An “accessible, elucidating book that makes a persuasive plea for us to connect data literacy and human rights.” Plus, “a genuine pleasure to read.” —Jessica Poon reviews We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age, by Wendy H. Wong (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023) $35/95 / 9780262048576
“What an odyssey her life has been! When you think of her beginnings in mid-century Romania and Israel, her narrow escape from perilous situations, and her good fortune, which she has fully utilized, it is one of those stories that can be told again and again.” Christina Johnson-Dean looks back on the life and art of Vancouver-based Pnina Granirer.
“Condon’s book is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of our cities, and is a call to action; challenging us to rethink urban development and advocate for policies that put people first.” Ryan Mitchell reviews Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality, and Urban Crisis, by Patrick M. Condon (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2024) $32.95 / 9780774869553
“Harrington devotes a separate chapter to each of the fifteen largest islands, namely Gabriola, Thetis, Salt Spring, North and South Pender, Saturna, Mayne, Galiano, Hornby, Denman, Quadra, Cortes, Savary, Bowen, Gambier, and Lasqueti, in that order.” Jack Little reviews Voices for the Islands: Thirty Years of Nature Conservation on the Salish Sea
by Sheila Harrington (Victoria: Heritage House, 2024) $34.95 / 9781772034929
“The book is also unique in that it provides first-person accounts from a socially and ethnically diverse group of professionals, including several chapters penned by women who openly share their lived experiences in a changing professional environment.” —Ryan Mitchell reviews The Role of Canadian City Managers, edited by Michael Fenn, Gordon McIntosh and David Siegel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023) $44.95 / 9781487552329
“If all you do is read the textile manifesto, you’ll come away with a lot to think about. But this book really shines in later sections, where McCabe brings us the stories of the people who work on the land and share relationships with their fibre, all combined with useful reference material.” Sarah Thornton reviews Fleece and Fibre: Textile Producers of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands by Francine McCabe (Victoria: Heritage House, 2023) $34.95 / 9781772034530
“Pearkes has issued an environmental warning…” Ron Verzuh reviews A River Captured: The Columbia River Treaty and Catastrophic Change by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes (Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2024) $25 / 9781771605236
“It is a book for those who are ‘too much.’ A wary reader will, within a few pages, find resonance examples of too much: too loud, too tall, too fat, too brown, too….” Wendy Burton reviews Your Body is a Revolution: Healing Our Relationship with Our Bodies, Each Other, and the Earth by Tara Teng (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2023) $23.99 / 9781459752863
“In her work at The Narwhal, Victoria-based investigative reporter Sarah Cox has earned a well-deserved reputation as one of Canada’s foremost environmental journalists. Mixing cautious optimism with an urgent call to arms, her remarkable new book, Signs of Life: Field Notes from the Frontlines of Extinction, provides a sobering account of biodiversity loss in Canada, its root causes, tragic consequences, and potential solutions.” Kevin Hutchings reviews Signs of Life: Field Notes from the Frontlines of Extinction by Sarah Cox (Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2024) $24.95 / 9781773102887
“The Sentient Cell comes at a timely moment, when the scientific consensus tells us that tipping points loom, and our options are narrowing quickly.” Loys Maingon reviews The Sentient Cell: The Cellular Foundations of Consciousness by Arthur S. Reber, Frantisek Baluska, and William B. Miller Jr. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2023) $78.00 / 9780198873211
“The depth and breadth of Craigie’s analysis is impressive, giving a sense of direction to a realm of policy that often seems bleak in its partisanship and illusory political rhetoric.” Matthew Downey reviews Our Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canada’s Housing Crisis by Gregor Craigie (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2024) $25.00 / 9781039009387
“Aaron Williams was raised in logging camps in BC with an old-time logger for a father and a supportive mother and logging Grandmother Joy doing the raising. He makes good use of his youthful memories to tell us in first-person present tense the workings of various operations that make up the industry.” Ron Verzuh reviews The Last Logging Show: A Forestry Family at the End of an Era by Aaron Williams (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $24.95 / 9781990776618
“This type of book is Pinterest before Pinterest, a way of gathering inspiration when it was primarily an arduous task. The physicality is something that can never be discounted, and I imagine the authors of the future will continue to always refer to books like this, as nothing quite replaces the ah-ha experience of leafing through it and coming to know to things in an unexplainable way, like a dream guiding you in the middle of the night.” Thomas Girard reviews Pretty Pictures by Marian Bantjes (New York: Metropolis Books, 2013) $99.00 / 9781938922220
“The idea was this thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we made a list of one hundred authors from one hundred years, then put a pin in their location on a map of the Coast.’ ” Cathalynn Labonté-Smith writes The Sunshine Coast Tale Trail: Where it Fits into 100 Years of Canadian Literary Landmark Maps
“In Defence of Copyright touches on all the greatest hits of the contemporary copyfight.” John Degen reviews In Defence of Copyright: An essential guide to the history and importance of copyright by Hugh Stephens (Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2023) $19.95 / 9781770866799
Debut poems and capitalist criticism in the form of “intricate napkin doodles,” they are “spectacular gestures but not always particularly easy or comfortable reads.” —Harold Rhenisch reviews Tomorrow is a Holiday, by Hamish Ballantyne (Vancouver: New Star Books, 2024) $16.00 / 9781554202089
Grimness, marvellous one-liners, complex characterization, and expert pacing turn a crime thrillerl into “a good, downright scathing read.” —Jessica Poon reviews Ocean Drive, by Sam Wiebe (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $24.95 / 9781990776694
“Davis has a long-time familiarity with the Colorado, dating back to 1967 when he first visited it as a teenager. Even then the Colorado’s path was already interrupted by a series of dams created in order to make the deserts bloom, enabling both population growth and large-scale agriculture.” Steve Koerner reviews River Notes: Drought and the Twilight of the American West – A Natural and Human History of the Colorado (Revised Edition) by Wade Davis (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2023) $22.95 / 9781778401428
“‘It became a philosophical/legal statement about the land. I hope it reaches out to Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences and will inform people going forward with reconciliation.’” Sage Birchwater reviews Lha Yudit’ih We Always Find a Way: Bringing the Tsilhqot’in Title Case Home by Lorraine Weir, with Chief Roger William (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2023) $35 / 9781772013825
“The intermittent chronicle of British Columbia filmmaking offers many examples of motion pictures that could have been made, but somehow never were.” British Columbia film historian and archivist Dennis J. Duffy ruminates on the films based on B.C. literature that got away, such as Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson, in his essay Knowing the Country: The Unfilmed Ethel Wilson