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2015 non-fiction fall preview

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Water, water, everywhere

back to the wellSixteen years after winning the  Governor General’s Literary Award for Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, Marq de Villiers goes Back to the Well (Goose Lane), in which he investigates how much of the current global crisis is actually the result of local political ideologies, and can be solved as such.

voices in the oceanHuman brains are much smaller than those of dolphins, which may explain why we’re stupid enough to treat the intelligent cetacean mammals so poorly. For two years, Susan Casey, author of the best-selling The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks, travelled the world observing dolphins’ lives for Voices in the Ocean (Doubleday Canada).

Screen shot 2015-06-24 at 1.52.34 PMProving you don’t have to leave home to find inspiration, author Helen Humphreys meditates on the Napanee River from her waterside property. Her personal examination of nature, The River (ECW), combines fiction, non-fiction, history, maps, and photos.

slick water andrew nikiforukAndrew Nikiforuk’s Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry (Greystone) tells the story of Jessica Ernst, a biologist and oil-patch consultant who filed a major lawsuit after discovering that the energy giant Encana had been secretly fracking gas wells around her home, which subsequently pierced the community’s drinking-water aquifer.


Margaret MacMillanHarper watch 2015

▶ Oxford University professor Margaret MacMillan’s forthcoming CBC Massey Lecture is not specifically about Prime Minister Stephen Harper, but the celebrated historian does examine the cult of personality surrounding leaders who have changed the course of history. History’s People: Personalities and the Past (Anansi), the latest in the prestigious series, arrives in September.
Stephen Harper (McClelland & Stewart), the much-anticipated biography by The Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson, goes beyond the politics to get up close and personal to the man (well, as close as you can get).
▶ Given that Canada After Harper includes contributions by David Suzuki and Maude Barlow, and it’s edited by trade unionist Ed Finn (with an introduction by Ralph Nader), it’s safe to assume Lorimer’s new essay collection falls on the left of the political divide.


Let’s get political

Before voting in October’s federal election, it might be wise to read NDP Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair’s autobiography, Strength of Conviction, out in August with Dundurn.

Former Federal Liberal interim leader and Ontario premier Bob Rae offers solutions to the current fractured state of political leadership in What Happened to Politics?, appearing with S&S Canada.

Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty shares his personal political history in Making a Difference (Dundurn).

And just when you think we’re done with Rob Ford, along comes his former chief of staff Mark Towhey and journalist Johanna Schneller with Mayor Rob Ford: Uncontrollable: How I Tried to Help the World’s Most Notorious Mayor (Skyhorse Publishing).


Free newspaper clipart fall preview 2015 front-page disruptionsFront-page disruptions

Former Globe and Mail editor-in-chief John Stackhouse examines the current crisis in journalism, and how traditional media outlets such as The Guardian and The New York Times are attempting to adapt. Mass Disruption: Thirty Years on the Front Lines of a Media Revolution arrives from Random House Canada in October.

Broadcaster Mark Bulgutch interviews more than 40 journalists about their big career moments in That’s Why I’m a Journalist: Top Canadian Reporters Tell Their Most Unforgettable Stories (D&M).

MacEwan University assistant professor and journalism veteran Brian Gorman argues that digital paywalls aren’t a new problem, and that the underlying issues facing media today date back to the 1970s in Crash to Paywall: Canadian Newspapers and the Great Disruption (McGill-Queen’s University Press).

(Q&Q’s fall preview covers books published between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2015. All information (titles, prices, publication dates, etc.) was supplied by publishers and may have been tentative at Q&Q’s press time. Titles that have been listed in previous previews do not appear here.)

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July 20th, 2015

2:59 pm

Category: Preview

Tagged with: fall preview, fall preview 2015