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The crack in the teacup: the life of an old woman steeped in stories
By Joan Bodger. 2000
Gestalt therapist, story-teller, teacher, writer, children's book editor, director of the first Headstart Program in New York State, Joan Bodger…
is a woman whose life has always been intertwined with stories. Her biography depicts how a life -- and a century -- can be shaped and given meaning by personal mythology, how the power of stories can repair a shattered life. While describing her own life she also includes sharp observations of the nuances of class, racial prejudice, and regional and national differences. Some strong language. 2000.The book of revenge: a blues for Yugoslavia
By Dragan Todorović. 2006
Serb Dragan Todorovic goes to Belgrade as the editor of a cultural magazine, but his constant clashes with the system…
end in his being drafted into the army. Dragan survives his tour of duty, but his return to Belgrade is unsettling - everything is changing, friendships are collapsing, conversations are guarded, and bit by bit, the country he knows and loves is being torn apart. Some strong language. 2006.The bookseller of Kabul
By Åsne Seierstad. 2003
Two weeks after September 11th, award-winning journalist Asne Seierstad went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict there. In the…
following spring she returned to live with an Afghan family for several months. For more than 20 years Sultan Khan defied the authorities - be they Communist or Taliban - in order to supply books to the people of Kabul. He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the Communists, and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and hatred of censorship, he is also a committed Muslim with strict views on family life. 2003.Systems of survival: a dialogue on the moral foundations of commerce and politics
By Jane Jacobs. 1994
In the form of a Platonic dialogue, Jacobs identifies two distinct moral syndromes - one governing commerce, the other, politics…
- and explores what happens when these two syndromes collide. She investigates such examples as business fraud, government subsidies to agriculture and criminal enterprise. She provides a new way of seeing our public transactions and encourages us towards the best use of our natural inclinations. 1994.Shadow maker: the life of Gwendolyn MacEwen
By Rosemary Sullivan. 1995
Using the personal impressions of the poet's intimate friends, Rosemary Sullivan builds a composite portrait of Gwendolyn MacEwan, the Toronto…
poet who died in 1987 at the age of 46. The daughter of an alcoholic father and mentally ill mother, MacEwen's story is a painful one, yet the richness of her art and inner life redeemed the pain. Winner of the 1995 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction.Secret ingredients: the brave new world of industrial farming
By Stuart Laidlaw. 2003
A vivid portrait of what modern industrial farming is, what it is doing to the environment, to farmers, to the…
plants and livestock we eat, and to us as consumers and as citizens. The author takes us from the dairy farms of Pennsylvania to Canada's prairie wheatfields, from the tomato greenhouses of southern Ontario to the potato fields of P.E.I. All along the way, he shows us food's secret ingredient - its hidden costs. 2003.Remembering Peter Gzowski: a book of tributes
By Edna Barker. 2002
This book is a celebration of Peter Gzowski's life and of the enormous role he played in Canadian life. It…
collects tributes from friends and colleagues, and from grieving strangers who had been touched by him in one of the roles that provide us with the chapters in this book: as a writer in newspapers, magazines, or books; as a radio broadcaster; on camera; as a lover of Canada; and as a father, relative, or trusted friend. 2002.Raymond Chandler: a biography
By Tom Hiney. 1997
Chandler created the famous fictional detective Philip Marlowe, whose many investigations in print also made it to the big screen.…
Chandler's own life was centred around his wife Cissy, 18 years his senior. After she died, he embarked on a manic globe-trotting spree that was risky and peppered with chance encounters. 1997.Paper shadows: a Chinatown childhood
By Wayson Choy. 1999
This is a memoir of the author's childhood days in Vancouver's Chinatown, during the 1930s and 1940s. He is able…
to piece together deeply held family secrets that came from China in the form of "paper shadows." With an engaging style, he reveals the link between these secrets and his own life. Some strong language. Canada Reads 2012. 1999.No logo: taking aim at the brand bullies
