learns early that black lives don't much matter. As a leader in the streets, his journey from boyhood to manhood means acquiring fighting skills to lead and unify long before losing his virginity. Smart and skeptical, but with a code of ethics, he, like every black kid, wants to be Malcolm, Martin or at least a "soul brother," which inspires fear among the powers that be.Spotted while an A student at Howard University in 1964, Prez is invited to do an interdisciplinary course with field work on Civil Rights in Chicago, a city as divided as Gettysburg was a hundred years earlier. Faced with police-state conditions, dubious armed gangs, spies and provocateurs, Prez and the young women and men he works with are propelled into a head-on fight with police. James Baldwin wrote that the blues began "on the auction block," others say it started with their kidnapping from Africa. Prez was born in exile, with the blues. Only someone who has lived through that period can write an enthralling and passionate story like Exile Blues. Gary Freeman has done so with insight and sensitivity.

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It’s October 1970 in Montreal, Quebec. Nadine is a trade unionist with the garment-workers union. Twenty years earlier in 1950, at the age of 15, she was banished to a home for unwed mothers. Her baby daughter, whose father is shrouded in secrecy, was given away for adoption without her permission. This prompts her to cut all ties with her mixed Irish and French-Canadian Catholic family whose past is cluttered with secrets, betrayals, incest and violence. She vows to one day she will reunite with her daughter.Following the FLQ kidnapping of a British Trade Commissioner and the Quebec Minister of Labour, Ottawa proclaims the War Measures Act and sends the army into Quebec. These staggering political events spark an unexpected encounter between Nadine and one of her estranged grandfathers from Quebec City, thus opening the door to contacting the family. It also lays the foundation for a reunion between Nadine and her daughter Lisette, embittered after been bounced from one foster home to another since she was a baby. Lisette and her partner Serge, who is close to the FLQ, need money and see Nadine as a possible source based on information they’ve gathered about Nadine’s family.World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, and the 1970 October crisis provide the backdrop to this family saga spanning some 60 years. Murielle Cyr breaks new ground by telling The Daughters’ Story, an unsung, overlooked but intensely passionate tale of women, propelled by their unquenchable need to belong despite oppressive conditions hard to imagine nowadays, and who manage to survive and thrive.

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A small plane was blown up in an act of sabotage several years ago over Northern Quebec, Canada. The incident was quickly analyzed and termed a mechanical failure. The case was closed in a rush.A young actor from Montreal dies in Afghanistan. Killed by a missile from a drone. His death opens up wounds and discussions that are not in the public domain. These two seemingly disparate events form the backbone of a compelling contemporary “ideas thriller,” set in Montreal’s Main district and in the blue-green mountains of Kandahar.Past values, local history, neighborhood myths and intense psychosexual vectors are suddenly on a collision course with the current international context of wars, migration, exile and terror. A soupy, foggy atmosphere hangs low over the district. In the backdrop is the cold case of the airplane sabotage that occurred over a decade ago. Was the plane crash hushed-up? Why? Three friends from Montreal’s Plateau and Mile End districts manage to de-freeze the cold case, burn up the fog and hell breaks loose, not only in their personal lives, but in their own affiliations. What does it take to clear the fog of complex emotions, the unresolved local conflicts and the intricate remembrances of various communities in a fabled neighborhood?

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Ishmael Reed has devoted his life to uncovering the neglected cultural and historical record of the United States, no matter how ugly it might be. He uses a full-court press: fiction, poetry, plays, songs, films, interviews, essays, and more. With Why No Confederate Statues in Mexico, Reed is at his best: insightful, hard-hitting, eclectic, refreshing, caustic, entertaining, informative, and, yes, funny. The War of Rebellion still divides the United States. President Trump, and millions of southerners wish to maintain monuments to generals like Robert E. Lee. Yet those who actually fought under them ran away by the thousands. Some rebel generals, whom the famous pro-confederate propaganda film “Gone With The Wind” referred to as “Knights,” earned their massacre bona fides by murdering thousands of blacks, Mexicans, and Native Americans, who were often unarmed. The “Knight” Robert E. Lee fought children during the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847. The children, Los niños heroes (pictured on the cover), refused to surrender and were slaughtered. The subjects addressed in this book of essays are vast. They include white nationalism, Donald Trump, Quentin Tarantino and Django, the musical Hamilton, Ferguson, Missouri, Amiri Baraka/Leroi Jones, a different take on #metoo, the one-at-a-time tokenism of an elite, who chooses winners and losers among minority artists, the Alt-Right, the use of immigrants to shame black America, and much more. After The Complete Muhammad Ali, recognized by many as the “truly definitive book” on the champion, Ishmael Reed is back with another exciting book of essays that will stir up debate in the United States and abroad.

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It could be happening here…or there. Today the place is Greece, wracked by a crisis that has pushed people to the brink. Two strangers meet in a train headed for Athens. One spews out his disgust at the foreigners and the poverty that have invaded the neighborhood he calls home, Vic City. He even has a "final solution” in mind. The other, seized by fright—or is it resignation and apathy?— squirms as his haughty silence gives way to voyeurism and to political correctness. While the former, uninhibited, lashes out at the economic crisis in a violent racist rant, the latter, troubled, checks his email about the latest health treatments aimed at him and his family. Along the way, we get glimpses of the forces that have destroyed a society. Who will end up leading its angry, desperate and rudderless people? Vic City Express seizes the anxieties of our dystopian globalized world.

