History

Innocence on Trial: The Framing of Ivan Henry

On November 28, 2014, an Ontario Superior Court withdrew a murder charge against Leighton Hay, who had spent the previous 12 years behind bars for a crime that, it turns out, he didn’t commit. According ... Read More »

February 5, 2015 | Filed under: History, Memoir & Biography

Etta and Otto and Russell and James

By Emma Hooper

Debut novelist Emma Hooper provides a carefully calibrated setting, but not all the elements in this book come through so vibrantly, writes Dory Cerny Early one morning, 82-year-old Etta Kinnick puts on her boots, fills ... Read More »

December 11, 2014 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, History

Grey Eyes

By Frank Christopher Busch

In Grey Eyes, Frank Christopher Busch takes the reader back to a pre-contact aboriginal society. At the start of the novel, a grey-eyed child known as Little Grey Bear Boy is born; his birth changes ... Read More »

December 1, 2014 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, History

Into the Blizzard: Walking the Fields of the Newfoundland Dead

By Michael Winter

In his first foray into non-fiction, novelist Michael Winter (This All Happened, Minister Without Portfolio) has written a love letter to the soldiers who fought for the Royal Newfoundland Regiment during the First World War. ... Read More »

October 27, 2014 | Filed under: History

Toronto: Biography of a City

By Allan Levine

The subtitle of Allan Levine’s ambitious history of Toronto may seem as stolid as the city’s British founding families, but it doesn’t take long for the reader to realize how carefully chosen it is. Levine, ... Read More »

October 20, 2014 | Filed under: History

The Greatest Victory: Canada’s One Hundred Days, 1918

By J.L. Granatstein

J.L. Granatstein, one of Canada’s most celebrated historians, wants you to know more about Canada’s role in the last hundred days of the First World War. Not only does he describe it as “the greatest ... Read More »

September 5, 2014 | Filed under: History

Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance after Operation Valkyrie

By Randall Hansen

With a title like Disobeying Hitler, University of Toronto professor Randall Hansen’s second book is likely to grab people right from its cover. The text itself, which focuses on the last days of the Third ... Read More »

August 27, 2014 | Filed under: History

Trouble on Main Street: Mackenzie King, Reason, Race, and the 1907 Vancouver Riots

By Julie F. Gilmour

The life of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s longest-serving prime minister, has been a favourite topic of Canadian historians for decades. Yet first-time author Julie F. Gilmour has managed to break fresh ground with Trouble ... Read More »

June 26, 2014 | Filed under: History

★ The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914

By Margaret MacMillan

One prevailing theme of most First World War histories is the inevitability of conflict: Europe wanted a war in 1914 and was just waiting for the perfect excuse. In her wonderful new book, Margaret MacMillan ... Read More »

February 20, 2014 | Filed under: History

Jews and the Military: A History

By Derek J. Penslar

University of Toronto professor Derek J. Penslar would like to challenge a central idea in Jewish history: that Israeli willingness to fight represents a break from Jewish behaviour in the diaspora. In Jews and the ... Read More »