Reviews (2)

An How to Do It Guide to Suriving in Rural Canada
If you're interested in how people lived in rural Canada during the 1800s, this book will give a first hand account. The book is composed of the author's letters back home to England, and answering questions from friends back home. She gives detail encounters of the voyage to her new home, cultivating the land, the hardships they face with their land, diseases, and the climate, and who is best suited for this type of life. Catharine Parr Traill is a great storyteller who is engaging and very descriptive in her writings. This is a good book if you want to really see what life was like for the early pioneers in North America.

True stocy kinda interesting... if u like that sort
about the eairly settlers of canada and how they managed the hardships and how people felt about development in the rural areas of canada ... Read more

Book Description

This look at the traditional and subversive world of women's folklore examines the realm of women's talk, exploring the ways Italian immigrant women from Montreal use classic folk genres to stretch the boundaries of their culture. Through songs, lullabies, bawdy riddles, and trickster tales, these women subvert, redefine, and alter what it means to be Italian and female in North America. More than just a study of Italian Canadians, this essay delves into broader themes of gender, immigration, and ethnicity, showcasing voices that contradict homogenizing interpretations of traditional historical scholarship. ... Read more

Book Description

William H. McNeill's seminal book The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963) received the National Book Award in 1964 and was later named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library. From his post at the University of Chicago, McNeill became one of the first contemporary North American historians to write world history, seeking a broader interpretation of human affairs than prevailed in his youth.

A candid, intellectual memoir from one of the most famous and influential historians of our era, The Pursuit of Truth charts the development of McNeill's thought over seven decades. At the core of his worldview is the belief that historical truth does not derive exclusively from criticizing, paraphrasing, and summarizing written documents, nor is history merely a record of how human intentions and plans succeeded or failed. Instead, McNeill believes that human lives are immersed in vast overarching processes of change. Ecological circumstances frame and limit human action, while in turn humans have been able to alter their environment more and more radically as technological skill and knowledge increased.

Over the course of his career as a historian, teacher, and mentor, McNeill expounded the range of history and integrated it into an evolutionary worldview uniting physical, biological, and intellectual processes. Accordingly, The Pursuit of Truth explores the personal and professional life of a man who affected the way a core academic discipline has been taught and understood in America. ... Read more

Book Description

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen are widely acknowledged as the great pop poets of the 1960s, transforming the popular song into a medium for questionng the personal, social, and political norms of their times. They emerged at a time when the music industry was transforming the revolutionary sound of black music into something bland, homogenous, and fit for mass consumption. For many members of their generation, Dylan and Cohen were able to articulate what they were feeling and could not express: anti-establishement anger, angst, and despondency.

Dylan and Cohen is a fascinating political, psychological and artistic profile of these two iconic writers and performers. With reference to both biographical details and lyrics. David Boucher explores their similarities and differences, tracing the development of religious political, and social themes in their work and the ways in which those ideas engaged a new audience.

A must-read for all serious fans of either Dylan or Cohen, this book will also engage anyone interested in the North America of the 1960s, or more generally in the relationship between music, identity and politics. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

Compulsively Readable
This is an excellent study of the music and lyrics of the 2 greatest rock "poets." Boucher explores whether or not their lyrics even qualify as poetry and keeps the subject interesting! He effectively delves into their psyches,as well, without getting hung up on personal, biographical details which have been over analyzed in other places. I found the final chapter "The Religious Experience" to be some of the best writing that I've seen on Dylan and Cohen's spiritual journeys. I highly recommend this to fans of either man's work.

Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
The irate and intemperate person signing himself pepidude in a previous review seems incapable of being able to appreciate an argument or of understanding the nature of the exercise that David Boucher has undertaken. It is a thematic book with a wide range of references, not a book of facts about Bob Dylan.The author introduces us to the complexities of issues relating to the difference between popular music lyrics and poetry, between origins and originality, the poetry of imagination and inspiration and much more. Anyone interested in ideas and issues, and in theories as well as facts will find this book immensely stimulating and fascinating.

Poetry Always was the New Rock & Roll
David Boucher has written a book that examines in detail the contribution of both artists to the worlds of both literature and rock & roll. In his intoduction he looks at the progress of Cohen from serious poet to rock & roll recording artist and performer. This transition cost him status in the literary world but aided by the legendary "golden voice" and some consummate musicians it allowed him to reach a hitherto undreamed of audience.

