Gold Rush Manliness: Race and Gender on the Pacific Slope by Christopher Herbert Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018 $30.00 (U.S.) / 9780295744131 Reviewed by Robert Hogg * Christopher Herbert has added to the considerable literature on gender in colonial societies, and of frontier masculinities in particular, as well as to the historiography of race,…
Read more #511 Gold, gamblers, greenhorns
Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire by Renisa Mawani Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2018 $27.95 (U.S.) / 9780822370352 Reviewed by Hugh Johnston * Renisa Mawani writes a thoroughly academic prose, not intended for a casual audience. Even so, her book will have fans, especially among…
Read more #496 Too much sail, not enough ballast
ESSAY: Universal Technologies and Traditional Innovations: A Comprehensive Perspective for Museums by Yosef Wosk An Ormsby Exclusive, in collaboration with the The Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars First published Feb. 5, 2019 * We are pleased to present an essay by Yosef Wosk about nothing less than mankind’s accumulation and appreciation of shared knowledge and wisdom. This extraordinarily…
Read more #479 On the wings of forever
How Churchill Waged War: The Most Challenging Decisions of the Second World War by Allen Packwood Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Books, 2018 $34.95 (U.S.) / 9781473893894 Reviewed by Peter Clarke First published Jan. 29, 2019 * Each new book about Winston Churchill inevitably faces the question of whether it is really necessary, since there…
Read more #474 Decisions, decisions
A Piece of the Continent by Paul Nicholson Victoria: Paul Nicholson, 2018 $24.50 / 9781775192305 Available from Amazon.ca and from the author Reviewed by Valerie Green First published January 19, 2019 * It is obvious from the first page of Paul Nicholson’s book that he is passionate about the two topics he covers in A…
Read more #469 From Passchendaele to Paris
Costly Fix: Power, Politics and Nature in the Tar Sands by Ian Urquhart Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018 $39.95 / 9781487594619 Oil’s Deep State: How the Petroleum Industry Undermines Democracy and Stops Action on Global Warming by Kevin Taft Toronto: Lorimer, 2017 $29.95 / 9781459409972 The Big Stall: How Big Oil and Think Tanks…
Read more #468 Power, petroleum, and pipelines
White by Deni Ellis Béchard Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2018 $19.95 / 9781772012088 Reviewed by Paul Headrick First published Jan. 15, 2019 * The narrator of White has a dramatic CV: freelance war reporter, novelist, and memoirist. It’s a background that closely matches the author’s, even down to the contents of their memoirs. Béchard’s explores his difficult…
Read more #465 Flight to the Congo
MEMOIR: The Spider Hunters by Lee Reid First published Nov. 23, 2018 * We are pleased to present The Spider Hunters, a coming-of-age memoir by Lee Reid (née Batchelor) of her early life in England (1946-1952), and then on densely-forested and thinly-populated Curteis Point near Sidney, Vancouver Island, between 1952 and 1964. The Spider Hunters…
Read more #431 The Spider Hunters
Codename Project 9: How a Small British Columbia City Helped Create the Atomic Bomb by Ron Verzuh CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018 $13.08 / 9781720820703 Reviewed by Michael Sasges First published Nov. 22, 2018 * Codename Project 9 is a small book that engenders reflections on some big history. Since 1945, journalists and scholars…
Read more #429 Trail, the bomb, and Blaylock
ESSAY: A century since Vimy and Passchendaele: Two wars, two families, one message by Howard Macdonald Stewart First published Nov. 11, 2018 * For Remembrance Day 2018 we offer a moving reflection by Howard Stewart — reprinted from Ormsby no. 195 (November 11, 2017) on this centenary of 11.11.18 — on war’s impact on his…
Read more #420 Why the red poppies matter
First published October 16, 2018 Island of the Blue Foxes: Disaster and Triumph on Bering’s Great Voyage to Alaska by Stephen R. Bown Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2017 $34.95 / 9781771621618 Reviewed by Robin Inglis * The Great Northern Expedition of 1733-1743, initiated by Emperor Peter the Great, extended Russian influence to the Aleutian Islands…
Read more #401 Legacy of Vitus Bering
Imprint: A Memoir of Trauma in the Third Generation by Claire Sicherman Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2017 $22.95 / 9781987915570 Reviewed by Mark Dwor First published Sept. 28, 2018 * Claire Sicherman opens Imprint: A Memoir of Trauma in the Third Generation with this dedication: My maternal grandparents were survivors of the Holocaust and I…
Read more #386 All my generations
An Uncommon Road: How Canadian Sikhs Struggled out of the Fringes and into the Mainstream by Gian Singh Sandhu Vancouver: Echo Storytelling, 2018. Available though Heritage Group Distribution $29.95 / 9781987900163 Reviewed by Gurpreet Singh First published August 29, 2018 * Gian Singh Sandhu came to Canada in 1970 and settled in Williams Lake, where…
Read more #359 From Punjab to Williams Lake
Churchill and Fisher: The Titans at the Admiralty who fought the First World War by Barry Gough Toronto: James Lorimer, 2017 $39.95 / 9781459411364 Reviewed by James Wood First published Aug. 23, 2018 * Barry Gough of Victoria continues his torrid pace and high-quality output with the publication of his character study, Churchill and Fisher:…
Read more #350 Naval giants of the Great War
Atomic Road Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2018 by Grant Buday, with a foreword by John O’Brian $20 / 9781772141139 Reviewed by Dustin Cole First published Jul. 9, 2018 * So it was all coming down, The future collapsing like a rotten house. – from Atomic Road. Recently I perused the Anvil Press website to see if…
Read more #339 Missiles, murder & emasculation
The World’s Most Travelled Man: A Twenty-Three Year Odyssey to and through Every Country on the Planet by Mike Spencer Bown Madeira Park: Douglas and McIntyre, 2017 $29.95 / 9781771621427 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart First published June 9, 2018 * During 1,000 weeks, Mike Spencer Bown backpacked around the world between 1990 and 2013,…
Read more #319 King of the back packers
Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition by Paul Watson Toronto: Penguin Random House (McClelland & Stewart), 2017 $34.95 / 9780771096525 Reviewed by Walter O. Volovsek First published May 17, 2018 * Based in Coquitlam, B.C., the remarkable Paul Watson–not to confused with that Sea Shepherd captain also named Paul Watson who…
Read more #305 Finding the Erebus and Terror
The Cinderella Campaign: First Canadian Army and the Battles for the Channel Ports by Mark Zuehlke Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2017 $37.95 / 9781771620895 Reviewed by Norm Fennema First published April 30, 2018 * Prolific historian Mark Zuehlke describes how battle-hardened but “woefully understrength” Canadian soldiers chased retreating Germans north towards the Seine River in…
Read more #295 Cinderella Campaign revisited
All the Fine Young Eagles: In the Cockpit with Canada’s Second World War Fighter Pilots (updated and expanded second edition; first published by Stoddart, 1997) by David L. Bashow Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2016 $28.95 / 9781771621359 Reviewed by Howard Hisdal First published April 3, 2018 * In All the Fine Young Eagles, David…
Read more #280 From Beurling to Bashow
The Locomotive of War: Money, Empire, Power, and Guilt by Peter Clarke London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017 $40.00 / 9781408851654 Reviewed by Stan Markotich First published March 31, 2018 * Prominent British political historian Peter Clarke (born 1942) divides his time between Cambridge and the Gulf Islands. Married to Canadian cultural historian Maria Tippett, Clarke was…
Read more #278 Trotsky’s locomotive of steam