Search results for ""baraka books""

Filled with original documents and vintage illustrations, this history chronicles the lives of the Hart family—a Jewish family who settled in predominantly Catholic Trois-Rivières, Quebec, in 1761. Following Aaron Hart and his descendants for a century, this account not only bares the Jewish struggle for equality and freedom, but also delineates the contributions made by the various family members—including the passing of the Jewish Emancipation Act in 1832 and the creation of the Hart Memorial Trophy for the National Hockey League’s Most Valuable Player. A fascinating and comprehensive read, this book breaks new ground in its examination of the Jewish experience in North America.

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In this anthology of speeches and writings since 1970, eminent Canadian thinkers, journalists, and political leaders explain how the government under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau deceived people and denied justice in October 1970. Arguing that Trudeau violated the human rights of hundreds of individuals by imposing the War Measures Act in response to the kidnappings of British Trade Consul James Cross and Labour Minister Pierre Laporte this compilation reveals the motives behind the strained relationship between Quebec and Canada. This book includes material by Margaret Atwood, Tommy Douglas, Don Jamieson, Eric Kierans, Peter C. Newman, Brian Moore, and Desmond Morton.

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Nicole Fortin is on the cusp of realizing a long-held dream when her life takes a sudden turn. Instead of participating in the Olympic Games, she finds herself struggling to master the challenging physical demands of her job in an aerospace plant and win the confidence of her male colleagues.As her involvement in union activity deepens, she is drawn into the centre of a bitter labour battle that pits her workmates against their employer.In the midst of this escalating confrontation, incidents from Nicole’s past threaten to destroy her credibility with her coworkers and her relationship with her daughter. Workplace and family ties become tangled and stretched to the breaking point.

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Rosa Ost grows up in Notre-Dame-du-Cachalot, a tiny village at the end of the world, where two industries are king: paper and Boredom. The only daughter of Terese Ost (a fair-to-middling trade unionist and a first-rate Scrabble player), the fate that befalls Rosa is the focus of this tale of long journeys and longer lives, of impossible deaths, unwavering prophecies, and unsettling dreams as she leaves her village for Montreal on a quest to summon the westerly wind that has proved so vital to the local economy. From village gossips, tealeaf-reading exotic dancers, and Acadian red herrings to soothsaying winkles and centuries-old curses, Rosa's Very Own Personal Revolution is a delightful, boundary-pushing story about stories and the storytellers who make them—and a reminder that revolutions in Quebec aren't always quiet.

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Contracting surrogate mothers is no longer marginal. Nor is it secret. Surrogacy is growing rapidly even though no informed debate on the social impacts of its normalization has been conducted. It is even regarded as socially progressive, while those who question it are considered to be opposed to progress. The 'surrogacy process' - commissioning a woman to bear and give birth to a child and then surrender it - is vitiated by its contractual nature, be it in its so-called altruistic form (i.e., no exchange of money) or the straight-forward commercial form. It is an attack on the human dignity and equal gender rights of surrogate mothers, but also a denial of the rights of the contracted child to come, who is so often forgotten in the 'process.' Current inconsistent or contradictory legislation has led to a fait accompli approach to the question. It's being done, so let's just regulate it, say its defenders. Other countries that have followed that logic have seen an increase in both demand for surrogates and recourse to shrewd international brokers. In many cases, international simply means the surrogate mother is from a poor country with lax legislation, the commissioning parents, from rich countries. By examining the 'surrogacy process' and all its implications, Maria De Koninck reaches the conclusion that the best way forward is an international ban on surrogacy.

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Winter blankets Montreal, while a bookseller and her lover dream of Prague. As the narrator's open marriage becomes the subject of a novel, reality blurs with fiction, and she tries to reconcile the need to create with the desire for love and sex. Written in stark, spare prose, Prague is an introspective and intimate account of the making of a novel from life.

