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Brotherhood to Nationhood: George Manuel and the Making of the Modern Indian Movement
By Peter McFarlane, Doreen Manuel. 2020
Charged with fresh material and new perspectives, this updated edition of the groundbreaking biography Brotherhood to Nationhood brings George Manuel and…
his fighting tradition into the present. George Manuel (1920–1989) was the strategist and visionary behind the modern Indigenous movement in Canada. A three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, he laid the groundwork for what would become the Assembly of First Nations and was the founding president of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. Authors Peter McFarlane and Doreen Manuel follow him on a riveting journey from his childhood on a Shuswap reserve through three decades of fierce and dedicated activism. In these pages, an all-new foreword by celebrated Mi'kmaq lawyer and activist Pam Palmater is joined by an afterword from Manuel’s granddaughter, land defender Kanahus Manuel. This edition features new photos and previously untold stories of the pivotal roles that the women of the Manuel family played – and continue to play – in the battle for Indigenous rights.The Mantle of Struggle: A Biography of Black Revolutionary Rosie Douglas
By Irving Andre. 2023
Rosie Douglas, former prime minister of Dominica, had a life unlike any other modern politician. After leaving home to study…
agriculture in Canada, he became a member of the young Conservatives, under the Canadian prime minister’s guidance. However, after he moved to Montreal to study political science his politics started to shift. By the late sixties he was an active civil rights supporter and when Black students in Montreal began to protest racism in 1969, he helped lead the sit-in. He was identified as a protest ringleader after the peaceful protest turned into a police riot, and served 18 months in prison. After his deportation from Canada in 1976, having been named a danger to national security, Douglas participated in political movements around the world building global solidarity. He became a leader of the Libyan-based revolutionary group World Mathaba and supported Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. Once back home in Dominica, he led the movement for Dominica’s full political independence from Great Britain, then served as a senator in the post-independence government, an MP, party leader, and finally prime minister. Relying on family sources, interviews, newspaper articles, government documents, and Douglas’ own articles, letters, and speeches, Irving Andre has drawn a rich and riveting record of this important Black revolutionary.Beryl: The Making of a Disability Activist
By Dustin Galer. 2023
Beryl Potter was a reserved working-class mother of three living a decent life, or so it seemed, when a harmless…
slip and fall marked the unravelling of everything that she had known about herself and the world around her. Over the course of six years, she endured unimaginable pain. As doctors raced to save her life, her limbs and eyesight were taken from her one by one. In the span of a few years, she lost nearly half her body, her financial security, her home, her husband, and any semblance of a recognizable future. A survivor of more than one hundred surgeries, a dangerous opioid addiction, and multiple suicide attempts, Beryl Potter devoted herself to bettering the lives of other people with disabilities and made a tremendous contribution to disability awareness from the 1970s to 1990s. In this unparalleled biography, Dustin Galer demonstrates how Beryl Potter seemed to crack the code of the social system that oppressed her. By wading into the weeds of her complicated life before and after her accident, Galer leaves readers with a complex portrait of a woman who defied and challenged gender and disability norms of her time, paving the way for disability justice.A Chance to Fight Hitler: A Canadian Volunteer in the Spanish Civil War
By David Goutor. 2018
In late 1936, as Franco’s armies stormed toward Madrid, Stalin famously termed the defence of Spain “the common cause of…
all advanced and progressive mankind.” As a German emigrant to Winnipeg, Hans Ibing recognized the importance of the Spanish Civil War to the struggle against worldwide fascism in a way that most people in Canada did not—joining the International Brigades in their fight to defend the Spanish Republic was his “chance to fight Hitler.” Drawing on interviews, Ibing’s personal papers, and archival material, David Goutor recounts the powerful story of an ordinary man’s response to extraordinary times.Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
By Salman Rushdie. 2024
From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on…
