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Murdered Midas: a millionaire, his gold mine, and a strange death on an island paradise /
By Charlotte Gray. 2019
On an island paradise in 1943, Sir Harry Oakes, gold mining tycoon, philanthropist and "richest man in the Empire," was…
murdered. The news of his death surged across the English-speaking world, from London, the Imperial centre, to the remote Canadian mining town of Kirkland Lake, in the Northern Ontario bush. The murder became celebrated as "the crime of the century." The layers of mystery deepened as the involvement of Oakes' son-in-law, Count Alfred de Marigny, came quickly to be questioned, as did the odd machinations of the Governor of the Bahamas, the former King Edward VIII. Despite a sensational trial, no murderer was ever convicted. Rumours were unrelenting about Oakes' missing fortune, and fascination with the Oakes story has persisted for decades. Award-winning biographer and popular historian Charlotte Gray explores, for the first time, the life of the man behind the scandal, a man who was both reviled and admired - from his early, hardscrabble days of mining exploration, to his explosion of wealth, to his grandiose gestures of philanthropy. And Gray brings fresh eyes to the bungled investigation and shocking trial in the remote colonial island streets, proposing an overlooked suspect in this long cold case. 2019.Trudeau: the education of a prime minister /
By John Ivison. 2019
Canadians are very divided about their chameleon prime minister. Is Justin Trudeau a transformative prime minister, or does he just…
play one on television? When he entered politics, he came across as a frivolous person with no fixed principles. Now, he presents himself as a conviction politician. Is he real or phony? What motivated his metamorphosis--belief or opportunism? More prosaically, he appears a man of good intentions but in 2019, he will be judged on results. And those results have been disappointing for many, even in his own party. The ballooning deficit, the Trans Mountain Pipeline, his disastrous trip to India, the carbon tax, and many other miscalculations have done him and his party no favours. And while the Liberals concluded a new trade deal with the United States and Mexico, there are still many Canadians dissatisfied with the terms. As political columnist for the National Post since 2003 and Ottawa bureau chief for Postmedia for the past three years, John Ivison has watched Trudeau evolve as a politician and leader at home and abroad. He first interviewed him in 2006 and has sat down on a number of occasions since. It has been a fascinating transition that has not been fully captured by any writer. This book will trace the palimpsest of the man, now barely visible beneath the talking points, virtue signalling, and polished trappings of office. Ivison concludes that he has always been manipulative--good at understanding the feelings of others and playing on them. It has made him a formidable politician but one who may yet be undone by raising the bar too high; by promising to transform a country that was designed to withstand change. 2019.Girls need not apply: field notes from the Forces /
By Kelly S. Thompson. 2019
At eighteen years old, Kelly Thompson enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces. Despite growing up in a military family --…
she would, in fact, be a fourth-generation soldier -- she couldn't shake the feeling that she didn't belong. From the moment she arrives for basic training at a Quebec military base, a young woman more interested in writing than weaponry, she quickly realizes that her conception of what being a soldier means, forged from a desire to serve her country after the 9/11 attacks, isn't entirely accurate. A career as a female officer will involve navigating a masculinized culture and coming to grips with her burgeoning feminism. In this compulsively readable memoir, Thompson writes with wit and honesty about her own development as a woman and a soldier, unsparingly highlighting truths about her time in the military. In sharply crafted prose, she chronicles the frequent sexism and misogyny she encounters both in training and later in the workplace, and explores her own feelings of pride and loyalty to the Forces, and a family legacy of PTSD, all while searching for an artistic identity in a career that demands conformity. When she sustains a career-altering injury, Thompson fearlessly re-examines her identity as a soldier. 2019.Daughter of Family G: a memoir of cancer genes, love and fate /
By Ami McKay. 2019
The story of Ami McKay's connection to a genetic disorder called Lynch syndrome begins over seventy years before she was…
born and long before scientists discovered DNA. In 1895 her great-great aunt, Pauline Gross, a seamstress in Ann Arbor, Michigan, confided to a pathology professor at the local university that she expected to die young, like so many others in her family. Rather than dismiss her fears, the pathologist chose to enlist Pauline in the careful tracking of those in her family tree who had died of cancer. Pauline's premonition proved true--she died at 46--but because of her efforts, her family (who the pathologist dubbed 'Family G') would become the longest and most detailed cancer genealogy ever studied in the world. A century after Pauline's confession, researchers would identify the genetic mutation responsible for the family's woes. Now known as Lynch syndrome, the genetic condition predisposes its carriers to several types of cancer, including colorectal, endometrial, ovarian and pancreatic. In 2001, as a young mother with two sons and a keen interest in survival, Ami McKay was among the first to be tested for Lynch syndrome. She had a feeling she'd test positive: her mother's side of the family was riddled with early deaths and her own mother was being treated for the disease. When the test proved her fears true, she began living in "an unsettling state between wellness and cancer," and she's been there ever since. 2019.High school /
