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Native peoples and cultures of Canada: an anthropological overview
By Alan D McMillan. 1988
A comprehensive overview of all the native groups of Canada -- Indian, Metis and Inuit. Describes their traditional ways of…
life from prehistoric times to the present issues of land claims and self-government. 1988.My father's wake: how the Irish teach us to live, love, and die
By Kevin Toolis. 2018
From here to eternity: traveling the world to find the good death
By Caitlin Doughty. 2017
Fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for…
their dead. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body. Grandpa's mummy has lived in the family home for two years, where the family has maintained a warm and respectful relationship. She meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls), and introduces us to a Japanese kotsuage, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved-ones' bones from cremation ashes. With curiosity and morbid humour, Doughty encounters vividly decomposed bodies and participates in compelling, powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in America. Introduces death-care innovators researching green burial and body composting, explores new spaces for mourning--including a glowing Buddha columbarium in Japan and America's only open-air pyre--and reveals unexpected new possibilities for our own death rituals. Bestseller. 2017.Chinese New Year: a celebration for everyone (Orca origins.)
By Jen Sookfong Lee. 2017
From its beginnings as a farming celebration marking the end of winter to its current role as a global party…
featuring good food, lots of gifts and public parades, 'Chinese New Year' is a snapshot of Chinese culture. Award-winning author and broadcaster Jen Sookfong Lee recalls her childhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, and weaves family stories into the history, traditions and evolution of Chinese New Year. Grades 3-6. 2017.Canada's first nations: a history of founding peoples
By Olive Patricia Dickason. 1992
Dickason traces the history of Canada's first nations, from the earliest habitation of North America through European settlement and to…
the present. She discusses current issues and controversies, including Meech Lake, the Oka crisis, and the debate over self-government. 1992.Bury my heart at Wounded Knee: an Indian history of the American West
By Dee Alexander Brown. 1970
The author sets out to tell of the conquest of the American West as the victims experienced it, using their…
own words whenever possible; of the greedy invaders, murdering and destroying Indians who had set out to live in peace with their white neighbours. 1970.Apron strings: navigating food and family in France, Italy, and China
By Jan Wong. 2017
Jan Wong knows food is better when shared, so when she set out to write a book about home cooking…
in France, Italy, and China, she asked her 22-year-old son, Sam, to join her. While he wasn't keen on spending excessive time with his mom, he dreamed of becoming a chef. Ultimately, it was an opportunity he couldn't pass up. On their journey, Jan and Sam live and cook with locals, seeing how globalization is changing food, families, and cultures. In southeast France, they move in with a family sheltering undocumented migrants. From Bernadette, the housekeeper, they learn classic French family fare such as blanquette de veau. In a hamlet in the heart of Italy's Slow Food country, the locals teach them how to make authentic spaghetti alle vongole and a proper risotto with leeks. In Shanghai, they cook firecracker chicken and scallion pancakes with the nouveaux riches and their migrant maids, who are part of the biggest demographic shift in world history. Along the way, mother and son explore their sometimes-fraught relationship, uniting--and occasionally clashing--over their mutual love of cooking. 2017.The milk lady of Bangalore: an unexpected adventure
By Shoba Narayan. 2018
When Shoba Narayan, a writer and cookbook author who had lived for years in Manhattan, moves back to Bangalore with…
her family, she befriends the milk lady, from whom she buys fresh milk every day. These two women from very different backgrounds bond over not only cows, considered holy in India, but also family, food, and life. After Narayan agrees to buy her milk lady a new cow (she needs one and Narayan can afford it, so why not?), they set off looking for just the right cow. What was at first a simple economic transaction becomes something much more complicated, though never without a hint of slapstick. 2018.Getting a life: the social worlds of geek culture
By Benjamin Woo. 2018
Comic book superheroes, fantasy kingdoms, and futuristic starships have become inescapable features of today’s pop-culture landscape, and the people we…