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Mathieu Poulin brings us an action comedy of a novel, starring big-budget, explosion-happy movie director Michael Bay. What if Bay were, against all odds, a misunderstood genius right up there with the likes of Plato, Sartre, and Nietzsche? What if his films were more than just Baydiocre, high-grossing box-office successes held in low esteem by most movie critics? What if Bad Boys was a film about decolonization? What if The Rock was about failing to be recognized by one's peers? If Armageddon was about a post-human future? And Pearl Harbor was a reflection on the freedom afforded an artist when striving to transform fact into fiction? Poulin takes his hypothesis and runs with it. Bayhem ensues as our leading man sets out in hot pursuit of the truth, finding more questions than answers between epic car chases and sexy love interests. Who are his real parents and why did they abandon him? Who keeps following him? Did someone intentionally try to poison him, aware of his deathly allergy to sesame? And most importantly: What is meaning?

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Quebec spoils its families, according to some, with those “long” parental leaves—a full year for mothers—well-subsidized childcare, and more. Marilyse Hamelin challenges that restrictive view. But she adds that although progress has been made compared to other places in North America, stop-gap measures are not the answer. Women deserve and expect more. And the fight for women’s rights and equality is taking place here and now, in Canada and the US, and not in some distant Third World country. Why can’t woman have it all? Why can’t the labor market and the entire infrastructure that sustains it be adapted to meet the needs of mothers—and fathers? What does that mean in practice? What are the causes of the lasting inequality between men and women? Why does our radar blank out women working at minimum wage or less? Marilyse Hamelin answers those questions and proposes solutions, bringing to bear numerous studies, statistics, and interviews.

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Before the Davie Crockets, the Daniel Boones and Jim Bridgers, the French had pushed far west and north establishing trade and kin networks across the continent. They founded settlements that would become great cities such as Detroit, Saint Louis, and New Orleans, but their history has been largely buried or relegated to local lore or confined to Quebec. In this seminal work, Foxcurran, Bouchard, and Malette Scrutinize primary sources and uncover the alliances, organic links and métissage, or mixing, between early French settlers and voyageurs and the indigenous nations. It began with the founding of New France by Samuel de Champlain in the early 1600s and continued well into the 19th century long after France was no longer a force in North America. The authors' keen and accessible story telling, combined with vintage maps, forgotten documents (such as the little known writings of Alexis de Tocqueville), and old photos or paintings propel the account of the peoples engendered and still thriving, their French lingua franca, and their ways of life back into the heart of the narrative of North American history where they belong. Songs Upon the Rivers also challenges historical orthodoxies regarding the Canadien Métis. These descendants of the French with mixed ancestry developed a hybrid culture with close kinship ties with indigenous peoples across the continent. They kept their French songs and language, which effectively made French the lingua franca of the American and Canadian West well into the 19th century.

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A strange and anonymous narrator, an unnamed village, an unsolved murder, a mysterious huntsman, and a wisdom tooth extraction gone terribly wrong. There's no shortage of intrigue in this offbeat debut novel by Jean-Michel Fortier. The "we" narrator's rambling and often ironic musings are unsettling at first, and the atmosphere vaguely claustrophobic as the tale shifts back and forth between Monday meetings at the parish hall, where villagers air their petty complaints, and their Friday gatherings shrouded in secrecy and presided over by the enigmatic Professor. A bewitching story full of dark humour and laugh-out-loud absurdity, The Unknown Huntsman is full of gossipy run-on sentences and snide remarks from the narrator. It reads like an allegory or dark adult fairy tale, and its motto could be: "If you don't want answers, don't ask questions.

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The Morrin Centre in Quebec City, built on the site of military barracks known as the Royal Redoubt, served first as a “common gaol” (public prison), then as the Morrin College, the first English-language institute of higher education in the city, and has been home to the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec for many years. The Society has hosted in its astonishing library such illustrious figures as Charles Dickens and Emmelyne Pankhurst. With incredible anecdotes, the authors guide us through the building’s two-century history and its place in the history of Quebec City, Quebec, and Canada.

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Captain Jim McFarlane, a Canadian infantry officer, is coming apart at the seams. It’s September 1944, in Italy, and the allied armies are closing in on the retreating Axis powers. Exhausted and lost, Jim tries to command his combat company under fire, while waiting desperately for letters from his wife Marianne. Joining the army not out of some admirable patriotic sentiments but rather because of his own failings and restlessness, he finds himself fighting in a war that is far from glorious. In this story of love and war, Murphy brilliantly captures our ambiguous relationship to war.

