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Fallows has spent much of her life learning languages and travelling around the world, but nothing prepared her for the… surprises of learning Mandarin, China's most common language. Over time, she realized that her struggles and triumphs with Mandarin provided clues to deciphering the behaviour and habits of its people. As her knowledge increased, bits of the language became windows into understanding romance, humour, protocol, relationships, and the overflowing humanity of modern China. c2010.
A winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize for physics explains in lay language the scientific search for a "final theory"… that would unify and explain the physical laws governing the universe. He speculates on the character of that theory and on what it might mean for humankind, including the question, "What about God?" c1992.
In November 2001 author Bishop-Stall entered Tent City, a lawless area in downtown Toronto claimed by a group of people… with nowhere else to go. For 10 months, Bishop-Stall was welcomed, but also subjected to cruel realities: drunken brawls, crackheads, forgotten children, and the repeated broken promises of those who said they were leaving once and for all. Canada Reads 2012. 2005.
Introduces us to the DSI team, a top-secret unit within the FBI (that's the Federal Bureau of Intimacy) whose sole… mission is to investigate dating dilemmas and equip you with the skills you need so you're never again a dating victim. Through humorous and engaging case studies, you'll read about boyfriends who might be gay, gamers who won't step up to the plate, and wimps who won't go down for the count. 2006.
Florida columnist and author focuses his humour on the aging of baby boomers. He gives highlights of each of the… "formative boomer years" from 1947, when he was born, to 1974. Barry grumbles about such issues as failing eyesight, retirement planning, and not being "hip" anymore. Bestseller. 1998.
Pat Capponi, a former mental patient, took herself off welfare to become a critically acclaimed author and mental health care… advocate. But when funding for her position was cut, unemployed and angry, she began to write an open letter to provincial premier Mike Harris. The letter became this book, an examination of life below the poverty line in Canada. 1997.
Brown is not white. Brown is not black. Brown is an experience, a state of mind. Historically speaking, issues of… race and skin colour have been interpreted along black and white lines, leaving out millions of people whose stories of migration and racial experiences have shaped our modern world. The book takes a global look at the many social, political, economic and personal implications of being a brown-skinned person in the world now. Brown people have emerged as the source of global cheap labour (Hispanics or South Asians) while also coming under scrutiny and suspicion for their culture and faith (Arabs and Muslims). Packed with personal narratives and on-the-street reporting conducted over two years in ten countries from four continents. Winner of the 2016 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. 2016.
Like any new mother, Emily Urquhart is thrilled when her first child, a daughter, is born. Sadie is healthy and… stunningly beautiful, with snow white hair and fair skin. Even the doctors and nurses can’t help a second look at this magical child. But soon a darker current begins to emerge - something is amiss. After three months of testing, Sadie is diagnosed with a rare genetic condition, albinism. Part memoir, part cultural critique, and part genetic travelogue, "Beyond the Pale" is a brave, intimate investigation into the secret histories that each of us carries in our genes and an inspiring memoir about parenting a child with a disability - and building a better future for that child. 2015.
Emmy Award-winning ABC News chief national correspondent and Nightline co-anchor, Byron Pitts shares the heartbreaking and inspiring stories of six… young people who overcame impossible circumstances - abuse, bullying, war, drug addiction, mental illness and violence - with extraordinary perseverance. None of these should be realities for anyone, much less a young person. But for some it is the only reality they have ever known. In these dark circumstances, six teens needed someone to "be the one" for them--the hero to help them back into the light. For Tania, Mason, Pappy, Michaela, Ryan, and Tyton, that hero was themselves. For junior and senior high readers. 2017.
An overview of contemporary cultural theory, covering the major thinkers - like Foucault, Bourdieu, Habermas and Giddens - and key… concepts of the last century - including symbolic interactionism, structuralism and psychoanalysis. An ideal guide for any student with an interest in the theoretical study of culture and society. 2001.
Nearly everything you know about Christmas is wrong. Do you think the proclaimed war on Christmas is a recent occurrence?… Do you think Santa is Dutch, or that his red suit was brought to you courtesy of Coca-Cola? Or are you merely dreaming of a Christmas like the one you used to know? You aren't alone: thirty years after the first recorded Christmas, a fourth-century archbishop was already complaining that his flock was spending the day dancing and feasting, not in religious observance. By 1616, the playwright Ben Jonson was nostalgically reminiscing about the vastly better Christmases in the old days. Some traditions of Christmas are relatively new--who would have thought gift-wrap was a novelty of the twentieth century? That the first holiday parade was neither at Macy's, nor even in the United States? Other elements, however, have been around for a surprisingly long time. The first known gag holiday giftbook, The Boghouse Miscellany, was advertised in the 1760s, while in 1805, the leaders of the Lewis and Clark expedition exchanged--what else?--presents of underwear and socks. Christmas is different things to different people: a religious festival for some, a family celebration for others, or perhaps simply a time of seasonal eating and drinking. In Christmas: A Biography, historian Judith Flanders casts a sharp eye over the myths, legends, and history that make up the holiday to show us the season as it really is, but rarely how it is understood. 2017. Feast of the circumcision or Holy Name of Jesus -- Twelfth Night -- Epiphany -- Candlemas -- Lady day -- Midsummer -- Michaelmas -- All Saints' Day -- All Souls' Day -- St Martin -- St. Nicholas -- St Lucy of Syracuse -- St Thomas the Apostle -- Christmas day -- St Stephen -- St John the Evangelist -- Feast of the Holy Innocents -- Sylvester.
A study of surviving members of a dwindling population in the forests of Paraguay, originally published in 1972. Written by… a French anthropologist who lived with this small group in 1963 and 1964, it portrays rituals surrounding birth, initiation, and death, as well as social customs involving food and cannibalism.1998. Uniform title: Chronique des Indiens Guayaki.
Introspective essays by a Jewish woman who married a black man in the 1960s, raised two black sons, and formed… close relationships with African Americans. She describes her growing awareness of and struggle with the "whiteness of whiteness--that terrible and inexcusable ignorance of racism which denies history and reality." 1996.
Canada’s health care system, which costs about $200 billion a year in public and private money, cannot continue as it… is - increasingly ill-adapted to an aging population with public costs growing faster than government revenues. Simpson examines Medicare and finds that many other countries have more extensive public health systems, and Canadian health care produces only average value for money. He explores four options: cuts in spending, tax increases, privatization, and reaping savings through increased efficiency. 2012.
Heather Mallick is sorely disappointed - the world has not turned out quite the way she had hoped it would.… But rather than retreat from it, she takes the world head on in her columns, cataloguing the many situations and items in our daily lives that we are told we should fear, teaching us how to cope with people we just can't stand, or writing about the valuable life lesson to be learned from one of her childhood heroes: Mrs. Tittlemouse, the original domestic goddess. 2007.
A Yiddish-speaking professor and translator examines the features of Jewish life and faith that contributed to the development of Yiddish… over the past thousand years. Covers subjects such as food, sex, death, kvetching (complaining), and humour to provide the context for understanding colourful Yiddish words, idioms, expressions, and metaphors. 2005.
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns… of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Bestseller. Winner of the National Book Award. 2015.
Thorne writes for nonscientists and scientists who are not physicists in a quest to share his insights about "where and… how relativity fails and what replaces it." He combines established principles of physics with imaginative speculation to examine concepts, such as black holes, that were developed theoretically long before technology was able to provide any observable evidence. 1994.
Looks at the network of shelters for abused women run by and for women. The author sees these shelters as… a better answer to the problem of family violence than measures taken by the conventional health and social services establishment. c1985.