his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him.Speaking out for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie answers violence with art, and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. Knife is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.My Lost Freedom: A Japanese American World War II Story
By George Takei. 2024
A moving, beautifully illustrated true story for children ages 6 to 9 about growing up in Japanese American incarceration camps during…
World War II—from the iconic Star Trek actor, activist, and author of the New York Times bestselling graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy. February 19, 1942. George Takei is four years old when his world changes forever. Two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares anyone of Japanese descent an enemy of the United States. George and his family were American in every way. They had done nothing wrong. But because of their Japanese ancestry, they were removed from their home in California and forced into camps with thousands of other families who looked like theirs. Over the next three years, George had three different &“homes&”: the Santa Anita racetrack, swampy Camp Rohwer, and infamous Tule Lake. But even though they were now living behind barbed wire fences and surrounded by armed soldiers, his mother and father did everything they could to keep the family safe. In My Lost Freedom, George Takei looks back at his own memories to help children today understand what it feels like to be treated as an enemy by your own country. Featuring powerful meticulously researched watercolor paintings, this is a story of a family&’s courage, a young boy&’s resilience, and the importance of staying true to yourself in the face of injustice.Jack of Hearts: QX11594
By Jackie Huggins, Ngaire Jarro. 2022
Born an only child in North Queensland, Jack Huggins had an idyllic childhood in Ayr, where his family somehow escaped…
the harsh Queensland government treatment of First Nations' peoples. His father was in the army in World War I and Jack followed in his footsteps into World War II. He was captured by the Japanese in Singapore and spent much of the war on the notorious Burma-Thailand railway.The narrative and personal reflections give insight into love, loss and the need to understand one man's journey, as seen through the eyes of his children seeking to learn more. It is an affectionate portrait and a moving account of courage in wartime which helps a reader understand the sacrifices made by our soldiers.A moving graphic memoir following Eddie Ahn, an environmental justice lawyer and activist striving to serve diverse communities in San…
Francisco amidst environmental catastrophes, an accelerating tide of racial and economic inequality, burnout, and his family&’s expectations.Born in Texas to Korean immigrants, Eddie grew up working at his family&’s store with the weighty expectations that their sacrifices would be paid off when he achieved the &“American Dream.&” Years later after moving to San Francisco and earning a coveted law degree, he then does the unthinkable: he rejects a lucrative legal career to enter the nonprofit world.In carving his own path, Eddie defies his family&’s notions of economic success, igniting a struggle between family expectations, professional goals, and dreams of community. As an environmental justice attorney, he confronts the most immediate issues the country is facing today, from the devastating effects of Californian wildfires to economic inequality, all while combatting burnout and racial prejudice. In coming fully into his own, Eddie also reaches a hand back to his parents, showing them the value of a life of service rather than one spent only seeking monetary wealth.Weaving together humorous anecdotes with moments of victory and hope, this powerful, deeply contemplative full-color graphic novel explores the relationship between immigration and activism, opportunity and obligation, and familial duty and community service.Meghan and Harry: The Real Story: Persecutors or Victims
By Lady Colin Campbell. 2018
**A Wall Street Journal bestseller** An updated edition of this blockbuster narrative provides the first behind-the-scenes, authoritative account of the…
Duke and Duchess of Sussex&’s marriage, by the New York Times bestselling author of Diana in Private.Meghan and Harry: The Real Story: Persecutors or Victims presents the reader with a strikingly forthright analysis of what happens when a vulnerable male, raised in the traditions of the Old World and protected by a lifetime of privilege, falls head over heels in love with a steely and ambitious doyenne of the New, who is careless of tradition, ignorant of its purpose, contemptuous of its consequences, and convinced that her own way is the best way even as the evidence to the contrary mounts. Exposing as she does a titanic clash of two civilisations, mores, and attitudes