Dylan, whom he refers to as "The Changing Man" in Chapter Three, was the chameleon-like performer who picked up, and discarded new personas and new musical styles at the drop of his very famous hat. The obvious example here is the infamous "electric tour" where Dylan was heckled and called "Judas". This abuse was, the book shows, not only for his perceived betrayal of the acoustic folk movement, but also a reaction to the contempt with which Dylan treated his audience. Dylan had always been a confrontational performer, and his response to such attacks was to become louder and less acoustic than ever. What David Boucher also shows is that this signified a shift from the community centred ethic of the folk movement to the excessive individualism and nihilism of the Beat poets who through the drug culture wanted, like Rimbaud, to experience the extremes.

In other chapters the myriad influences on both performers are examined as well as their involvement with political and religious organisations. Finally David Boucher gives us an insight into the road travelled by both men in search of their own personal salvation.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen are complex men and complex performers. To listen to, or to read the works of either man is always challenging. In this book the author has written an analysis that is equally challenging exploring, as it does, the anger and the angst of the 1960s and beyond. I enjoyed every minute of the challenge.

How lovely does it get...?
David Boucher's masterly work 'Dylan & Cohen' is essential reading, not simply for devotees of these 'Poets of Rock and Roll' but for anyone with an interest in the history of the radical cultural, political and musical changes in the last century.

It is clear from this eloquent book that neither Dylan nor Cohen wished to speak for anyone but themselves and equally clear that the strength of their work would be seized upon by a generation looking for a new direction. Thankfully they both continued to write through their tribulations and we have a bank of some of the most evocative music to continue to listen to.

I urge you to buy this book but with a word of warning: you won't want to stop reading once you've started.

Icons Of The 60's
This is a simply marvelous book, which has inspired me to go back to my old record collection, and re-play all the old vinyls. I recommend it to everyone interested in the political movements of the 60's and the music that characterised them. David Boucher recreates the mood and the excitement of the times and traces their careers to the present day. This book is a must buy! ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An excellent book!
This is a fascinating look at the life of a true genius whose path took him, inevitably, to Saddam's door. His dream of producing a gun capable of putting a satellite into orbit was twisted into a weapon for the Iraqi regime. Reads like an espionage novel, although it slows down a bit when talking about the businesses and fronts used to get the weapon's parts into Iraq. Otherwise, a really good read! ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (13)

Haunting & Insightful True Story of Tragedy & Survival
This wonderful book tells the story of a Nova Scotia coal mine disaster in 1958 and its rather unique aftermath. Melissa Fay Greene weaves a series of small personal stories into a haunting and evocative narrative: one of the best "disaster" books I have ever read. The resiliency of the survivors, when juxtaposed with the unusual events which followed, including the bizarre intervention of the racist Governor of Georgia, really gives this account a special perspective on history and the human condition.

I found it fascinating that the author, from Georgia, became involved in the saga of the Springhill miners from the back end of the story, as it were. The Georgia connection adds a remarkable coda to the miners' ordeal, but if she had just told that, it would not have resonated as effectively as the book does. She took the time to trace the story to its beginning and to tell it all. For that I am grateful. I learned far more than I had ever known before, and I was drawn in by her skill with narrative and her genuine understanding of/empathy for those involved.

This insightful book is definitely a worthwhile experience.

BRINGS YOU TO TEARS
In the year 1958, the Springhill Mine Disaster occurred in Nova Scotia, where men were trapped and plunged into darkness below sea level with little hope of escape or ever seeing their families again.

As you reach further into the book you become distraught and filled with anxiety one time and then hope at another interval.. For from day to day the picture changed and one was never sure how the trapped miners were going to have the strength to persevere.

They were challenged beyond what I thought humankind could endure, and then again it is at those weakest moments when we do find that strength, and do the impossible.......like jumping fences too high for us........cutting off our legs if they hurt too badly, those kind of things.

This book is true story and not to be taken for lightly or for granted. I would give this book five golden stars......and then Ms. Melissa Fay Greene for her wonderful courage in writing this great book.

Heather (nettle-girl)

A whole lot more that a survival story!
The basic facts of this book's content - the event surrounding the Spring Hill Mine rescue have been covered in other reviews and I will not waste time rehashing them yet again. Instead I would like to focus upon the less obvious gems within this book that in my opinion transend the amzing story of survival.

Melissa Green takes the reader on a journey not just into a coal mine, but into life in this working class town in 1958. The families, the marriages and the race relations all form a familiar image for those who like myself lived in or near the same time frame(in my case as a child) except that this book provided me an understanding of my parent's world. While my father wasn't a miner or ever a manual laborer nevertheless the men of the mine matched up with faces and families of those I grew up with in a world long lost to history. Of solid men who took care of their families, saved, and yet know how to have fun.

Beyond that personal appeal the medium of the story takes us with the trapped men and allows us to expereince their empotions. Somehow inspite of the fact we know it is coming the disaster seems as fresh and unexpected as it was to the men who also knew that some day there would be the "big one" and prayed they wouldn't be inside when it happened.

