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Showing 101 - 120 of 390 items
By Roxane Gay. 2017
As a woman who describes her own body as "wildly undisciplined," Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between…
self-comfort and self-care. In this memoir, she explores her own past, including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life--and brings listeners along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself. Bestseller. Winner of the 2018 LAMBDA Bisexual Non-fiction Award. 2017.Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist: more things are named after him than anyone else. There are…
towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid, even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon. Taking us on a fantastic voyage in his footsteps, Andrea Wulf shows why his life and ideas remain so important today. Winner of Royal Society Science Book Prize 2016, James Wright Award for Nature Writing 2016, and Costa Biography Award 2015. Bestseller. 2015.By Ruth Franklin. 2016
Still known to millions only as the author of the "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) remains curiously absent from the…
American literary canon. A genius of literary suspense, Jackson plumbed the cultural anxiety of postwar America better than anyone. Biographer Ruth Franklin reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the author behind such classics as 'The Haunting of Hill House' and 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle'. Placing Jackson within an American gothic tradition of Hawthorne and Poe, Franklin demonstrates how her unique contribution to this genre came from her focus on "domestic horror" drawn from an era hostile to women. With its exploration of astonishing talent shaped by a damaged childhood and a troubled marriage, this is the definitive biography of a generational avatar and an American literary giant. Winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for best critical / biography book. 2016.By Mary Beth Leatherdale. 2017
The plight of refugees risking their lives at sea has, unfortunately, made the headlines all too often in the past…
few years. This book presents five true stories, from 1939 to today, about young people who lived through the harrowing experience of setting sail in search of asylum: Ruth and her family board the St. Louis to escape Nazism; Phu sets out alone from war-torn Vietnam; José tries to reach the United States from Cuba; Najeeba flees Afghanistan and the Taliban; and after losing his family, Mohamed abandons his village on the Ivory Coast in search of a new life. Grades 4-7. Winner of the 2018 Silver Birch Non-Fiction Honour Book Award. 2017.By Jessica Dee Humphreys, Michel Chikwanine. 2015
It's 1993, and the Democratic Republic of Congo is going through major political changes. Five-year-old Michel is playing with friends…
one day when, without warning, a group of rebel soldiers pulls up to the school grounds. Forced onto trucks, the frightened boys are taken to a camp in the hills. There they are thrust into a terrifying and violent world. Grades 5-8. Winner of the 2017 Red Maple Non-Fiction Award. 2015.By Margot Shetterly. 2016
The amazing true story of four African American female mathematicians at NASA who helped achieve some of the greatest moments…
in our space program. Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. This book brings to life the stories of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, four African American women who lived through the Civil Rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the movement for gender equality, and whose work forever changed the face of NASA and the country. For grades 3-6. 2019 Coretta Scott King Honor Book for Best Illustration. 2016.By Solange Messier. 2014
"Mingan my village" is a collection of 15 faces and 15 poems written by young Innu. Given a platform to…
be heard, the children chose to transport readers far away from the difficulties and problems related to their realities to see the beauty that surrounds them in nature. Winner of the 2013 Prix jeunesse des libraires du Québec (5-11 years category). Grades K-3 and older readers. 2014.By Karolyn Smardz Frost. 2007
In 1985, archeologists in downtown Toronto discovered the remains of a house belonging to former slaves Thornton and Lucie Blackburn,…
who were key figures in the Underground Railroad. Fleeing Louisville, Ky., in 1831, shortly before Lucie was to be sold, the Blackburns settled in Detroit until they were recognized and arrested. Before they could be convicted and returned to slavery, the first racial uprising in Detroit - a crowd of friends and abolitionists who marched on the jail - gave them the opportunity to escape. Fleeing to Toronto, they founded the city's first taxi business while working with prominent abolitionists. Winner of the 2007 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction. 2007.By Erin Wunker. 2016
Erin Wunker is a feminist killjoy, and she thinks you should be one, too. Following in the tradition of Sara…
Ahmed (the originator of the concept "feminist killjoy"), Wunker brings memoir, theory, literary criticism, pop culture, and feminist thinking together in this collection of essays that take up Ahmed's project as a multi-faceted lens through which to read the world from a feminist point of view. She attempts to think publicly about why we need feminism, and especially why we need the figure of the feminist killjoy, now. From the complicated practices of being a mother and a feminist, to building friendship amongst women as a community-building and -sustaining project, to writing that addresses rape culture from the Canadian context and beyond, Wunker invites the reader into a conversation about gender, feminism, and living in our inequitable world. Winner of the 2017 Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award. 2016.By Steven Heighton. 2016
A collection of laments and celebrations that reflect on our struggle to believe in the future of a world that…
continues to disappoint us. The poet challenges the boundaries of sleep and even death in these meditations on what lies just beneath the surface of contemporary life. These are poems that trouble over the idea of failure even as they continually recommit to the present moment. Winner of the 2016 Governor General’s Award for Poetry. 2016. Uniform title: Poems.By Elizabeth MacLeod. 2016