divided by a common language, Sunday Times best-selling author Lady Colin Campbell scrutinizes with insight, clarity, and precision the evidence of the circumstances, actions, and motives of Meghan and Harry with an impeccable and aristocratically experienced vision honed by five decades in the public eye. She catalogues in depth how this apparently brilliantly-favoured couple came to lose their way, how they exhibited profound contemptuousness for practices built up by a treasured institution over a millennium, and how they were unable to understand the potential benefits of their destiny to such an extent that they managed to turn their fate on its head. Contrary to their statements, Meghan and Harry prove through their own actions that they are ill-judged characters, unable to bring the dynamism of the New to the Old or represent the dignity of the Old to the New. Falling between these two stools, they conspire time and again against themselves and others, inviting nothing but unnecessary controversy and unintended failure, despite the fact that the vast majority of onlookers, who would ultimately become critics, originally wished them well and hoped they would successfully forge a unique way forward in their ground-breaking union. Lady Colin&’s pen allows the couple no escape from the consequences of their actions, whether these be royal and aristocratic customs governed by tradition, precedence, and conservation; the racial furore they unleashed and the damage they wrought throughout the Commonwealth; the speculation they engendered with regards even to something as straightforward as pregnancy; the very different laws on each side of the Atlantic and how these affect inheritance as well as other important factors; the differing attitudes to money of those who have had it for many a year and those for whom it is newly minted; the merits of position versus celebrity; the benefits of freedom of the press and the efforts of the couple to curtail them; the dangers of suppression of civil liberties or even simply the choice of everyday activities which Meghan and Harry have shown time and again will involve themselves and onlookers in controversy after controversy.Chipped: Writing from a Skateboarder's Lens
By José Vadi. 2024
A memoir-in-essays about how skateboarding re-defines space, curates culture, confronts mortality, and affords new perspectives on and off the boardChipping…
a board—where small pieces of deck and tape break off around the nose and tail—is a natural part of skateboarding. Novice or pro, you&’ll see folks riding chipped boards as symbols of their stubborn dedication toward a deck, a toy, and aging bodies that will also reach their inevitable end. In Chipped, José Vadi personalizes and expands upon this symbol. Written after finishing his debut collection Inter State: Essays From California, Vadi used these essays to explore his own empathy in aging, and to elaborate on the impact skateboarding has had on culture, power, and art. From tracing a critical mass skater takeover of San Francisco&’s streets, to an analysis of visceral &‘90s skate videos and soundtracks, to the solace found skating a parking lot during a global pandemic, Vadi expands our understanding of the ways skateboarding can alter one&’s life. Vadi acts as a &“ethnographer on a skateboard,&” writing, living, and animating an object, likening the board and skate ephemera to the fear of being discarded, wanting to be seen as useful, functional, living. These essays analyze the legacy of seminal texts like Thrasher Magazine, influential programming giants like MTV, and skateboard artists like Ed Templeton. They imagine jazz composer Sun Ra as a skateboarder to explore sonic connections between skateboarding and jazz, obsessively follow bands, chronicle tours, and discover the creative bermuda triangle Southern California suburbs have to offer. Chipped is an intimate, genre-pushing meditation on skateboarding and the reasons we continue to get up after every fall life throws our way.Never Say You've Had a Lucky Life: Especially If You've Had a Lucky Life
By Joseph Epstein. 2024
A rich and comic portrait of the radical changes in American life and the literary world over the last eighty…