The aftermath leaves the reader choking on coal dust and shaken by the sight of crushed men whom they have just gotten to know. Unlike some writers the author doesn't pretty it up and the all the horror and mental trauma of the men is ours to share. We also share through the men's thoughts, thoughts of children and the future they now realize they will never see, thoughts of wives whom they will never hold and the constant and never ending question of what will it be like when death comes? Like so many of us who take life's little pleasures for granted, this disaster brings into focus for these trapped and dying men the value of those things and people they took for granted.

Lie in the coal black mine on a bed of broken rock while thirst unlike anything you have ever known treatens to drive you out of your mind. Realize your pants can't stay up because you've lost so much weight and understand that you can't last, can't live much longer. Then return to thoughts of your parched throat that feels as if it is filled with a splintery wooden stake that keeps "being twisted and twisted."

A harrowing and personal experience. Well done! Well done indeed!

Disappointed - written as "soap opera non-fiction"
There seems to be a new writing style out there that is a cross between fiction and non-fiction (not faction), so let's call this style "soap opera non-fiction". That's where an author takes a historical event, and trys to write it like a "soap opera". The last two books I've bought have done this. I guess the object is to make the book appealling to more readers and therefore make more money.

This was a fascinating story that could have been better told if it was written from a documentary or historical perspective. I wanted to learn something, not read a made-for-TV movie.

I still don't know how the Governor of Georgia and his exploits fits in this story? That is a bizzare and dis-jointed side-story. She somehow tried to tie-in perceived racial incidents surrounding this tradgedy.

I was dissappointed in this book.

Great Story, Distracting Technique
Author Melissa Fay Greene employes the "non-fiction novel" storytelling technique in the book, "Last Man Out," which in a disaster book always carries the risk of exploiting the agony of the victims for the sake of sensationalism. Greene's use of generalizations to describe what certain individuals were thinking as well as her occasionally overdramatic literary prose mar what is otherwise a very compelling real life story.

The disaster itself hardly needs embellishment. Nineteen coal miners were trapped for days a mile underground when a large section of the Springhill mine in Nova Scotia collapsed in 1958. As the town above fretted and began to give up hope, the men lay entombed, slowly dying. This story is similar to one published last year by Karen Tintori in a book called "Trapped" about the 1909 Cherry Mine fire in Illinois. Tintori's book, however, relies on straight reporting and is thus far superior to this one.

The technique used by Greene is distracting and fails to place the disaster in proper context. The book is interesting primarily because the story is so compelling and because Greene is a very talented writer. When writing about disasters, however, the author has a duty to stay out of the way and let the victims tell their stories. By that measure, "Last Man Out" is a failure. ... Read more

Book Description

This harrowing tale is the story of a dog musher during the Klondike and Nome gold rushes. Originally published in 1928, Walden's narrative has not diminished in impact or historical significance. It is one of the most exciting books ever written about dog mushing or the great gold rushes. Wolf Creek Classics is a series of the most interesting books about Alaska and the Yukon. These historic works have been reprinted with their original typefaces and layouts ... Read more

Book Description

This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years – from ‘The Remains of the Day’ to ‘White Teeth’. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question. ... Read more

Book Description

Newly-wed Jessie Ann Smith left Scotland in February, 1884, and traveled with her orchardist husband, John, to the south western British Columbia community of Spence's Bridge. Thirty-year-old Jessie Ann's strict Presbyterian upbringing and her training as a teacher, musician and banker did little to prepare her for the exciting life she was about to lead as a pioneer in British Columbia's fledgling ranching and fruit industry.

Her story, a love story with an historical twist, begins with her childhood in Scotland and follows her by ship across the Atlantic and by rail across the U.S.A. to the west coast of British Columbia. Her introduction to Canada includes a work train trip through the Fraser Canyon on the then under construction Canadian Pacific Railway. The young couple initially settled at Spence's Bridge where John Smith worked for orchardist, John Murray. However, after an attempt at her husband's life, they left "The Bridge" for a harsh decade of homesteading in an upland valley south of Merritt. In 1897, after the death of John Smith's former employer, the family returned to purchase and rebuild the ailing Spence's Bridge orchard.

John Smith died in 1905, partly as the result of an earlier Granite Creek mining accident. Jessie Ann Smith and her children continued working the Spence's Bridge orchard. For nearly a decade their Grimes Golden apples won top honors in shows in Canada, the U.S.A. and England. King Edward VII sought the apples of the "Widow Smith of Spence's Bridge" at a London Horticultural Show in 1909. The King? Ay, ay - no less than he,
None other than His Majesty;
His car already comes to stand
At Islington's exhibit grand,
Ingenuous to a high degree -
"I've come," he says most graciously,
"Those luscious Golden Grimes to see
Of Widow Smith's from fair B.C."
With dainty taste and polished mien
He deems them fitting for the Queen.
Forthwith he executes command
That they be sent to Buckingham.