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A man loses his daughter while swimming one summer. This little gem of a novella—sad and beautiful and spellbinding all at once—is the tale of how he strives to be reunited with her again, whether back home on dry land or thousands of miles underwater. Racked with guilt and doubt, he lingers over her memory, refusing to let her go. He imagines and reimagines the moment she slipped away from him as he searches for her behind every rock, in every bush, in every wave.

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When President Barack Obama demanded formally in the summer of 2011 that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down, it was not the first time Washington had sought regime change in Damascus. The United States had waged a long war against Syria from the very moment the country's fiercely independent Arab nationalist movement—of which Assad and his father Hafez al-Assad were committed devotees—came to power in 1963. Washington sought to purge Arab nationalist influence from the Syrian state and the Arab world more broadly because it was a threat to its agenda of establishing global primacy and promoting business-friendly investment climates for US banks, investors and corporations throughout the world. Arab nationalists aspired to unify the world's 400 million Arabs into a single super-state capable of challenging United States hegemony in West Asia and North Africa and becoming a major player on the world stage free from the domination of the former colonial powers and the US. Washington had waged long wars on the leaders of the Arab nationalist movement—Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iraq's Saddam, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, and Syria's Assads, often allying with particularly violent forms of political Islam to undermine its Arab nationalist foes. By 2011, only one pan-Arabist state remained in the region—Syria. In Washington's Long War on Syria Stephen Gowans examines the decades-long struggle between secular Arab nationalism, political Islam, and United States imperialism for control of Syria, the self-proclaimed Den of Arabism, and last secular pan-Arabist state in the region.

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At a time when austerity is claimed by some to be the only answer to today’s economic woes, a close look at the best practices used in Scandinavia is edifying. Decision makers everywhere dispose of ample evidence showing that social determinants have an impact on health and wellbeing. Yet governments develop policies that diverge enormously. Scandinavian countries are often cited as models for their egalitarian social and health policies but are also known to have thriving economies where the gap dividing rich from poor is smaller than elsewhere. Despite quasi mythic status, these policies aimed to combat inequalities in health are neither well known or understood. Policies discussed in Scandinavian Common Sense include education, housing, conciliation of work and family life, daycare, sustainable development and more. For these policies to be part of political debate, be it in Quebec, Canada, the United States or elsewhere, they must be in the public domain. That is the purpose of this book.

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Including material and photographs not included in most of the 100 other books about the champion, Ishmael Reed's The Complete Muhammad Ali is more than just a biography - it is a fascinating portrait of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. An honest, balanced portrayal of Ali, the book includes voices that have been omitted from other books. It charts Ali's evolution from Black Nationalism to a universalism, but does not discount the Nation of Islam and Black Nationalism's important influence on his intellectual development. Filipino American author Emil Guillermo speaks about how The Thrilla In Manila brought the Philippines into the 20th century. Fans of Muhammad Ali, boxing fans, and those interested in modern African American history and the Nation of Islam will be fascinated by this biography by an accomplished American author.

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It’s spring, 1963 in the “Nickel Capital of the World.” Nineteen-year-old Jake McCool is about to undergo a rite of passage—his first shift underground in a hard rock mine. But the Cold War is at its height, and Jake is also about to become a reluctant participant in a bitter inter-union battle fuelled by the global struggle between two ideologies in the wake of the Second World War.So is his girlfriend, Jo Ann Winters. Together the couple will be swept up in a web of intrigue; at its centre is a terrible secret that will haunt their relationship for the rest of their lives, as their hometown becomes not only one of the world’s greatest hard rock mining centres, but also the epicenter of the Cold War in North America.In this fast-paced novel set against the little-known historical backdrop of a true-life battle that included vicious beatings, riots and worse, Lowe posits a provocative premise: that the US government sponsored a ruthless covert operation to destabilize a strategic community in the heartland of its closest ally: Canada.

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Examining the incomparable “Main,” or Saint-Laurent Boulevard, that crosses the heart of Montreal from north to south, this book explores how it has been a gateway for immigrants and the place where “solitudes” have met. With analysis of the many social and cultural movements that were born on the Main, the volume shows how they continue to thrive and influence Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and beyond.

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Retraces Italy's colonial history, focusing on how propaganda, literature and popular culture have warped our understanding of the past and thereby hampered our ability to deal with the present.

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Alfred Thomas Wood was nothing and everything. One hundred years before the Hollywood film “The Great Impostor,” Wood, the Great Absquatulator, roved through the momentous mid-19th century events from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to New England, Liberia, Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, Canada, the U.S. Mid-West and the South. An Oxford-educated preacher in Maine and Boston, he claimed to be a Cambridge-educated doctor of divinity in Liberia, whereas neither University admitted black students then. He spent 18 months in an English prison. In Hamburg in 1854, he published a history of Liberia in German. Later, in Montreal, he claimed to have been Superintendent of Public Works in Sierra Leone. He served the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois as an Oxford-educated DD, then toiled in post-Civil War Tennessee as a Cambridge-trained MD. People who knew him couldn’t wait to forget him.In his Foreword, Rapper Webster (Aly Ndiaye) compares Wood to a mid-19th-century Forrest Gump but also to Malcolm X, before Malcolm became political.

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Liz, born in China and raised in Montreal, is about to land in Germany for a summer physics internship at the end of her freshman year. Eager for a new beginning, she hopes to break free of her unrealized childhood dream of becoming a pianist, a dead-end romantic relationship, and the tug of war between her Chinese and Canadian identities.In Germany, she meets fellow intern Haider, an Indian Muslim from Toronto, and they fall in love against expectations. But summer doesn't last forever. Once they return to Canada, culture clashes and family disapproval threaten to pull them apart. As her sense of self is pushed dangerously close to a tipping point, Liz must summon the courage to survive the chaos that her life has become.

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