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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.Attila the Hun: Leader of the Barbarian Hordes
By Sean Stewart Price. 2009
Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts: The Mystical Tradition of Ancient Egypt
By Jeremy Naydler. 2005
A radical reinterpretation of the Pyramid Texts as shamanic mystical wisdom rather than funerary rituals• Reveals the mystical nature of…
Egyptian civilization denied by orthodox Egyptologists• Examines the similarity between the pharaoh’s afterlife voyage and shamanic journeying• Shows shamanism to be the foundation of the Egyptian mystical traditionTo the Greek philosophers and other peoples of the ancient world, Egypt was regarded as the home of a profound mystical wisdom. While there are many today who still share that view, the consensus of most Egyptologists is that no evidence exists that Egypt possessed any mystical tradition whatsoever. Jeremy Naydler’s radical reinterpretation of the Pyramid Texts--the earliest body of religious literature to have survived from ancient Egypt--places these documents into the ritual context in which they belong.Until now, the Pyramid Texts have been viewed primarily as royal funerary texts that were used in the liturgy of the dead pharaoh or to aid him in his afterlife journey. This emphasis on funerary interpretation has served only to externalize what were actually experiences of the living, not the dead, king. In order to understand the character and significance of the extreme psychological states the pharaoh experienced--states often involving perilous encounters with alternate realities--we need to approach them as spiritual and religious phenomena that reveal the extraordinary possibilities of human consciousness. It is the shamanic spiritual tradition, argues Naydler, that is the undercurrent of the Pyramid Texts and that holds the key to understanding both the true nature of these experiences and the basis of ancient Egyptian mysticism.Cambridge Classical Studies: Revisiting Delphi
By Julia Kindt. 2016
Revisiting Delphi speaks to all admirers of Delphi and its famous prophecies, be they experts on ancient Greek religion, students…
of the ancient world, or just lovers of a good story. It invites readers to revisit the famous Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, along with Herodotus, Euripides, Socrates, Pausanias and Athenaeus, offering the first comparative and extended enquiry into the way these and other authors force us to move the link between religion and narrative centre stage. Their accounts of Delphi and its prophecies reflect a world in which the gods frequently remain baffling and elusive despite every human effort to make sense of the signs they give.The Gladiator: The Secret History of Rome's Warrior Slaves
By Alan Baker. 2000
Extreme Survivors: Animals That Time Forgot (How Nature Works #0)
By Kimberly Ridley. 2017
Selected for the 2018 Bank Street College of Education Best STEM Children’s Books of the Year What do the goblin…
shark, horseshoe crab, the “indestructible” water bear, and a handful of other bizarre animals have in common? They are all “extreme survivors,” animals that still look much like their prehistoric ancestors from millions of years ago. Meet ten amazing animals that appear to have changed little in more than 100 million years. They are the rare exceptions to the rule. More than 99 percent of all life forms have gone extinct during the 3.6-billion-year history of life on Earth. Other organisms have changed dramatically, but not our extreme survivors. Evolution may have altered their physiology and behavior, but their body plans have stood the test of time. How have these living links with Earth’s prehistoric past survived? The search for answers is leading scientists to new discoveries about the past—and future—of life on Earth. The survival secrets of some of these ancient creatures could lead to new medicines and treatments for disease. Written in a lively, entertaining voice, Extreme Survivors provides detailed life histories and strange “survival secrets” of ten ancient animals and explains evolution and natural selection. Extensive back matter includes glossary, additional facts and geographic range for each organism and a geologic timeline of Earth. F&P Level V Advisory: Bookshare has learned that this book offers only partial accessibility. We have kept it in the collection because it is useful for some of our members. To explore further access options with us, please contact us through the Book Quality link. Benetech is actively working on projects to improve accessibility issues such as these.Oratory and Political Career in the Late Roman Republic
By Henriette, Van Der Blom. 2016
Oratory and Political Career in the Late Roman Republic is a pioneering investigation into political life in the late Roman…
Republic. It explores the nature and extent to which Roman politicians embraced oratorical performances as part of their political career and how such performances influenced the careers of individual orators such as Gaius Gracchus, Pompeius Magnus, and Julius Caesar. Through six case studies, this book presents a complex and multifaceted picture of how Roman politicians employed oratory to articulate their personal and political agendas, to present themselves to a public obsessed with individual achievement, and ultimately to promote their individual careers. By dealing specifically with orators other than Cicero, this study offers much-needed alternatives to our understanding of public oratory in Rome. Moreover, the assessment of the impact of public speeches on the development of political careers provides new perspectives on the hotly debated nature of republican political culture.Lupa and Lamb
By Susan Hawthorne. 2014
This collection of imagist poems combines mythology, archaeology, and translation. Susan Hawthorne draws on the history and prehistory of Rome…
and its neighbors to explore how the past is remembered. Under the guidance of Curatrix, Director of the Musæum Matricum, and Latin poet, Sulpicia, travelers Diana and Agnese are led through the mythic archives about wolves and sheep before attending an epoch-breaking party to which they are invited by Empress Livia. An enticing tapestry of real and imaginary texts that gladden the readers' hearts, Lupa and Lamb is poet Susan Hawthorne at her best.In addition to his 40-year career at the British Museum, Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge was a prolific and…
