A Hundred Years On A Handshake
- Author: Brian Hanington
M. Sullivan and Son, the Arnprior, Ontario-based construction business started in 1914, celebrated a milestone of sorts last year, but who, you ask, outside the enormous Sullivan family, would care? Well, as it turns out, many people, including many outside the local communities permanently improved by the well-run, ethical and generous company. A Hundred Years On A Handshake: The Lively History of M. Sullivan and Son Limited – written and produced by Ottawa’s own Brian Hanington – is the reason that the story of the Sullivans and their adventures will wend its way, perhaps slowly but most certainly, across the provinces and down into the Unites States as time presses on.
Bitter Harvest: A Woman's Fury, a Mother's Sacrifice
- Author: Ann Rule
Bitter Harvest: A Woman's Fury, a Mother's Sacrifice, a strangely-named book written by the recently deceased and prolific true crime writer Ann Rule, is the tragic and torturous story of an exceedingly unhappy and violent family. Don't expect much of a happy ending, but (spoiler alert) there are a couple of courageous survivors. For this two-doctor family that starts out with so much promise and produces such wonderful, healthy children, it ends up imploding on a scale almost never seen in the suburbs.
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
- Author: Timothy Snyder
This 2010 New York Times Bestseller is a painful look back at some of humanity's most violent years, precipitated by two of history's most diabolical tyrants.
Crime and Punishment
- Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
It’s critical when you pick up a classic like Crime and Punishment – first published in 1866 – that you understand where the author was coming from. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s intense, painful and complicated life is summarized very briefly on the inside cover of the 1982 Bantam Book edition of the 472-page novel. Born in 1821 in Moscow, he was the son of an abusive alcoholic army surgeon who was ultimately murdered by his own serfs. Tired of the elder man’s brutality, they drowned him in vodka by pouring the toxic liquid down his throat.
Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr
- Author: Emily Carr
There will never be another Canadian artist like Emily Carr, who died at age 73 in 1945 and was an honorary member of the Group of Seven. Genius that she was, today’s audience of art lovers would never get to experience her talent. In these liberal, see-yourself-as-victim-first times, her masterful work would never get off the ground. Her penchant for painting and writing about, and even living with, Canadian aboriginals would be denounced immediately and ferociously by the cultural misappropriation police. More on that later. Thankfully, Carr -- who, though pursued by several potential partners, never married or had children – made it to national treasure-hood.
Hand that Rocks the World, The: An Inquiry Into Truth, Power and Gender
- Author: David Shackleton
The Hand that Rocks the World: An Inquiry Into Truth, Power and Gender, by Ottawa's well-known men's advocate David Shackleton, is one ambitious undertaking. Shackleton’s goal is to lay the groundwork for a new social science discipline, one that will guide humanity to truth and wisdom. According to Shackleton, once this innovative psychosocial regimen is established and put into practice, it will lead to -- among other previously unattainable accomplishments -- the eradication of the psychological blocks that prevent men and women from understanding and accepting one another other fully. Applied properly, the new social science will ensure both sides learn precisely how the two groups can fit snugly together into the same world, and live happily ever after.
Massey Murder, The
- Author: Charlotte Gray
A hundred years ago, on February 8, 1915, Bert Massey, a car salesman and member of Canada’s prominent Massey family, arrived at his Walmer Road home in Toronto to an unexpected and fatal surprise. Carrie Davies, his 18-year-old domestic servant, stood in the shadowy doorway, aimed the gun she was holding, and shot him in his side with his own 32- calibre Savage automatic pistol, “available in the Eaton’s catalogue for $18.” After firing another shot or two as he turned and ran, the tiny girl closed the door and disappeared inside the house with the weapon.
My Shoes are Killing me
- Author: Robyn Sarah
I am convinced the goal of most solemn poems is to remind the reader that a hollow, perpetual depression is lurking just underneath the surface of everyday feelings. Joy is fleeting. True happiness is an illusion for all but children. Contentedness is only for those who don't think too deeply. Those are my thoughts after reading and rereading the 35 poems in My Shoes are Killing Me, the most recent book by award-winning Canadian writer Robyn Sarah. If I am right, then, ironically, Sarah triumphs with My Shoes -- the only book of hers I have ever read -- by igniting especially despondent feelings, the ones rational people presumably spend much of their lives running from. Good work Robyn, you've ruined my day.
Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths about Marijuana
- Author: Kevin Sabet
Published in 2013, it would be a mistake for present day governments to ignore Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths about Marijuana. It was written by Kevin A. Sabet, an assistant professor of psychiatry -- though not a medical doctor, his detractors remind us -- and Director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and of Oxford University, where he received his Doctorate in social policy, Sabet is enemy number one to the frenzied, far-flung and demanding hurry-up-and-legalize-marijuana industry.
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The
- Author: Lynne Cohen
I decided to read William H. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany – first published fifteen years after the World War II’s end, then republished in 1974, 1990, 1991, 1998, 2010 and 2011 – while listening to Lowell Green’s lively Ottawa weekday morning talk radio program sometime in 2013. One of Green’s callers, a regular woman participant who always has interesting information and opinions to contribute, mentioned that she had read the book and therefore knew how dangerous anti-Semitism could be. My late mother’s dog-eared copy – with the torn spine and too many loose pages – had been eerily sitting up high on my living room shelf – dusted but not read – for almost 30 years. So I finally took it down and started on a terrifying, educational journey into the evil genius and reign of one of the twentieth centuries most demonic tyrants.
Sun Also Rises, The
- Author: Ernest Hemingway
At first I had to force myself to continue to read The Sun Also Rises, first published in 1926. Over and over again as I ploughed through scenes of the post-war “Lost Generation” drinking too much in Paris nightclubs or, around the middle of the book, fishing in the Pyrenees, I asked myself, and sometimes my friends: “So, what’s the deal with Hemmingway, anyway?”