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Showing 1 - 20 of 20258 items
By George O'Brien. 2006
Georgetown University professor George O'Brien provides the biographical background of the four masters of Irish literature and an in-depth analysis…
of their greatest works. O'Brien discusses the very qualities that set these works apart and the "Irishness" that characterizes each of them. 2006.By David Dilks. 2005
Winston Churchill's connection with Canada ("the Great Dominion", as he called it) spanned more than half a century: at Winnipeg…
he heard the news of Queen Victoria's death, in Ottawa in the dark days of 1941 he proclaimed his confidence in victory, and in 1952 had to concede that the result of victory had been far less satisfying than he had wished. No other Commonwealth country sparked such detailed knowledge or lifelong interest. 2005.By Piers Dudgeon. 1997
Catherine Cookson's first novel, "Kate Hannigan", was published in 1950. The novel represented the author's triumph over unhappiness - within…
its pages she was exorcising her own demons. Piers Dudgeon unlocks her complex character using her many books as a key and explores with Catherine herself the tortured drama of her personal life and its resolution. 1997.By John Vaillant. 2005
In 1997, when a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an Alaskan island north of the Canadian border,…
they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. The author braids together the strands of this mystery and brings to life the historical collision of Europeans and the Haida and the harrowing world of logging. Canada Reads 2012. Winner of the 2005 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction. Bestseller. 2005.By Daniel Paisner, Krystyna Chiger. 2008
In 1943, with Lvov's 150,000 Jews having been exiled, killed, or forced into ghettos and facing extermination, a group of…
Polish Jews sought refuge in the city's sewer system. The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, provides a first-person account of those fourteen months with her family. Also describes Leopold Socha, a Polish Catholic and former thief, who risked his life to help Chiger's underground family survive, bringing them food and supplies. 2009, c2008.By Sharon Butala. 2008
In 1962, Alexandra Wiwcharuk was found murdered on the banks of the Saskatchewan River. Nearly 50 years later, her murder…
still haunts Saskatoon residents, especially those who, like Butala, were Alexandra's friends. Compelled by her memories of Alex, Butala returns to that still-unsolved murder, writing an in-depth investigation of the tragic death, a nostalgic coming-of-age story, and an exploration of the nature of good and evil. Some descriptions of sex and violence. 2008.By Jeffrey Meyers. 2009
Dual biographies of playwright Arthur Miller (1915-2005) and actress Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962). Traces the couple's disparate family backgrounds and 1956…
marriage. Describes Monroe's role as Miller's muse but posits that her psychological problems and feelings of inadequacy led to their divorce after five years. Some descriptions of sex. 2009.By Ulrich Boser. 2009
Journalist recounts the 1990 robbery of Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in which two crooks posing as policemen nabbed art…
worth $500 million, including five Degas paintings, three Rembrandts, and a Vermeer. Traces the investigation of art detective Harold Smith and explores case links to mobsters and the IRA. Strong language. 2009.By Tristram Hunt. 2009
Friedrich Engels was a textile magnate and fox-hunter, a raffish, high-living, heavy drinking devotee of the good things in life.…
But Engels was also the man behind Karl Marx who for forty years funded him, looked after his children, soothed his furies, and provided one-half of history's most celebrated ideological partnership. He was co-author of The Manifesto of the Communist Party and co-founder of what would come to be known as Marxism. Interpreted and misinterpreted, quoted and misquoted, Friedrich Engels became one of the central architects of modern global socialism. 2009.By David Gilmour. 2007
The true story of author Gilmour's decision to let his 16-year-old son drop out of high school, on the condition…
that the boy agree to watch three films a week with him. Examines how those years changed both their lives. From French New Wave and Kurosawa to De Palma, film noir, and Billy Wilder, Gilmour describes key moments in each film, as he teaches his son about life and the vagaries of growing up through the power of the movies. Strong language and descriptions of sex. Canada Reads 2012. 2007.By Hala Jaber. 2009
Jaber, a Lebanese-British foreign correspondent, describes covering the Gulf War and her personal engagement with an Iraqi family caught in…
the crossfire. Reporting on the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Jaber took up the cause of hospitalized children wounded in the bombing, and helped start a fund to provide them with better medical attention and supplies. In particular, she learned the extraordinary story of two orphans and decided to adopt them. Some descriptions of violence. 2009.By Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski. 2015
By Eva MacLean. 1993
Eva MacLean left her settled, Presbyterian Ontario life behind to accompany her young minister-veternarian husband to the "wilds" of northwestern…
B.C. in the early 1900s, during times of mining rushes and railroad-building. 1993.By Bruce Hutchison. 1976
This is the 1970s autobiography of the journalist and historian whose life and writing influenced many Canadians. British Columbia-raised, his…
life spanned some formative years of the province's political history. As a journalist he met and wrote about many prime ministers, and became recognized as an influential thinker. 1976.By Ranulph Fiennes. 1991
The "Feather Men," so named because of their light touch, were a group of Englishmen recruited to stop an organization…
of contract killers from murdering former members of the Special Air Service. This true story of their vigilante activities during the 1980s is set mainly in Oman and is told in chilling detail with action-packed narrative. Includes violence. 1991.By Dick Lehr. 2009
The Fence documents the true story of a Boston police incident during which an undercover officer was brutally beaten by…
fellow officers who mistook him for a murder suspect. Some strong language and some descriptions of violence. c2009.By Esther Rudomin Hautzig. 1995
During World War II, when she was eleven years old, the author and her family were arrested in Poland by…
the Russians as political enemies and exiled to Siberia. She recounts here the trials of the following five years spent on the harsh Asian steppe. Grades 5-8. 1995, c1968.By Robertson Davies, Judith Skelton Grant. 1979
By Stephen Calloway, David Colvin. 1997
Oscar Wilde was a central figure of the fin de siecle, and, in his own words, "a man who stood…
in symbolic relation to his times." He rose to fame in the 1880s and had the world at his feet in the 1890s. It all went wrong when following his love-affair with Lord Alfred Douglas he was persecuted by Douglas' father and sentenced to two years in jail for homosexuality. He spent the last years of his life surrounded by a handful of loyal friends in France but shunned by those who had been his followers in his days of glory. 1997.By Nadine Gordimer, Stephen Clingman. 1988
This personal history of 27 years, 1959 to 1986, of Afrikaner domination in South Africa charts the response of novelist…
Nadine Gordimer to the crisis of apartheid and the struggle of the blacks to free themselves. 1988.