popular author who specialized in books on ancient Egypt. The Dwellers on the Nile remains among the most comprehensive and readable histories of daily life in ancient Egypt, covering the Egyptian family and school; furniture, jewelry, food and drink; society, work, and play; Egyptian religion and its numerous gods, temples, and priests; Egyptian writing — hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic, and Coptic; literature, medicine, astrology, and alchemy. The book concludes with an exploration of practices related to burial of the dead and beliefs concerning the afterlife. Using information from the excavations of tombs and excerpts from papyri, tomb inscriptions, and other sources, Budge brings to life the ancient culture of the Nile dwellers. The text is profusely illustrated with many reproductions of Egyptian art and artifacts. The great wealth of detail, primary information, and original interpretation make this volume indispensable to students and other readers interested in classical civilization and comparative religion.Rome: The Autobiography
By Jon E. Lewis. 2010
The history of Ancient Rome has been passed down to us through official accounts, personal letters, annotated words of great…
orators and the considered histories of powerful men. It is found on inscriptions, in private memoirs and official reports from every corner of the Empire. Over 150 pieces are collected in this autobiography of Ancient Rome, from the written accounts of Caesars and slaves, generals and poets on major battles, conspiracy and politics to the minutiae of everyday life and includes amongst them:How to keep a slave, by Cato the Elder; The Life of a Roman Gentleman by Pliny the Younger; Gang Warfare in Rome, by Cicero; a Chariot Fight, by Julius Caesar; Female Athletes and Gladiators, by Juvenal; the Eruption of Vesuivius, by Pliny the Younger; Nero Murders Britannicus, by Tacitus; On Going to bed with Cleopatra, by Mark Antony; Homosexuals in Rome, Juvenal; Alaric the Visogoth Sacks Rome,by Jordanes; The Great Fire of Rome, by Tacitus; Gladitorial Shows, by Seneca; Two Days in the Life of an Emperor's Son, Marcus Aurelius.How to Build Egyptian Boat Models: Patterns and Instructions for Three Royal Vessels
By Jack Sintich. 2007
The ancient Egyptians were avid model makers. Many of their miniature masterpieces were replicas of boats, lovingly handcrafted from the…
finest woods and often decorated with rich materials such as ivory. Amazing examples of Egyptian maritime art and technology, many of these models remain intact today, displayed and admired in museums and private collections centuries after they were masterfully crafted.Concise, authoritative, and easy to follow, this unique guide shows modern shipwrights how to build three ancient Egyptian boat models following the same expert techniques used by craftsmen thousands of years ago. A beginner's skill level is all that's needed to expertly construct the royal sailing ships of King Khufu (ruled ca. 2551-2528 B.C.), Queen Hatshepsut (ruled ca. 1479-1458 B.C.) and the great Ramses II (ruled ca. 1279-1213 B.C.). Learn how to select the proper wood and gather the appropriate tools and materials. Follow simple guidelines for every aspect of construction, from hull to sails to rowing oars--even building the display stand. Replicate the paints and colors used for the original Egyptian models. And discover ancient free-hand painting techniques, including how to create authentic hieroglyphic symbols to decorate your project. A profusion of detailed patterns and diagrams--plus photographs of each finished model--accompany the text, guiding crafters step-by-step to shipbuilding success.Heuristic Strategies in the Speeches of Cicero
By Gábor Tahin. 2014
This book introduces a new form of argumentative analysis: rhetorical heuremes. The method applies the concepts of heuristic thinking, probability,…
and contingency in order to develop a better understanding of complex arguments in classical oratory. A new theory is required because Greek and Roman rhetoric cannot provide detailed answers to problems of strategic argumentation in the analysis of speeches. Building on scholarship in Ciceronian oratory, this book moves beyond the extant terminology and employs a concept of heuristic reasoning derived from the psychology of decision making and mathematical problem solving. The author analyses selected passages from Cicero's forensic speeches where arguments of probability are deployed, and shows that the Sophistic concept of probability can link ancient rhetoric and modern theories of argumentation. Six groups of heuremes are identified, each of which represents a form of probabilistic reasoning by which the orator plays upon the perception of the jurors.The Age of Caesar: Five Roman Lives
By Pamela Mensch, James Romm, Mary Beard, Plutarch. 2017
A brilliant new translation of five of history’s greatest lives from Plutarch, the inventor of biography. Pompey, Caesar, Cicero, Brutus,…
Antony: the names resonate across thousands of years. Major figures in the civil wars that brutally ended the Roman republic, their lives still haunt us as examples of how the hunger for personal power can overwhelm collective politics, how the exaltation of the military can corrode civilian authority, and how the best intentions can lead to disastrous consequences. Plutarch renders these history-making lives as flesh-and-blood characters, often by deftly marshalling small details such as the care Brutus exercised in his use of money or the disdain Caesar felt for the lofty eloquence of Cicero. Plutarch was a Greek intellectual who lived roughly one hundred years after the age of Caesar. At home in the world of Roman power, he preferred to live in the past, among the great figures of Greek and Roman history. He intended his biographical profiles to be mirrors of character that readers could use to inspire their own values and behavior—emulating virtues and rejecting flaws. For Plutarch, character was destiny for both the individual and the republic. He was our first master of the biographical form, a major source for Shakespeare and Gibbon. This edition features a new translation by Pamela Mensch that lends a brilliant clarity to Plutarch’s prose. James Romm’s notes guide readers gracefully through the people, places, and events named in the profiles. And Romm’s preface, along with Mary Beard’s introduction, provide the perfect frame for understanding Plutarch and the momentous history he narrates.