years. An autobiography usually requires a justification. The great autobiographies—those by Benvenuto Cellini, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Brooks Adams—were justified by their authors living in interesting times, harboring radically new ideas, or participating in great events. Joseph Epstein qualifies on none of these counts. His life has been quiet, lucky in numerous ways, and far from dramatic. But it has also been emblematic of the great changes in our country since World War II. He grew up in a petit-bourgeois, Midwestern milieu, and the city of Chicago looms large in his life. He drew a lucky ticket in the parent lottery and his was a happy boyhood spent on playgrounds and hanging around drug stores. At high school dances, he was the rhumba king and at drive-in movies he was never allowed to go as far with girls as he so ardently desired. At twenty-six, after two years in the army, he found himself married, the father or stepfather of four children, and living in New York on the meager salary of a magazine subeditor. He was ablaze with ambition and fettered by frustration. He broke out by moving to Little Rock, Arkansas, to direct the city&’s anti-poverty program at the height of the Civil Rights movement. His writing career blossomed, he began teaching at Northwestern University, and, for twenty-five years, edited one of great intellectual magazines. Never Say You&’ve Had a Lucky Life is an intimate look at one life steeped in radical change: from a traditionally moral culture to a therapeutic one, from an era when the extended family was strong to its current diminished status, from print to digital life featuring the war of pixel on print, and on. But for all the seriousness of Epstein&’s themes, this book is memorable for its comic point of view and the constant reminder of how unpredictable, various, and wondrously rich life can be.Free Love: The Story of a Great American Scandal
By Robert Shaplen. 1954
A wry, instructive, and hugely entertaining account of &“one of the most sensational trials in American history&” (New York Times…
Book Review).On the night of July 3, 1870, Elizabeth Tilton confessed to her husband that she&’d had an affair with their pastor, Henry Ward Beecher. This secret would soon transfix America, for Beecher was the most famous preacher of the day, founder of the most fashionable church in Brooklyn Heights, a presidential hopeful, an influential supporter of Abolition, and a leader of the campaign for women&’s suffrage. When Beecher tried to silence the Tiltons, it was a whisper network of suffragists, notably Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who spread news of the affair, and it was the radical Victoria Woodhull—an outspoken proponent of &“free love&”—who seized on it, as political dynamite, to blow up the myth of monogamy among the political elite. Her public accusations led to even more public trials, which shocked the country and divided the most progressive thinkers of the era. In 1953, the journalist Robert Shaplen revisited the Tilton-Beecher affair in a series of articles for the New Yorker, relying on 3,000 pages of contemporary accounts—court transcripts, love-letters, newspaper reports and illustrations, even political cartoons—to reanimate a scandal that shook the American reform movement and to expose a strand of America&’s cultural DNA that remains recognizable today.This Part Is Silent: A Life Between Cultures
By Sj Kim. 2024
A searing essay collection that explores displacement and loss, creativity and change, institutional power and progress. Born in Korea, raised…
in the American South, and trying her best to survive British academia, SJ Kim probes her experiences as a writer, a scholar, and a daughter to confront the silences she finds in the world. With curiosity and sensitivity, she writes letters to the institutions that simultaneously support and fail her, intimate accounts of immigration, and interrogations of rising anti-Black and anti-Asian racism. She considers the silences between generations—especially within the Asian diaspora in the West—as she finds her way back to her own family during the pandemic lockdown. Embracing the possibilities and impossibilities of language, Kim rejoices in the similes of Korean, her mother tongue, and draws inspiration from K-dramas and writers across cultures who sustain her. As borders close in and nations enter lockdown, the journey that Kim traces is fraught—and at once illuminates that the act of remaining present has its own power, allowing boundless hope.The Secret Mind of Bertha Pappenheim: The Woman Who Invented Freud's Talking Cure
By Gabriel Brownstein. 2024
The story of a patient who changed the world, and the mystery of her illness. In 1880, young Bertha Pappenheim…
got strangely ill—she lost her ability to control her voice and her body. She was treated by Sigmund Freud&’s mentor, Josef Breuer, who diagnosed her with &“hysteria.&” Together, Pappenheim and Breuer developed what she called &“the talking cure&”—talking out memories to eliminate symptoms. Freud renamed her &“Anna O&” and appropriated her ideas to form the theory of psychoanalysis. All his life, he told lies about her. For over a century, writers have argued about her illness and cure. In this unusual work of science, history, and psychology, Brownstein does more than describe the controversies surrounding this extraordinary woman. He brings Pappenheim to life—a brilliant feminist thinker, a crusader against human trafficking, and a pioneer—in the hustling and heady world of nineteenth-century Vienna. At the same time, he tells a parallel story that is playing out in leading medical centers today, about patients who suffer symptoms very much like Pappenheim&’s, and about the doctors who are trying to cure them—the story of the neuroscience of a condition now called FND.The Secret Mind of Bertha Pappenheim argues for the healing art of listening and describes the new &“talking cures&” emerging out of neuroscience today.Ghost Stories: On Writing Biography (Footprints Series #29)