used to deride as “nerds” or “geeks” have ridden their popularity and visibility to mainstream recognition. Yet these conventionalized representations of geek culture typically ignore the real people who have invested time and resources to make it what it is. Woo recentres our understanding of geek culture on the everyday lives of its participants, drawing on fieldwork in comic book shops, game stores, and conventions. He shows how geek culture is a set of interconnected social practices that are associated with popular media and argues that typical depictions of mass-mediated entertainment as something that isolates and pacifies its audiences are flawed because they do not account for the conversations, relationships, communities, and identities that are created by engaging with the products of mass culture. 2018. "What is a nerd?" -- Talk nerdy to me: the meaning of geek culture -- Taking geek culture seriously: a practice-theoretic account -- Values and virtues: what is best in life? -- Careers: boldly going on -- Making communities from mass culture -- Institutions: building worlds between production and consumption -- The limits of participation -- The geek, the bad, and the ugly --The last whalers: three years in the far Pacific with a courageous tribe and a vanishing way of life
By Doug Bock Clark. 2019
Journalist Doug Bock Clark tells the stunning inside story of the Lamalerans, an ancient tribe of 1,500 hunter-gatherers who live…
on a volcanic island so remote it is known by other Indonesians as "The Land Left Behind." They have survived for centuries by taking whales with bamboo harpoons, but now are being pushed toward collapse by the encroachment of the modern world. 2019.Native peoples (Discovering Canada)
By Robert Livesey. 1993
Who were the original native peoples who lived in what is now Canada? Where and how did they live? What…
were their legends and myths, heroes and gods? The authors move from east to west, providing the history and folklore of seven native nations. Activities and a crossword puzzle are included. Grades 5-8. 1993. (Discovering Canada series)A mind spread out on the ground
By Alicia Elliott. 2019
In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about Native people in North America while drawing on intimate…
details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight and understanding to the ongoing legacy of colonialism. What are the links between depression, colonialism and loss of language--both figurative and literal? How does white privilege operate in different contexts? How do we navigate the painful contours of mental illness in loved ones without turning them into their sickness? How does colonialism operate on the level of literary criticism? A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is Alicia Elliott's attempt to answer these questions and more. In the process, she engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, sexuality, love, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrification, writing and representation. Elliott makes connections both large and small between the past and present, the personal and political--from overcoming a years-long history with head lice to the way Native writers are treated within the Canadian literary industry; her unplanned teenage pregnancy to the history of dark matter and how it relates to racism in the court system; her childhood diet of Kraft dinner to how systematic oppression is linked to depression in Native communities. With deep consideration and searing prose, Elliott extends far beyond her own experiences to provide a candid look at our past, an illuminating portrait of our present and a powerful tool for a better future. Bestseller. Winner of the 2020 Evergreen Award. 2019.The making of home: the 500-year story of how our houses became our homes
By Judith Flanders. 2014
Flanders traces the evolution of the house from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century across northern Europe and America,…
showing how the homes we know today bear only a faint resemblance to homes though history. What turned a house into a home? Why did northwestern Europe, a politically unimportant, sociologically underdeveloped region of the world, suddenly became the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution, the capitalist crucible that created modernity? While investigating these important questions, Flanders uncovers the fascinating development of ordinary household items--from cutlery, chairs and curtains, to fitted kitchens, plumbing and windows--while also dismantling many domestic myths.Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation
By Michael Powell. 2019
The moving story of a Navajo high school basketball team, its members struggling with the everyday challenges of high school,…
adolescence, and family, and the great and unique obstacles facing Native Americans living on reservations. Deep in the heart of northern Arizona, in a small and isolated patch of the vast 17.5-million-acre Navajo reservation, sits Chinle High School. Here, basketball is passion, passed from grandparent to parent to child. Rez Ball is a sport for winters where dark and cold descend fast and there is little else to do but roam mesa tops, work, and wonder what the future holds. The town has 4,500 residents and the high school arena seats 7,000. Fans drive thirty, fifty, even eighty miles to see the fast-paced and highly competitive matchups that are more than just games to players and fans. Celebrated Times journalist Michael Powell brings us a narrative of triumph and hardship, a moving story about a basketball team on a Navajo reservation that shows how important sports can be to youths in struggling communities, and the transcendent magic and painful realities that confront Native Americans living on reservations. This book details his season-long immersion in the team, town, and culture, in which there were exhilarating wins, crushing losses, and conversations on long bus rides across the desert about dreams of leaving home and the fear of the same.JAY-Z: Made in America