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Revealing a little-known part of North American history, this lively guide tells the fascinating tale of the settlement of the St. Lawrence Valley. It also tells of the Montreal and Quebec-based explorers and traders who traveled, mapped, and inhabited a very large part of North America, and “embrothered the peoples” they met, as Jack Kerouac wrote. Connecting everyday life to the events that emerged as historical turning points in the life of a people, this book sheds new light on Quebec's 450-year history and on the historical forces that lie behind its two recent efforts to gain independence.

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Wendake, Odanak, Wôlinak, Pointe-du-Lac, Kahnawake, Kanesatake, Akwesasne, Kitigan Zibi are communities located all along the St. Lawrence River valley and its tributaries. They have been home to descendants of the Huron-Wendat, Algonquin, Nipissing, and Iroquois nations. These First Nations have in common the fact that their ancestors were allies of the French and had converted to Christianity. Historians have ignored these nations described as 'domiciled Indians ('sauvages domiciliés') by the French administrators. Jean-Pierre Sawaya carefully studied how an alliance of such diverse 'missions' was created, developed and conducted to become The Seven Nations of Canada. How did this confederation come about? Who took part and what were their roles? The answers are mined in the massive colonial archives. Seven Fires is original research at its best, combining detailed analysis and systematic investigation, that has enabled the author to dispel the tenacious colonial myth about irrational, submissive, and fatalistic Indigenous peoples. Readers will discover forward-looking people motivated by a deep desire for independence and solidarity.

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World trade was revolutionized in the 19th Century when ships went from sail to steam. When did the first steamship cross the Atlantic? Who built it? Where? Several ships have claimed that title, but the true answer lies in Canada where steamboats were plying the rivers and lakes since the 19th century. The Paddle Steamer Royal William, built at the Campbell and Black shipyard in the Port of Quebec, steamed across the Atlantic from Pictou, Nova Scotia, to Portsmouth, England in 1833. That was the first transatlantic crossing under steam. Ships from the US and Holland have challenged her right to the title. This book shows that the PS Royal William's claim is valid.

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One US military leader has called Israel “the intelligence equivalent of five CIAs.” An Israeli cabinet minister likens his country to “the equivalent of a dozen US aircraft carriers,” while the Jerusalem Post defines Israel as the executive of a “superior Western military force that” protects “America’s interests in the region.” Arab leaders have called Israel “a club the United States uses against the Arabs,” and “a poisoned dagger implanted in the heart of the Arab nation.” Israel’s first leaders proclaimed their new state in 1948 under a portrait of Theodore Herzl, who had defined the future Jewish state as “a settler colony for European Jews in the Middle East under the military umbrella of one of the Great Powers.” The first Great Power to sponsor Herzl’s dream was Great Britain in 1917 when foreign secretary Sir Arthur Balfour promised British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In 1967 Israel launched a successful war against the highly popular Arab nationalist movement of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, the most popular Arab leader since the Prophet Mohammed. Nasser rallied the world’s oppressed to the project of throwing off the chains of colonialism and subordination to the West. He inspired leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Muammar Gaddafi. Viewing Israel as a potentially valuable asset in suppressing liberation movements, Washington poured billions into Israel’s economy and military. Since 1967, Israel has undertaken innumerable operations on Washington’s behalf, against states that reject US supremacy and economic domination. The self-appointed Jewish state has become what Zionists from Herzl to an editor of Haaretz, the liberal Israeli newspaper, have defined as a watch-dog capable of sufficiently punishing neighboring countries discourteous towards the West.Stephen Gowans challenges the specious argument that Israel controls US foreign policy, tracing the development of the self-declared Jewish state, from its conception in the ideas of Theodore Herzl, to its birth as a European colony, through its efforts to suppress regional liberation movements, to its emergence as an extension of the Pentagon, integrated into the US empire as a pro-imperialist Sparta of the Middle East.

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Born during the Great Depression, Jean-Claude Morel is an Everyman, an ordinary Montreal construction worker who has built the city with his own hands, digging its metro, creating islands, and weaving expressways through the downtown core. But the progress has come at a cost: neighbourhoods have been razed, streets wiped off the map, and the Morel family expropriated. Teeming with life, Morel uncovers a story of Montreal that has been buried under years of glitzy urban renewal and modernization. This intricately constructed literary novel is a profoundly human portrait of one man and his time, a monument to a city, and a toast to days gone by.

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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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