By Judith Adamson. 2024
A biographer is, in a sense, the ghostwriter of someone else’s life, trying to keep out of the way but…
inevitably leaving an imprint and being changed in the enterprise. In her memoir Judith Adamson, a professional biographer, tells the ghost’s side of the story.Adamson reveals the questions she asked herself as she researched and wrote, as well as the personal challenges she faced in producing a lively sense of the figure she was recreating on the page, drawing an unbreakable connection between the personal and the professional. Crossing paths with literary luminaries of the twentieth century, she went on to collaborate with Graham Greene on Reflections, the last of his books published in his lifetime. She recounts how she was entrusted with the publication of Leonard Woolf and Trekkie Ritchie’s love letters; how she found a way to hunt down Charlotte Haldane, one of the first women on Fleet Street; and how she came to write the biography of Max Reinhardt, the man behind the finest English publishing house of the mid-twentieth century.A sharply observant and self-effacing narrator, Adamson brings vividly to life an anglophone upbringing in mid-century Montreal, the London literary scene, and the struggles faced by the women intellectuals of her time. Ghost Stories is a tale of good luck and the hard sleuthing of biographical work before the digital age.Liberty Equality Fashion: The Women Who Styled the French Revolution
By Anne Higonnet. 2024
Three women led a fashion revolution and turned themselves into international style celebrities. Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France; Térézia…
Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe; and Juliette Récamier, muse of intellectuals, had nothing left to lose. After surviving incarceration and forced incestuous marriage during the worst violence of the French Revolution of 1789, they dared sartorial revolt. Together, Joséphine and Térézia shed the underwear cages and massive, rigid garments that women had been obliged to wear for centuries. They slipped into light, mobile dresses, cropped their hair short, wrapped themselves in shawls, and championed the handbag. Juliette made the new style stand for individual liberty. The erotic audacity of these fashion revolutionaries conquered Europe, starting with Napoleon. Everywhere a fashion magazine could reach, women imitated the news coming from Paris. It was the fastest and most total change in clothing history. Two centuries ahead of its time, it was rolled back after only a decade by misogynist rumors of obscene extravagance. New evidence allows the real fashion revolution to be told. This is a story for our time: of a revolution that demanded universal human rights, of self-creation, of women empowering each other, and of transcendent glamorThe Fixer: Moguls, Mobsters, Movie Stars, and Marilyn
By Josh Young, Manfred Westphal. 2024
A riveting tell-all biography that delves into the extraordinary life of Hollywood&’s most infamous private detective and &“fixer&” to the…
stars, revealing newly discovered shocking revelations from his never-before-seen investigative files. During the height of Hollywood&’s golden age, one man lorded over the city&’s lurid underbelly of forbidden sin and celebrity scandal like no other: Fred Otash. An ex-Marine turned L.A.P.D. vice cop, Otash became the most sought-after private detective and fixer to the stars by specializing in the dark arts that would soon dominate the entertainment industry. Otash was notorious for bugging the homes, offices, and playpens of movie stars, kingmakers, and powerful politicians, employing then state-of-the-art methods of electronic surveillance and wiretapping for a who&’s who list of clients for whom he&’d do &“anything short of murder.&” He lied to federal authorities to protect Frank Sinatra from criminal liability; recorded Rock Hudson&’s coming out confession to his estranged wife; moved in with Judy Garland to help her get sober; taped President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy&’s tragic love affairs with the greatest sex symbol of all time, and he listened to Marilyn Monroe die. Based on Otash&’s never-before-seen investigative files and personal archives, THE FIXER takes readers inside the sensational and nefarious world of the man whose art imitating life inspired the private eye characters portrayed by Jack Nicholson in Chinatown and Russell Crowe in LA Confidential.Based on an extensive collection of letters written from the home front and the battlefront, Family War Stories offers fresh…
