“On Sunday, the 22nd, we were relaxing and having breakfast outside after a successful day previous in presenting my Tai Chi talk and demo (there’s an irony!), when we heard some anxious buzz from folks in the building that something was going on. At almost same moment, we saw clouds of heavy dark smoke drifting in just past our building and the big shade tree behind us, as if a house or store was on fire nearby.” Author and poet Trevor Carolan reports from Puerto Vallarta on his recent experience.
“These stories of resistance need to be shared to help understand the breadth of depravity of fascism and its impact that can evolve under unchecked hate and power. Rather than “fascism” being an abstract word or slogan, it becomes visceral when told as a story using sequential art.” David Lester writes an essay telling of how, “as the creeping noose of modern-day fascism encircles us, I found myself drawing a story from 80 years ago.” Partisans: A Graphic History of Anti-Fascist Resistance, by Raymond Tyler & Paul Buhle (eds.) (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2025) $34.95 / 9781771136525
“In this intimate account, Comox Valley writer Joline Martin uniquely focuses on the draft resisters who came to Vancouver Island and became Canadians.” Ron Verzuh reviews War Resisters: Standing Against the Vietnam War, by Joline Martin (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2025) $26 / 9781773861685
“…the memoir They Never Left Me, written by a Holocaust survivor, Evelyn Kahn, assisted by her daughter Hodie Kahn, is very different and extremely powerful.” Valerie Green reviews They Never Left Me: A Holocaust Memoir of Maternal Courage and Triumph, by Evelyn Kahn with Hodie Kahn (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2025) $22.95 / 9781553807322
“Hill presents a compelling case for Antifa relevance in its fight against racism, fascism, and authoritarianism, providing a detailed history of events in our past, so we can better understand our probable future.” Jeffrey Stychin reviews The Antifa Comic Book: Revised and Expanded, by Gord Hill (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025) $24.95 / 9781834050041
“In some respects, the school already had a number of carefully nurtured traditions tending in that direction. We played rugger rather than the more plebeian soccer. We competed with several minor public schools at cricket and rugger and, although twelve miles from the River Thames, entered one or two rowing eights in the Head of the River races.” Christopher Levenson recalls his schoolboy days in England in the next instalment of his memoir “Not One of the Boys.”
“In order to give an additional perspective on Castle’s role as photographer in the First World War, the author provides salient details of his role as a photographer in the earlier Balkans war. Here the whole culture of war photography, including camaraderie and competition amongst the journalists, she suggests were a seminal influence on Castle’s sense of his own role.” Theo Dombrowski reviews The Taking of Vimy Ridge: First World War Photographs of William Ivor Castle, by Carla-Jean Stokes (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2025) $64.99 / 9781771126984
“Controlled in recording the objections and counterarguments to Vrba’s claims, Twigg nevertheless has established such a firm sense of his own authority and knowledge that it is hard not to feel that most readers, like Twigg himself, will be deeply affected by Vrba’s words.” Theo Dombrowski reviews Holocaust Hero: The Life and Times of Rudolf Vrba, by Alan Twigg (Richmond Hill, ON: Firefly Books, 2025) $29.95 / 9780228105718
“Harper’s words tell this story but Marriott adds the historian’s tools of archival documents, war histories, and news reports. He provides a section on sources that explains how he knit together the word-images that take readers to the killing fields. Those vivid pictures of warfare on the Western front are often unimaginable.” Ron Verzuh reviews Till We Meet Again: A Canadian in the First World War, by Brandon Marriott (Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2025) $39.95 / 9781668208236
“The strength of Martin’s book, and its value as an analysis of the Canadian experience in Afghanistan, is in the way that he personifies the political experience of the Afghan war through his anecdotes. There is a point where he elucidates the three circles of power in Afghanistan – the first being the local power brokers and warlords, the second being the government of the democratic regime, and the third being the international forces.” Matthew Downey reviews Unwinnable Peace: Untold Stories of Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan, by Tim Martin (New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781990160349
“A few short paragraphs on the deep red inside cover lays out the deeply serious content. John Scott is identified by the years of his life (1949-2022) along with two of his main streams of images—graphically brutal war machinery and, in contrast, strange and vulnerable humanoids.” John Scott: Firestorm, by Dr. John O’Brian (Victoria: Figure 1 Publishing, 2024) $50 / 9781773272726
“I don’t think of myself as an author,” begins acclaimed curator Catherine Clement, “I think of myself as a street historian or community historian first, and the only reason I create books is to solidify those memories, to lock them in for future generations to find.” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment featuring Vancouver curator and historian Catherine Clement.
“Sprawling [and] ambitious” 1940s-set debut novel captures the death and male camaraderie of wartime Europe and the romantic challenges of a mixed-race couple in Vancouver. —Jessica Poon reviews The Riveter, by Jack Wang (Toronto: House of Anansi, 2025) $24.99 / 9781487007614
“Not one single gravestone stands to mark my family. It is as though they didn’t exist.” —In “The Blood in the Stone” Deborah Lane excavates family history and imagines life as it might have been.
A poignant and intricate collection of evocative poems “demonstrates a virtuoso poetic sensibility.” —gillian harding-russell reviews Nucleus: A Poet’s Lyrical Journey from Ukraine to Canada, by Svetlana Ischenko (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2024) $18.95 / 9781553807070
“It’s as if Catherine is trying to live vicariously through Michelle, and thus how devastating that Michelle’s life was cut short, leaving Catherine to wonder what it was for, was it all in vain? Was the mission to Afghanistan in vain?” Sheldon Goldfarb reviews Embedded: The Irreconcilable Nature of War, Loss and Consequence, by Catherine Lang (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024) $26 / 9781773861517
Author draws on true-life experiences to portray hardship and perseverance in a wintry city during a horrific three-year campaign of attrition. —Heidi Greco reviews Winter of Siege, by Jan DeGrass (Garden Bay: MW Books, 2023) $20.00 / 9780995277830
“Wind sets out the many ways that Israeli institutions of higher education are enlisted in Israel’s settler-colonial project. Some are strategically situated to anchor Israeli territorial expansion, often standing literally on the sites of razed Palestinian villages.” Larry Hannant reviews Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, by Maya Wind (London: Verso, 2024) $39.95 / 9781804291740
“Once again, as with his previous graphic novels, he offers readers a lesson in ‘history from below’ about how ordinary people can rally against tyranny.”—Ron Verzuh reviews Revolution by Fire: New York’s Afro-Irish Uprising of 1741, A Graphic Novel, by David Lester and Marcus Rediker with Paul Buhle (Boston: Beacon Press, 2024) $18.95 / 9780807012550