By Naomi Klein. 2000
As big companies such as McDonald's, Nike and Wal-mart keep getting bigger, consumers are becoming more wary of their attempts…
to force ready-to-wear lifestyles upon us. Klein discusses the growth of the corporate logo, and the resistance to the attempts of the big companies to move into every aspect of our lives. 2000.Lives of mothers & daughters: growing up with Alice Munro
By Sheila Munro. 2001
An intimate biography of Alice Munro. It describes in a way that only a close relative could, the details of…
her family background, from the Laidlaws who left Scotland in the early 19th century, to Alice Munro's birth in 1931, her early years and marriage all the way to the current family. The constant echoes of settings, situations, and characters that occur in her fiction make this an informative commentary to Munro's works.L. M. Montgomery, the creator of Anne of Green Gables and author of more than 20 books, is a household…
name the world over. "Anne of Green Gables" has been translated into 40 different languages and immortalized on film. Montgomery was determined to be a writer, despite the loss of her mother at an early age, her strict and lonely upbringing, and years of doubt and rejection. 2004.Lake of the prairies: a story of belonging
By Warren Cariou. 2002
Cariou's memoir on growing up in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, where he witnessed the discrimination, anger and fear directed at the…
town's Cree and Métis populations by the European settlers. While he has absorbed these prejudices as his own, he is forced to confront the politics of race as an adult. Then, he discovers secrets that his family had kept hidden for generations, secrets that would alter forever his sense of identity and belonging in Meadow Lake. Winner of the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize of the 2003 Writers' Trust of Canada Awards. 2002.Jane Austen (A Penguin life)
By Carol Shields. 2001
In this literary biography, writer Carol Shields throws light on the works of the nineteenth-century English novelist, Jane Austen. Discusses…
the private woman, describing the quiet personal life of a "stern moralist" who wrote "marriage novels" but never married. Canada Reads 2012.Inside memory: pages from a writer's workbook
By Timothy Findley. 1990
This collection of essays, journalistic pieces and diary entries provides a glimpse into the mind of author Timothy Findley. He…
describes his unusual research methods and gives his impressions and thoughts about other literary figures. Includes a portion of "Famous last words" which was removed before publication. Some strong language. Bestseller 1991. Nominated for the 1993 Talking Book of the Year Torgi Award.Byron, the flawed angel: The Flawed Angel
By Phyllis Grosskurth. 1997
The first full-scale biography of Lord Byron published in over forty years. Grosskurth portrays the fascinating, complex, and extraordinary figure…
who, during his life, was the most notorious man in Europe and remains one of the greatest and most entertaining poets of any age. 1997.Charles Dickens: his life and his work
By Stephen Leacock. 1933
Stephen Leacock's biography of the great novelist was, not surprisingly, the first to explore the humour as well as the…
morality of Dickens' novels. Readable, entertaining, and insightful, this biography is a classic work, admirable for both its subject and author. 2004, c1933.Here be dragons: telling tales of people, passions and power
By Peter C Newman. 2005
Peter C. Newman's autobiography, from his youth as a pampered child in a Czech chateau; to the Jewish kid in…
short pants being machine-gunned by Nazi fighter planes on the beach at Biarritz, en route to the last ship to escape France in 1940; to a refugee in Canada. He became a journalist and author, writing about Canadian politics, history and business while working as an editor at the Toronto Star and Maclean's. Seeing himself as the perennial outsider, Newman discusses his marriages, enthusiasms, and the controversies that constantly embroil him. 2005.Good to great: why some companies make the leap--and others don't (Good to Great #1)
By James C Collins. 2001
Author Collins and a team of researchers investigated how 11 companies made substantial improvements in their performance over time. The…
companies, including Fannie Mae, Gillette, and Wells Fargo, had common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Rather than a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, or innovative change management or business strategies, they instead had a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. 2001.