What leads a top-secret war-policy insider to desert during the Vietnam War? In the case of Bruce Proctor, it was reconnaissance photos: images which showed the bombing of civilian villages in Southeast Asia, despite the administration's claims otherwise. Appalled by his discovery, Bruce suddenly quit his job at the Defense Intelligence Agency. To avoid the draft, he joined the Air National Guard, but his unit was activated for service in Vietnam. Rather than fight in an immoral war, Bruce...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Winner of the Leacock Medal for Humour • The follow-up to the back-to-back successes of How to Be a Canadian (over 110,000 copies sold) and Happiness™Will Ferguson spent a three-year period criss-crossing Canada and back again. In a helicopter above the barrenlands of the sub-Arctic, in a canoe with his four-year-old son, aboard seaplanes and along the Underground Railroad, Will’s travels have taken him from Cape Spear on the...

A panoramic revisionist portrait of the nineteenth-century invention that is transforming the twenty-first-century world“Excellent . . . calls to mind Bill Bryson, John McPhee, Rebecca Solnit.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New YorkerThe bicycle is a vestige of the Victorian era, seemingly at odds with our age of smartphones and ride-sharing ...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERFinalist for the Toronto Books AwardsFinalist for the Governor General's Award for Non-FictionFinalist for the Hilary Weston-Writers' Trust Prize for Non-FictionAn inventive memoir about one family’s escape from Vietnam and the father’s mysterious disappearance along the way. This book is an intricate exploration of a searching mind, shedding light on the psyche of...

Dao's debut novel blends memoir, fiction, family history and philosophy in a saga of the Vietnamese diasporaDescribed by the Guardian as "a work of unusual power and beauty," André Dao’s award-winning novel Anam transforms fragments of childhood memories, audio recordings, government documents and family lore into a moving inquiry into what can and cannot be imagined about another person’s life. The unnamed narrator, a former lawyer who embarks on...

What begins as a road trip through America soon becomes a journey of discovery into themselves and into the heart of the next-door neighbour they thought they knew. For Wayne Grady, the thrill of landscape and history is tempered by memories of racism and his own family roots. Merilyn Simonds, her ear tuned for the offbeat, finds curious echoes of the ex-pat promised land she grew up with. Together they travel against the tide of American history, followin...

No one writes about mountaineering and its attendant hardships and victories more brilliantly than critically acclaimed author Jon Krakauer. In this collection of his finest work from such magazines as Outside and Smithsonian, he explores the subject from the unique and memorable perspective of one who has battled peaks like K2, Denali, Everest, and, of course, the Eiger. Always with a keen eye, an open heart, and a hunger for the ultimate experience, he gives us unerring...

The year’s best travel writing, as chosen by series editor Jason Wilson and guest editor Robert Macfarlane.Writing, reading, and dreaming about travel have surged, writes Robert MacFarlane in his introduction to the Best American Travel Writing 2020. From an existential reckoning in avalanche school, to an act of kindness at the Mexican-American border, to a moral dilemma at a Kenyan orphanage, the journeys showcased in this collection are as spiritual as ...

When the struggle to save oil-soaked birds and restore blackened beaches left him feeling frustrated and helpless, John Francis decided to take a more fundamental and personal stand—he stopped using all forms of motorized transportation. Soon after embarking on this quest that would span two decades and two continents, the young man took a vow of silence that endured for 17 years. It began as a silent environmental protest, but as a young African-American man, walking across the country in...

The Best Travel Writing 2011 is the eighth volume in the annual Travelers' Tales series launched in 2004 to celebrate the world's best travel writing - from Nobel Prize winners to emerging new writers. The points of view and perspectives are global, and themes encompass high adventure, spiritual growth, romance, hilarity and misadventure, service to humanity, and encounters with exotic cuisine. Sweat, suffer, and fall in love in Guyana, meet a traveler who conducts his ow...

Beside me, on the stone steps of this quiet courtyard, there is a lame man – the sweeper. He is so thin that the end of his belt comes back around to its buckle. He’s trying to feed a puppy the rest of his lunch. He reminds me that we all need something to need us, and that maybe that’s why we Westerners, who are so independent, mostly fail to understand family in this way, and need to come up with things like ‘quality time’ to justify such a base need. Everyone here asks if my family ...

An epic memoir of one family's experiences on both sides of WWII that questions what we know about the conflict while tracing the effects of war.In March 1942, Mieke Eerkens' father was a ten-year-old boy living in the Dutch East Indies. When the Japanese invaded the island, he, his family, and one hundred thousand other Dutch civilians were interned in a concentration camp and forced into hard labor for three years. After the Japanese surrendered, Mieke's father an...