A unique look at Canadian history. Captures milestones and many more in ten chapters filled with biographies, quotes and trivia.…
It's the story of the people, places and events that have shaped the country--one year at a time. Grades 3-6. Winner of the 2017 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction. 2016.By Richard Wagamese. 2016
Wagamese finds lessons in both the mundane and sublime as he muses on the universe, drawing inspiration from working in…
the bush, sawing and cutting and stacking wood for winter, as well as the smudge ceremony to bring him closer to the Creator. He explores the various manifestations of grief, joy, recovery, beauty, gratitude, physicality and spirituality--concepts many find hard to express. But for Wagamese, spirituality is multifaceted. Within these pages, readers will find hard-won and concrete wisdom on how to feel the joy in the everyday things. Wagamese does not seek to be a teacher or guru, but these observations made along his own journey to become, as he says, "a spiritual bad-ass," make inspiring reading. Bestseller. Winner of the 2017 Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award. 2016.By Joe Jackson. 2016
Black Elk, the Native American holy man, is known to millions of readers around the world from his 1932 testimonial,…
"Black Elk Speaks". Cryptic and deeply personal, it has been read as a spiritual guide, a philosophical manifesto, and a text to be deconstructed--while the historical Black Elk has faded from view. Jackson provides the definitive biographical account of a figure whose dramatic life converged with some of the most momentous events in the history of the American West. Born in an era of rising violence, Black Elk killed his first man at Little Big Horn, witnessed the death of his second cousin Crazy Horse, and traveled to Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Upon his return, he was swept up in the traditionalist Ghost Dance movement and shaken by the massacre at Wounded Knee. But Black Elk was not a warrior and instead chose the path of a healer and holy man, motivated by a powerful prophetic vision that haunted and inspired him, even after he converted to Catholicism in his later years. Winner of the Spur 2017 best western biography award. Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. 2016.By Solange Messier, Rogé. 2014
"Mingan my village" is a collection of 15 faces and 15 poems written by young Innu. Given a platform to…
be heard, the children chose to transport readers far away from the difficulties and problems related to their realities to see the beauty that surrounds them in nature. Winner of the 2013 Prix jeunesse des libraires du Québec (5-11 years category). Grades K-3 and older readers. 2014.By Colleen Murphy. 2015
At 4:00 a.m. on a secluded farm, a woman fights to take her life back from a serial killer as…
her desperate sister and a haunted police officer reach across time and distance in an attempt to rescue her. Winner of the 2016 Governor General’s Award for Drama. 2015.By Kamal Al-Solaylee. 2016
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.By Ella Burakowski. 2015
The Gold family lived an idyllic life in pre-war Poland, but that life was shattered in 1939 when Germany invaded…
Poland and Jewish people were forced into the streets, their homes, schools, and businesses burned. Eventually, the Golds hid in a cramped, secret enclosure for twenty-six months. Appalling conditions, starvation, fear of imminent betrayal and capture makes this a heart-stopping testament to the human spirit. For junior high readers. Winner of the 2017 Red Maple Non-Fiction Honour Book Award. 2015.By Elizabeth Kolbert, Véronique Desjardins, Marcel Blanc. 2015
À travers l'Histoire, notre planète a connu cinq grandes extinctions de masse. Partout dans le monde, des scientifiques surveillent les…
signes avant-coureurs d'une sixième extinction, la plus dévastatrice depuis la chute de l'astéroïde qui a fait disparaître les dinosaures. Les responsables du prochain cataclysme, ce sera nous, les humains. Dans cet essai percutant, Elizabeth Kolbert explique pourquoi et comment nous détruisons notre environnement à petit feu et présente les conséquences désastreuses qui en découlent. Appuyant ses propos sur des données scientifiques rigoureuses, l'auteure démontre qu'à moins d'adopter des comportements plus responsables, l'homme causera un bouleversement planétaire irréversible dont il sera l'une des premières victimes. Gagnant de Prix Pulitzer 2015. 2015. Titre uniforme: Sixth extinction.By Jean-Philippe Warren. 2015
Dans l'esprit de bien des gens, la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle confirme le repli conservateur d'une population canadienne-française engagée…
dans un combat ardu pour la survivance. Mais que faire d'un homme comme Honoré Beaugrand, qui aime à se décrire comme un « natural-born kicker » ? Soldat dans l'armée mexicaine, journaliste à La Nouvelle-Orléans, touriste en Chine, romancier et poète à ses heures, maire de Montréal, riche actionnaire de banques et de compagnies de chemins de fer, propriétaire du journal La Patrie, il entend convaincre ses compatriotes du droit des peuples à disposer d'eux-mêmes, du principe d'une éducation obligatoire et gratuite, de l'idéal du suffrage universel et de l'importance de l'autonomie des affaires temporelles à l'égard de l'autorité de l'Église catholique. Prix du Gouverneur général, section essais, 2015. 2015.By Liz Howard. 2015
The mechanisms we use to make sense of our worlds – even our direct intimate experiences of it – come…
under constant scrutiny and a pressure that feels like love. The waters of Northern Ontario shield country are the toxic origin and an image of potential. A subject, a woman, a consumer, a polluter; an erotic force, a confused brilliance, a very necessary form of urgency – all are loosely tethered together and made somehow to resonate with our own devotions and fears; made “to be small and dreaming parallel / to ceremony and decay.” Winner of the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize. 2015. Uniform title: Poems.