With the aid of three of her granddaughters, Jessie Ann Smith began writing her life story in the mid-1930s. Half a century later, Murphy Shewchuk was approached by granddaughter Audrey Ward to help complete the book and it was first published in 1989. It has now been reprinted twice. The latest reprint, in July, 1998, includes corrections on an addendum on the inside back cover. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Excellent. Easy read. Professional
An excellent account of the beginnings of Canadian security and intelligence activities, and the RCMProle in security and intelligence work. Easy read. Supported by many formerly official documents of the1940s-1970s. ... Read more

Book Description

A gunner with the 9th Battery, C.F.A. in WWI, the author won a Military Medal at Passchendaele.His five small diaries, reproduced here, comprise an engaging account of his wartime experiences. ... Read more

Amazon.com

In this forceful, complex memoir, Wayne Johnston returns to the setting of his 1999 novel, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. Johnston doesn't just come from Newfoundland, remotest of Canada's provinces; he comes from the Avalon Peninsula, the most isolated portion of Newfoundland (and confused in young Wayne's boyish imaginings with the mythical Avalon, where King Arthur sailed to be healed of mortal wounds). It's an apt metaphor for a land that "was the edge of the known world, and looked it." Avalon's natives fiercely resented the 1948 referendum that joined Newfoundland to the Canadian Confederation--especially Johnston's father, the memoir's central character, who keens for lost independence in a manner highly reminiscent of Stephen Dedalus's father in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Indeed, parallels with Ireland are evident throughout, not just because the Johnstons are descended from Irish immigrants but because the Newfoundlanders exhibit a similar passionate insularity and zest for feuding among themselves. Johnston's muscular, plainspoken prose bears little resemblance to that of James Joyce, but his themes of exile and loss, loyalty and betrayal, and an ancient culture's ambivalent relationship with modernity resonate with the great writer's most urgent concerns. --Wendy Smith ... Read more

Reviews (7)

The Real Newfoundland
An elegy for a country, a place, and a family - which can describe much of Maritime Canadian writing, but Johnston is such a gifted writer this one really stands out. Read it for the description of the horse leading the way home in blinding snow, read it for story of blacksmithing, just read it. And if you like this, you'll love "the Danger Tree" by David MacFalane - a different part of Newfoundland, a different family, another incredible writer.

NOT FOR POSTING
Just wanted you to know that your review of this book has a factual inaccuracy.

The Avalon Peninsula ISN'T the most remote part of Newfoundland.Quite the opposite - its by far the most developed, densely populated part of the entire province. St. John's is on Avalon, as are most of the province's towns. Your reviewer was thinking of the Great Northern Peninsula (where Shipping News takes place) - although the most remote part of the province is certainly Northern Labrador.

Nationalism from Newfoundland
I don't know why I expected to read about the way of life in small Newfoundland communities, but I certainly didn't expect to read about the nationalist dreams of the people of the Avalon peninsula. This may be a good topic for a book, actually, but it would have to be better organized and more clear in its purpose than this aimless memoir. The main problem is that the author constantly laments Newfoundland's loss of independance, but never explains how or why Newfoundlanders would be better off as an independant country, or, failing that, why we should care.

Smashing
Any book that can make a reader who hales from the land of pleasant living (i.e., the mid-Atlantic region of the United States) seriously consider spending a winter in Newfoundland is clearly worth reading. Wayne Johnston once again manages to turn what most of us would consider a very dull subject (growing up in Newfoundland) into a minor masterpiece. If you enjoyed "Colony of Unrequited Dreams," you will be equally charmed, intrigued and entranced by "Baltimore's Mansion" but in a more personal -- and, perhaps, more meaningful -- way. I expect that if Mr. Johnston were from the USA, his books would stay at the top of the best seller lists. As it is, he remains a bit of a hidden treasure. Perhaps "Baltimore's Mansion" will help change the situation.

From blacksmith to wordsmith.
Being from the other side of the confederation with Canada event (my family was pro-confederation), I found Johnson's memoir a real eyeopener to the sense of defeat and angst found in the loss of Newfoundland's precarious nationhood. The political subtext amplifies the family melodrama of loss and defeat. Although a bit too `Irish' for my taste in Newfoundland set stories, the writing is profound and the best in the english language currently being turned out these days. Johnson's family were smiths with iron and his writing is the same; that is, he turns the raw iron of language into something minimal, economical and heavy that carries the weight and experience of generations. Like the anchors, nails, and iron shoes, Johnson's writing will stand the test of time's weathering I'm sure. ... Read more