By Sara Quin. 2019
High School is the revelatory and unique coming-of-age story of Sara and Tegan Quin, identical twins from Calgary, Alberta, growing…
up in the height of grunge and rave culture in the 90s, well before they became the celebrated musicians and global LGBTQ icons we know today. While grappling with their identity and sexuality, often alone, they also faced academic meltdown, their parents' divorce, and the looming pressure of what might come after high school. Written in alternating chapters from both Tegan's point of view and Sara's, the book is a raw account of the drugs, alcohol, love, music, and friendship they explored in their formative years. A transcendent story of first loves and first songs, it captures the tangle of discordant and parallel memories of two sisters who grew up in distinct ways even as they lived just down the hall from one another. 2019.From the ashes: my story of being Métis, homeless, and finding my way
By Jesse Thistle. 2019
Abandoned by his parents as a toddler, Jesse Thistle briefly found himself in the foster-care system with his two brothers,…
cut off from all they had known. Eventually the children landed in the home of their paternal grandparents, but their tough-love attitudes meant conflicts became commonplace. And the ghost of Jesse's drug-addicted father haunted the halls of the house and the memories of every family member. Struggling, Jesse succumbed to a self-destructive cycle of drug and alcohol addiction and petty crime, spending more than a decade on and off the streets, often homeless. One day, he finally realized he would die unless he turned his life around. 2019.We have always been here: a queer Muslim memoir /
By Samra Habib. 2019
Growing up in Pakistan, Samra Habib lacks a blueprint for the life she wants. She has a mother who gave…
up everything to be a pious, dutiful wife and an overprotective father who seems to conspire against a life of any adventure. Plus, she has to hide the fact that she's Ahmadi to avoid persecution from religious extremists. As the threats against her family increase, they seek refuge in Canada, where new financial and cultural obstacles await them. When Samra discovers that her mother has arranged her marriage, she must again hide a part of herself--the fun-loving, feminist teenager that has begun to bloom--until she simply can't any longer. So begins a journey of self-discovery that takes her to Tokyo, where she comes to terms with her sexuality, and to a queer-friendly mosque in Toronto, where she returns to her faith in the same neighbourhood where she attended her first drag show. Along the way, she learns that the facets of her identity aren't as incompatible as she was led to believe, and that her people had always been there--the world just wasn't ready for them yet. 2019.Mistakes to run with: a memoir /
By Yasuko Thanh. 2019
Mistakes to Run With chronicles the turbulent early years of Yasuko Thanh's life, from a rough childhood to her teen…
years as a sex worker to her emergence as a writer. Growing up in a housing project in Victoria, BC, Thanh rebels against her extremely religious parents. She's an honours student, but also a nascent delinquent, cutting herself and getting arrested for shoplifting. By fifteen her parents have kicked her out. She runs away repeatedly from foster homes, acquiring a taste for drugs and alcohol and learning unlikely lessons about sex, power, and friendship. By the time she enters the world of sex work she feels completely abandoned--by her family, her friends, her school, and society. After a stint in jail at sixteen, she meets her pimp, Jesse, and falls in love. The next chapter of her life takes us from the motel rooms of Victoria to the streets of Vancouver, as Thanh endures further hardship: beatings, arrests, Jesse's crack cocaine addiction, and an unwanted pregnancy. It's the act of writing that ultimately becomes a solace from her suffering--but even as publication and awards bolster her, she remains haunted by her past. 2019.The Fountain of Age
By Betty Friedan. 1993
Betty Friedan launches a new revolution with this powerful, bestselling book breaking through the American mystique of aging as decline.…
Through hundreds of interviews, Friedan confronts our denial and demolishes society's compassionate contempt -- to offer a vision of what can be embraced.The Hourglass Solution: A Boomer's Guide to the Rest of Your Life
By Jeff Johnson, Paula Forman. 2009
Seventy-five million baby boomers are finding themselves bound by habits and pursuits instigated many years agoand for a large percentage…
of those boomers, significant aspects of their lives no longer satisfy. But by joining revolutionary insight to highly proprietary prescriptive advice, The Hourglass Solution provides a proactive and pragmatic way to lead a better life after 50. Johnson and Forman evaluate the life narrative through the lens of an hourglassproposing that those in early adulthood are at the top of the hourglass, able to select from many options, while those in middle age are in the hourglass’s neck, constrained by the choices they made earlier in their lives. The Hourglass Solution explains how those approaching their fifties (and beyond) can still find a wealth of opportunity by recognizing and pursuing new directions, free from the restrictions imposed by an earlier choice. Like Gail Sheehy’s Passages before it, The Hourglass Solution will enlighten and inspire a generation of readers to regain control over their lives and well-being.Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement And Transform America