By Michael Eric Dyson. 2019
"If you want the definitive treatment of a man who took it from Marcy Projects to the White House with…
wit, wisdom, and talent, and changed hip hop along the way, look no further than this insightful, brilliant and moving book." -Common JAY-Z is America at its scrappy, brash, irreverent, soulful, ingenious best: as transcendent a cultural icon as Frank Sinatra, as adventurous a self-made billionaire as Mark Zuckerberg, as gifted a poet as Walt Whitman. As he reaches the half-century mark, logs thirty years as a recording artist, becomes the genre's first billionaire, reigns as an elder statesman in a field teeming with artists half his age, and continues to make relevant rap records that chart-and that chart an artistic and political response to revived racism and renewed hostility to blackness-it is an auspicious time to examine JAY-Z's ideas, gifts and impact, to take measure of his stride as a cultural colossus. And there is no one better suited to the task than Michael Eric Dyson, who has investigated and championed hip hop, and the work of JAY-Z, as a critical American art form, for decades.Love Thy Neighbor
By Ayaz Virji. 2019
A powerful true story about a Muslim doctor's service to small-town America and the hope of overcoming our country's climate…
of hostility and fear. In 2013, Ayaz Virji left a comfortable job at an East Coast hospital and moved to a town of 1,400 in Minnesota, feeling called to address the shortage of doctors in rural America. But in 2016, this decision was tested when the reliably blue, working-class county swung for Donald Trump. Virji watched in horror as his children faced anti-Muslim remarks at school and some of his most loyal patients began questioning whether he belonged in the community. Virji wanted out. But in 2017, just as he was lining up a job in Dubai, a local pastor invited him to speak at her church and address misconceptions about what Muslims practice and believe. That invitation has grown into a well-attended lecture series that has changed hearts and minds across the state, while giving Virji a new vocation that he never would have expected. In Love Thy Neighbor, Virji relates this story in a gripping, unforgettable narrative that shows the human consequences of our toxic politics, the power of faith and personal conviction, and the potential for a renewal of understanding in America's heartland.Monsieur Mediocre: One Man's Journey to Becoming Real French
By John Von Sothen. 2019
A hilarious, candid account of what life in France is actually like, from a writer for Vanity Fair and GQ…
Americans love to love Paris. We buy books about how the French parent, why French women don't get fat, and how to be Parisian wherever you are. While our work hours increase every year, we think longingly of the six weeks of vacation the French enjoy, imagining them at the seaside in stripes with plates of fruits de mer. John von Sothen fell in love with Paris through the stories his mother told of her year spent there as a student. And then, after falling for and marrying a French waitress he met in New York, von Sothen moved to Paris. But fifteen years in, he's finally ready to admit his mother's Paris is mostly a fantasy. In this hilarious and delightful collection of essays, von Sothen walks us through real life in Paris-not only myth-busting our Parisian daydreams but also revealing the inimitable and too often invisible pleasures of family life abroad. Relentlessly funny and full of incisive observations, Monsieur Mediocre is ultimately a love letter to France-to its absurdities, its history, its ideals-but it's a very French love letter: frank, smoky, unsentimental. It is a clear-eyed ode to a beautiful, complex, contradictory country from someone who both eagerly and grudgingly calls it home.Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars
By Meghan Daum. 2019
From "one of the most emotionally exacting, mercilessly candid, deeply funny, and intellectually rigorous writers of our time" (Cheryl Strayed,…
