In Search of a Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey

By Payam Akhavan

When Payam Akhavan casually comments, midway through In Search of a Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey, that he spent his youth “making history,” he’s not pulling a Trump, but stating a fact. The McGill ... Read More »

September 6, 2017 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Turning Parliament Inside Out: Practical Ideas for Reforming Canada’s Democracy

By Michael Chong et al. (eds.)

This slender volume of essays, edited by three sitting MPs with contributions from another five, features arguments for enhancing the efficacy of our parliament – an idea we can all get behind in theory, but ... Read More »

July 10, 2017 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Memoirs of a Muhindi: Fleeing East Africa for the West

By Mansoor Ladha

In August 1972, Idi Amin demanded that all Asians exit Uganda in 90 days. In the neighbouring countries of Tanzania and Kenya, Asians – or Muhindi as they were known – found themselves on edge. ... Read More »

April 24, 2017 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs, Reviews

Washington’s Long War on Syria

By Stephen Gowan

While the complicated Syrian conflict is best known as the focal point for one of the largest refugee populations in world history, few have a firm grasp on the roots of a war that continues ... Read More »

April 24, 2017 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs, Reviews

Swingback: Getting Along in the World with Harper and Trudeau

By Mike Blanchfield

While Justin Trudeau’s name appears in the subtitle of Mike Blanchfield’s new book, the volume is mainly about Canadian foreign policy in the years Stephen Harper was prime minister. Despite the fact that, as Blanchfield ... Read More »

April 10, 2017 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

★ Churchill and the Dardanelles: Myth, Memory, and Reputation

By Christopher M. Bell

In 1915, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, seized on an idea to attack the Ottoman Empire by getting a fleet through the straits of the Dardanelles. His hope was that success would ... Read More »

March 6, 2017 | Filed under: History, Politics & Current Affairs

Shopping for Change: Consumer Activism and the Possibilities of Purchasing Power

By Joseph Tohill (ed.); Louis Hyman (ed.)

We may easily feel a sense of worthiness as consumers when we purchase a product that we are told will, say, help fund research toward a cure for cancer. But how do we know our ... Read More »

February 22, 2017 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Death in the Family

By John Chipman

When the wheels of justice grind slowly, the process can seem interminable and destructive. This is especially true in cases where justice is being miscarried. By the time Tammy Marquardt had been exonerated in the ... Read More »

February 13, 2017 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs, Science, Technology & Environment

Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours)

By Harold R. Johnson

The theme of healing is present in two recent non-fiction books by indigenous authors. But each author approaches the process of healing, and the question of what needs to be healed in the first place, ... Read More »

January 24, 2017 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Native Peoples, Politics & Current Affairs

Truth and Honour: The Death of Richard Oland and the Trial of Dennis Oland

By Greg Marquis

Dennis Oland was perceived as a mild-mannered family man of good character. Then, on Dec. 19, 2015, he was convicted of butchering his father, Richard Oland, a millionaire businessman and part of the family that ... Read More »

December 15, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

A Number of Things: Stories of Canada Told Through Fifty Objects

By Jane Urquhart‚ Scott McKowen (ill.)

Canada’s sesquicentennial in 2017 no doubt will prompt much soul-searching around the subject of how to define our country. Is it easier or harder, 150 years after Confederation, to explain who we are? And how ... Read More »

December 12, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs, Reference

The Promise of Canada: 150 Years – People and Ideas That Have Shaped Our Country

By Charlotte Gray

Canada’s sesquicentennial in 2017 no doubt will prompt much soul-searching around the subject of how to define our country. Is it easier or harder, 150 years after Confederation, to explain who we are? And how ... Read More »

December 8, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs, Reference

Shadow of Doubt: The Trial of Dennis Oland

By Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon

Dennis Oland was perceived as a mild-mannered family man of good character. Then, on Dec. 19, 2015, he was convicted of butchering his father, Richard Oland, a millionaire businessman and part of the family that ... Read More »

November 28, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

The Candidate: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail

By Noah Richler

Noah Richler’s latest book is meant to be the story of one unlikely politician’s doomed campaign as a candidate for the federal New Democratic Party. But this enjoyable, albeit uneven, memoir also provides some insight ... Read More »

November 7, 2016 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Politics & Current Affairs

★ The Return of History: Conflict, Migration, and Geopolitics in the Twenty-First Century

By Jennifer Welsh

In The Return of History, the 2016 edition of the CBC Massey Lectures, Jennifer Welsh takes umbrage with Francis Fukuyama. In 1992, Fukuyama declared that the end of the Cold War marked the inevitable cessation ... Read More »

October 26, 2016 | Filed under: History, Politics & Current Affairs

No News Is Bad News: Canada’s Media Collapse – And What Comes Next

By Ian Gill

If you don’t know what’s been happening to the news business these days, you haven’t been following the news. The story is by now familiar. Print is locked in a death spiral, starved for revenue ... Read More »

October 17, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Without Apology: Writings on Abortion in Canada

By Shannon Stettner (ed.)

In 1969, abortion was legalized in Canada, but only when the procedure was performed in a hospital and had been approved by a committee of doctors. In response to these restrictions, activists launched the cross-country ... Read More »

October 17, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Boiling Point: Government Neglect, Corporate Abuse, and Canada’s Water Crisis

By Maude Barlow

With 2016 on track to shatter heat and drought records, the crises of climate change and declining freshwater supplies that have long afflicted the global south are increasingly appearing in Canada, where the seemingly unlimited ... Read More »

October 13, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs, Science, Technology & Environment

★ Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel

By David Leach

Reading David Leach’s thoroughly researched and expertly envisioned new book, one cannot help but be reminded of the twin etymology of the word “utopia.” The term comes from both the Greek eu topos, meaning a ... Read More »

September 29, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Queer Progress: From Homophobia to Homonationalism

By Tim McCaskell

Tim McCaskell is often referred to as a granddaddy of gay activism in Canada, though he’s suggested he prefers the term “dinosaur.” In his exhaustive history of LGBT politics in Toronto and beyond, McCaskell tracks ... Read More »

September 29, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Blood of Extraction: Canadian Imperialism in Latin America

By Todd Gordon‚ Jeffery R. Webber

Despite a recent change in government and the widespread “Canada is back” rhetoric accompanying it, Canucks travelling abroad may still choose to keep the maple leaf decal off their backpacks after reading this stinging indictment ... Read More »

August 16, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Trudeaumania: The Rise to Power of Pierre Elliott Trudeau

By Robert Wright

Screaming girls, flashing lights, and a dazzling smile. These are the images that come to mind when reminiscing about Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s rise to power, popularly known as Trudeaumania. This, however, is the antithesis of ... Read More »

August 2, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

America at War with Itself

By Henry A. Giroux

A front-page article in the May 29, 2016, edition of The New York Times features the headline, “Rise of Trump Tracks Debate Over Fascism.” The article, by Peter Baker, examines the unlikely political trajectory of ... Read More »

July 12, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

Making Feminist Media: Third-Wave Magazines on the Cusp of the Digital Age

By Elizabeth Groeneveld

In Making Feminist Media, Elizabeth Groeneveld, currently assistant professor in the women’s studies department at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, investigates the magazines that defined feminism of the 1990s. From third-wave publications like Bitch, ... Read More »

July 11, 2016 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Politics & Current Affairs

The Killing Game: Martyrdom, Murder and the Lure of ISIS

By Mark Bourrie

Marshall McLuhan would have had a field day exploring the dynamics of a terrorist group whose instantly recognizable brand of brutality appeals to disaffected youth while inspiring panic in the world’s most powerful nations. Ottawa ... Read More »

March 10, 2016 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs