An estimated 2 billion people around the world watched the catastrophic destruction of the World Trade Center. The enormity of the moment was immediately understood and quickly took on global proportions. What has been less obvious is the effect on the locus of the attacks, New York City, not as a seat of political or economic power, but as a community; not in the days and weeks afterward, but over months and years. New York after 9/11 offers insightful and critical obser...

Annette Libeskind Berkovits thought her attempt to have her father record his life's story had failed. But three years after her father's death, she was going through his things and found a box of tapes—several years' worth—with his spectacular life, triumphs, and tragedies told one last time in his baritone voice.Nachman Libeskind's remarkable story is an odyssey through crucial events of the twentieth century. With an unshakable will and a few drops of luck, he s...

In the spring and summer of 1938, a third-generation German Canadian took an unforgettable road trip in Europe. Franklin Wellington Wegenast drove through Austria, Italy, France, Luxembourg, and Germany. He stopped to talk to people along the way and offered rides to those requesting them. He listened to what his passengers had to say about their lives, the conditions they lived under, and their views on what was happening in Europe. Wegenast heard Hitler speak in Innsbruck, and so witness...

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association celebrates its fiftieth anniversary with this overview of its activities--sometimes quiet and sometimes strident--as a watchdog and safeguard for Canadians and their rights as citizens. Through a series of discussions and interviews, a picture of Canada over the last half-century evolves. From the Charter of Freedoms to life and death matters such as abortion and the death penalty through to public security vs. the right to privacy, and a look forwa...

At a crucial moment in the Second World War, an obscure French general reaches a fateful personal decision: to fight on alone after his government’s flight from Paris and its capitulation to Nazi Germany.Amid the ravages of a world war, three men — a general, a president, and a prime minister — are locked in a rivalry that threatens their partnership and puts the world’s most celebrated city at risk of destruction before it can be liberated. This is the setting of ...

A look at how a major confrontation between Canada and the First Nations could erupt, and how it might be prevented.There are few greater tragedies than a war waged by a society against itself. As Time Bomb shows, a catastrophic confrontation between Canada’s so-called “settler” and First Nations communities is not only feasible, it is, in theory, inevitable. Grievances, prejudice, and other factors all combine to make the likelihood of a First Nations uprising very real.

The legendary Canadian book editor presents this "remarkable, four-decade romp through the back rooms of publishing" ( Toronto Sun).Scottish-born Douglas Gibson was drawn to Canada by the writing of Stephen Leacock—and eventually made his way across the Atlantic to find a job in book publishing, where he edited a biography of none other than Leacock. But over the decades, his stellar career would lead him to work with many more of the country's leading lit...

Digital records and broad access to the Internet have made it easier for genealogists to gather relevant information from distant sources and to share the information they have gathered. The law, however, remains tied to particular geographic locations. This book discusses how specific laws -- access to information, personal data protection, libel, copyright, and regulation of cemeteries -- apply to anyone involved in genealogical research in Canada.

An in-depth breakdown of the recent wave of Canadian Senate scandals, highlighting the need for abolition.The Senate of Canada was created as a temporary expedient at the time of Confederation, offered as part of the negotiations to bring Canada’s original colonial provinces into the new political union in the mid-1860s. Since then, the original provinces with upper houses abolished them. New provinces were created without second chambers to their legislatures. Only the Parliament ...

Brown celebrates the survival of our railway heritage in stations that have been saved or remain in use.Despite the "green" benefits of rail travel, Canada has lost much of its railway heritage. Across the country stations have been bulldozed and rails ripped up. Once the heart of communities large and small, stations and tracks have left little more than a gaping hole in Canada’s landscapes. This book revisits the times when railways were the country’s economic lifelines, and the ...

BC Book Prize, Non-Fiction, Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One (Finalist)Burt Award for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Literature: Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One (Third Prize winner)Like thousands of Aboriginal children in Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school.These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native c...

From an award-winning journalist comes this real-life cloak-and-dagger tale of Vera Atkins, one of Britain’s premiere secret agents during World War II.As the head of the French Section of the British Special Operations Executive, Vera Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored special operatives whose job was to organize and arm the resistance in Nazi-occupied France. After the war, Atkins courageously committed herself to a dangerous search for twelve of her most cherished women spie...