By Marc Freedman. 1999
Over the next three decades, the number of Americans over fifty will double, swelling to more than a quarter of…
the population. Already we are living thirty years longer than a century ago, with further gains expected in the coming years. The end result is a new stage of life, one as long or longer than childhood or middle age in duration, and one spent in unprecedented good health. Yet, as individuals, and as a society, we've shown little imagination or wisdom in using this great gift of a third age. Marc Freedman identifies the new longevity as not a problem to be solved, but an opportunity to be seized-provided we can engage the experience, talent, and idealism of older Americans. At a juncture when the middle-generation faces a time-famine, struggling to simultaneously raise kids and work long hours on the job, the older generation is awash in free time, poised to succeed women as the trustees of civic life in this country. In the process they stand to find new meaning and purpose in their lives, and abandon the limbo-like state unfulfilling for so many older individuals. Freedman argues that the aging phenomenon, the massive transformation that many portray as our downfall, may in fact be our best hope for renewal as a nation.The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain
By Gene D. Cohen. 2005
The Mature Mind delivers good news for those in the second half of life, with an extraordinary account of cutting-edge…
neuroscience, groundbreaking psychology, fascinating vignettes from history and case studies, and practical advice for personal growth strategies. Gene Cohen, a renowned psychiatrist and gerontologist, draws from more than thirty years of research to show that surprising positive changes in our brains have the powerful potential to enhance, not diminish, our lives after fifty.Keeping Mum: Caring for Someone with Dementia
By Marianne Talbot. 2011
At 3am I was startled awake by the opening of the stairgate Leaping out of bed I found Mum…
clothes on over her pyjamas grumbling she was fed up of being moved from pillar to post and was going home When her mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer s disease Marianne Talbot decided she couldn t put her into a care home Instead for five years she looked after her mum in her own home For nearly three of those years she chronicled for the readers of Saga Magazine Online the fears and frustrations the love and the laughter and the tears and the traumas of caring Now in this heart warming book you too can meet Marianne Mum and the appalling Fatcat You will also find plenty of practical tips for caring for someone with dementia and on staying sane whilst doing so a resources and useful contacts section and Marianne s reflections on caring from a distance and on when caring comes to an end Written for anyone anywhere who has anything to do with dementia or with caring in reading it you will know you are not aloneThe Caregivers
By Nell Lake. 2014
A moving, intimate, and compassionate book that chronicles the experiences of a group of long-term caregivers and illuminates critical issues…
of old age, end-of-life care, medical reform, and social policy In 2010, journalist Nell Lake began sitting in on the weekly meetings of a local hospital's caregivers support group. Soon members invited her into their lives. For two years, she brought empathy, insight, and an eye for detail to understanding Penny, a fifty-year-old botanist caring for her aging mother; Daniel, a survivor of Nazi Germany who tends his ailing wife; William, whose wife suffers from Alzheimer's; and others with whom all caregivers will identify. Witnessing acts of devotion and frustration, lessons in patience and in letting go, Lake illuminates the intimate exchanges of caregiving and carereceiving. Her work considers important and timely social issues with humanity, warmth, and concern: How can we care for the aging, ill, and dying with skill and compassion, even as the costs and labors of care increase? How might the medical profession take into account the needs of caregivers as well as patients? Nell Lake understands that broad policy questions are experienced personally, in the daily, difficult but rewarding lives of caregivers everywhere. The Caregivers is a thoughtful and tenderly reported depiction of the real-life predicaments that evoke these crucial questions. With more and more people spending their late years ill and frail, and 43 million Americans caring for family members over age fifty, The Caregivers is an important chronicle of a widely shared experience and a public concern. It offers a humane, realistic, and life-affirming portrait of what it means to give and receive love.AARP Meditations for Caregivers: Practical, Emotional, and Spiritual Support for You and Your Family
By Barry J. Jacobs, Julia L. Mayer. 2016
Family caregiving has its challenges: emotional overload, time constraints, anxiety, burnout, missed work, adult sibling conflicts, and marital issues. AARP…
