“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
“Reynolds calls for more education about the history of colonialism in schools and universities, which is fair enough, although Canadian historians have been writing on the subject for, oh, about fifty years.” Robin Fisher reviews Canada and Colonialism: An Unfinished History by Jim Reynolds (Vancouver: Purich Books, 2024) $32.95 / 9780774880947
“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
“As I pull off the road and down the drive toward my home on Sumas Mountain, where I will take a walk in the woods, there is one thinker’s phrase that nags as I come to terms with the reality of this doublethink, doublespeak, society. Thoreau’s prophetic statement in an 1860 letter to Harrison Blake, is all too relevant– ‘What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?’ Author and essayist Natalie Virginia Lang writes the timely essay “Living with Oil?”
“Thomson casts a fictional net over the special hell of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon in the 1970s and early 1980s.” Larry Hannant reviews The Struggle Continues: An arduous journey of hope by Christopher Thomson (Victoria: FriesenPress, 2023) $19.49 / 9781039157613
“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
“This book is a history lesson, required reading for those who come late to the struggle and wonder why nothing has been done.” Wendy Burton reviews Water Confidential: Witnessing Justice Denied – The Fight for Safe Drinking Water in Indigenous and Rural Communities in Canada by Susan Blacklin (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781773861319
“History is never simple and nor is the truth. The sooner everyone steps away from the rhetoric of genocide on the one hand and benign paternalism on the other, the better in terms of healing those who feel they need it, and their reconciliation with those whom they feel were responsible.” Richard Butler reviews Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) by C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan (eds.) (Ottawa: True North/Dorchester Books, 2023) $21.00 / 9798867599317
“We have waited long for this opportunity to hear this side of the conversation as poets and playwrights, fiction and non-fiction writers from Indigenous nations speak their truth…Good immortalises and memorializes ground breakers like Chief Dan George, Lee Maracle, and the gentle trickster Dan Moses, now gone to spirit, and a whole new generation of writers.” Linda Rogers reviews Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada by Michelle Good (Toronto: Harper Collins, 2023) $29.99 / 9781443467810
“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 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
“Author Richard Butler, in his two recent titles, has decided, quite admirably, to describe his own path in addressing reconciliation. He begins Taking Reconciliation Personally upfront about his own settler privilege.” Trevor Marc Hughes reviews Taking Reconciliation Personally (Victoria: A&R Publishing, 2023) $15 / 9798849376998 & I Dare Say…Conversations with Indigeneity by Richard Butler (Victoria: A&R Publishing, 2023) $11 / 9798871999066
“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
“Taking into account all the studies of humanity Davis has done throughout his career, his pointing out the adaptability of human beings across the ages is a potent tonic for our collective cynicism and despair.” Trevor Marc Hughes reviews Beneath the Surface of Things: New and Selected Essays by Wade Davis (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2024) $36.95 / 9781778400445
“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
“The Notorious Georges is about the rivalry of the two Georges and about the founding of Prince George. It’s also about the drive to tame a wild land with organized townsites and laws, rules, and regulations that needed to be adhered to—civilization as opposed to lawless wilderness.” Steven Brown reviews The Notorious Georges: Crime and Community in British Columbia’s Northern Interior, 1909 – 1925 by Jonathan Swainger (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2023) $32.95 / 9780774869416
“The topics covered in this book cover many issues: portraying girls as full individuals and the theory that anything is possible, sexual awakenings, political activism, and advocating for safe abortions.” Valerie Green reviews The Time of my Life: Dirty Dancing by Andrea Warner (Toronto: ECW Press, April 2024) $19.95 / 9781770417410
Exceptional essays “elicit gasps, induce chills.” —Brett Josef Grubisic reviews Dinner on Monster Island: Essays, by Tania De Rozario (Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2024) $17.99 / 9780063299665
“Wuest firmly roots her book’s subject as a Western Canadian cultural institution.” Matthew Downey reviews Douglas Lake Ranch: Empire of Grass by Donna (Yoshitake) Wuest with Joe W. Gardner (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2023) $50.00 / 9781990776427