insights into how the reciprocal nature of family correspondence can shape a family’s understanding of the war.Family War Stories examines the contribution of the Densmore family to the Northern Civil War effort. It extends the boundaries of research in two directions. First, by describing how members of this white family from Minnesota were mobilized to fight a family war on the home front and the battlefront, and second, by exploring how the war challenged the family’s abolitionist beliefs and racial attitudes. Family War Stories argues that the totality of the family’s Civil War experience was intricately shaped by the dynamics of family life and the reciprocal nature of family correspondence. Further, it argues that the serving sons’ understanding of the war was shaped by their direct military experiences in the army camps and battlefields and how their loved ones at home interpreted these experiences.With two sons serving as officers in the United States Colored Troops’ regiments fighting in the Mississippi Valley, the Densmore family was heavily involved in destroying slavery. Family War Stories analyses how the sons’ military experiences tested the family’s abolitionist ideology and its commitment to white racial superiority. It also explains how the family sought to accommodate the presence of a refugee from slavery working in the family kitchen. In some ways, the presence of this worker in the household posed an even greater range of challenges to the family’s racial beliefs than the sons’ military service.By examining one family’s deep involvement in the war against slavery, Wilson analyses how the Civil War posed particular challenges to Northerners committed to abolitionism and white supremacy.Puzzled: A Memoir about Growing Up with OCD
By Pan Cooke. 2024
Growing up with undiagnosed OCD sure isn&’t easy, and here Pan Cooke shares his own experiences with that condition in…
a graphic-novel memoir that is as funny as it is powerfully candid and openhearted.Pan Cooke is ten years old when anxious thoughts begin to take over his brain like pieces of an impossible puzzle. What if he blurts out a swear word while in church? What if he accidentally writes something mean in his classmate&’s get-well card? What if his friend&’s racy photo of a supermodel ends up in his own homework and is discovered by his teacher? More and more, he becomes hijacked by fears that can only be calmed through exhausting, time-consuming rituals.Pan has no way of knowing that this anxiety puzzle and the stressful attempts to solve it are evidence of a condition called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This is his story of living with and eventually learning about OCD. Told with endearing honesty and humor, Puzzled shows the reader the importance of empathy for oneself and those going through something they don&’t yet understand.Give Me Space but Don't Go Far: My Unlikely Friendship with Anxiety
By Haley Weaver. 2024
A tender, funny, illustrated memoir about anxiety and self-acceptance from the artist behind @haleydrewthisAnxiety has been glued to Haley Weaver&’s…
side since she was a child. Like most people, Weaver saw the constant what-ifs and worst-case scenarios that Anxiety whispered in her ear as an obstacle to her happiness. Maybe she could dump her anxiety at her therapist&’s office, or send it on a trip far, far away—anything to get rid of it for good. But over time she realized anxiety&’s true intention: to keep her safe. Could she learn to let it do its job but also figure out how to live without constant worry and fear? This full-color, illustrated memoir stars Haley and Anxiety (as themselves) and showcases their complicated but ultimately uplifting relationship. It also introduces readers to the helpful (and not-so-helpful) coping mechanisms Haley relies on to soften the edges of her mental health issues. There&’s the Distractor, who wears a bright red boa and encourages Haley to avoid uncomfortable feelings by scrolling the Internet, the Liar, who teaches Haley the pillars of a good fib in order to survive at the middle school lunch table, and even the Partier, who gives Haley a social life in college but also lands her in the ER. From detailing her first unsupervised birthday party as a preteen to exploring the overwhelming life transitions as an adult, Give Me Space but Don&’t Go Far brings to life the pivotal moments of Haley&’s life and illuminates the lesson she&’s learned: With care, practice, and sound strategies, we can learn to coexist with our anxiety—and maybe even love it.