author of Wild) comes a seminal new book that reaches surprising truths about feminism, the Trump era, and the Resistance movement. You won't be able to stop thinking about it and talking about it. In the fall of 2016, acclaimed author Meghan Daum began working on a book about the excesses of contemporary feminism. With Hillary Clinton soon to be elected, she figured even the most fiercely liberal of her friends and readers could take the criticisms in stride. But after the election, she knew she needed to do more, and her nearly completed manuscript went in the trash. What came out in its place is the most sharply-observed, all-encompassing, and unputdownable book of her career. In this gripping new work, Meghan examines our country's most intractable problems with clear-eyed honesty instead of exaggerated outrage. With passion, humor, and most importantly nuance, she tries to make sense of the current landscape-from Donald Trump's presidency to the #MeToo movement and beyond. In the process, she wades into the waters of identity politics and intersectionality, thinks deeply about the gender wage gap, and tests a theory about the divide between Gen Xers and millennials. This signature work may well be the first book to capture the essence of this era in all its nuances and contradictions. No matter where you stand on its issues, this book will strike a chord.The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini
By Joe Posnanski. 2019
Award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski enters the world of Harry Houdini and his legions of…
devoted fans in an immersive, entertaining, and magical work on the illusionist's impact on American culture-and why his legacy endures to this day. Harry Houdini. Say his name and a number of things come to mind. Escapes. Illusions. Magic. Chains. Safes. Live burials. Close to a century after his death, nearly every person in America knows his name from a young age, capturing their imaginations with his death-defying stunts and daring acts. He inspired countless people, from all walks of life, to find something magical within themselves. This is a book about a man and his extraordinary life, but it is also about the people who he has inspired in death. As Joe Posnanski delves into the deepest corners of Houdini-land, visiting museums (one owned by David Copperfield), attractions, and private archives, he encounters a cast of unforgettable and fascinating characters: a woman who runs away from home to chase her dream of becoming a magician; an Italian who revives Houdini's most famous illusion every night; a performer at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles who calls himself Houdini's Ghost; a young boy in Australia who, one day, sees an old poster and feels his life change; and a man in Los Angeles whose sole mission is life has been to keep the legend's name alive. Both a personal obsession and an odyssey of discovery, Posnanski draws inspiration from his lifelong passion for and obsession with magic, blending biography, memoir, and first-person reporting to examine Harry Houdini's life and legacy. This is the ultimate journey to uncover why this magic man endures, and what he still has to teach the world about wonder.Wolfpack
By Abby Wambach. 2019
"Abby is a relatable revolutionary-with WOLFPACK, she inspires the confidence, leadership and sisterhood we all so desperately need right now."-Amy…
Schumer This program is read by the author. Based on her inspiring, viral 2018 commencement speech to Barnard College's graduates in New York City, New York Times bestselling author, two-time Olympic gold medalist and FIFA World Cup champion Abby Wambach delivers her empowering rally cry for women to unleash their individual power, unite with their pack, and emerge victorious together. Abby Wambach became a champion because of her incredible talent as a soccer player. She became an icon because of her remarkable wisdom as a leader. As the co-captain of the 2015 Women's World Cup Champion Team, she created a culture not just of excellence, but of honor, commitment, resilience, and sisterhood. She helped transform a group of individual women into one of the most successful, powerful and united Wolfpacks of all time. In her retirement, Abby's ready to do the same for her new team: All Women Everywhere. In WOLFPACK, Abby's message to women is: We have never been Little Red Riding Hood. We Are the Wolves. We must wander off the path and blaze a new one: together. She insists that women must let go of old rules of leadership that neither include or serve them. She's created a new set of Wolfpack rules to help women unleash their individual power, unite with their Wolfpack, and change the landscape of their lives and world: from the family room to the board room to the White House. - Make failure your fuel: Transform failure to wisdom and power. - Lead from the bench: Lead from wherever you are. - Champion each other: Claim each woman's victory as your own. - Demand the effing ball: Don't ask permission: take what you've earned. In Abby's vision, we are not Little Red Riding Hoods, staying on the path because we're told to. We are the wolves, fighting for a better tomorrow for ourselves, our pack, and all the future wolves who will come after us. More praise for WOLFPACK: "WOLFPACK is a must-read for all of us determined to teach our kids there are no limits. It's a manifesto for everyone trying to lead-whether it's a team, a company, a family, or a meaningful life."-Serena Williams "I would follow Abby Wambach into any battlefield. I would follow her not because she is a bold leader (although she is one), but because she leads from BESIDE women, not from AHEAD of us...Abby Wambach is what the next level of women's revolution will look like, and I'm DOWN."-Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love