Meditations for Caregivers blends emotional and spiritual motivation to minimize the strains while helping caregivers view their work as a mission from the heart. Chapters are organized by theme, including topics such as accepting your feelings, knowing your limits, seeking support, and managing stress. Each reading offers a poignant meditation, an anecdote drawn from the author's personal or clinical experience, and hands-on or psychological advice to foster coping skills and a sense of fulfillment.The meditations in this dispensable book will provide you with solutions to typical caregiving challenges, offer relief and renewal through mindfulness, and inspire you to find meaning and value in the work you do.How We Age: A Doctor's Journey into the Heart of Growing Old
By Marc Agronin. 2011
Human Rights of Older People
By Bethany Brown, Claudia Martin, Diego Rodríguez-Pinzón. 2015
This book focuses on descriptions of the developments in legal frameworks and policies regarding the human rights of older persons.…
First, it covers the policies adopted and practices developed at the universal system, particularly within the sphere of the United Nations. Second, it includes a side-by-side comparison of the work of regional human rights mechanisms, which have picked up some momentum in the past decade. Through its inclusion of law, policy, and current processes, the widest net possible has been cast to collect a descriptive resource for advocates. Overall, we hope that this book contributes to a better understanding of the current limitations and possibilities that international institutions offer to uphold the human rights of older persons. We expect that this information will allow states and other policy makers to move forward with the international recognition of the human rights of older persons. We know this is only a first effort in compiling and reporting the standards that are being produced by different international institutions. But we have no doubt that many others will follow with their expert analysis of these emerging standards, and that the ongoing discussion will finally crystalize in international human rights binding instruments explicitly recognizing the universal rights of older persons.Evolving Eldercare in Contemporary China
By Lin Chen. 2016
With an increasing number of elders moving into nursing homes, the shift from family to nursing home care calls for…
an exploration of caregiving decision-making in urban China. This study examines how a rapidly growing aging population, the one-child policy, and economic reform in urban China pose unprecedented challenges to the country's ingrained tradition of family caregiving. It presents interviews of matched elders and their children from a government-sponsored nursing home in Shanghai and analyzes the decision-making process of institutionalization. This book offers fresh insight into the evolving culture and arrangements of caregiving in contemporary Chinese society, illuminating the diverse needs for long-term care of Chinese elders-the world's largest aging population-in the coming decades.Aging in Asia: Findings from New and Emerging Data Initiatives
By James P. Smith. 2012
The population of Asia is growing both larger and older. Demographically the most important continent on the world, Asia's population,…
currently estimated to be 4.2 billion, is expected to increase to about 5.9 billion by 2050. Rapid declines in fertility, together with rising life expectancy, are altering the age structure of the population so that in 2050, for the first time in history, there will be roughly as many people in Asia over the age of 65 as under the age of 15. It is against this backdrop that the Division of Behavioral and Social Research at the U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA) asked the National Research Council (NRC), through the Committee on Population, to undertake a project on advancing behavioral and social research on aging in Asia. Aging in Asia: Findings from New and Emerging Data Initiatives is a peer-reviewed collection of papers from China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand that were presented at two conferences organized in conjunction with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, Indonesian Academy of Sciences, and Science Council of Japan; the first conference was hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, and the second conference was hosted by the Indian National Science Academy in New Delhi. The papers in the volume highlight the contributions from new and emerging data initiatives in the region and cover subject areas such as economic growth, labor markets, and consumption; family roles and responsibilities; and labor markets and consumption.Grand Challenges of Our Aging Society: Workshop Summary
By National Research Council of the National Academies. 2010
Aging populations are generating both challenges and opportunities for societies around the globe. Increases in longevity and improvements in health…
raise many questions. What steps can be taken to optimize physical and cognitive health and productivity across the life span? How will older people finance their retirement and health care? What will be the macroeconomic implications of an aging population? How will communities be shaped by the shift in age structure? What global interconnections will affect how each society handles the aging of its population? To address these questions, the National Academies organized a symposium, summarized in the present volume, to determine how best to contribute to an evidence-based dialogue on population aging that will shape policies and programs. Presentations in the fields of biology, public health, medicine, informatics, macroeconomics, finance, urban planning, and engineering approached the challenges of aging from many different angles. The presenters reviewed the current state of knowledge in their respective fields, identifying areas of consensus and controversy and delineating the priority questions for further research and policy development.