National Network for Equitable Library Service

Canada's pre-eminent satirical commentator brings down the curtain on his hugely successful show in this instant #1 national bestseller. Rick Mercer can always be relied on to provoke a strong reaction-but what he said one fall day in 2017 truly shocked the nation. In a rant posted on social media, the great Canadian satirist announced loud and clear that the current, 15th season of the Rick Mercer Report-the nation's best-watched and best-loved comedy show-would be the last.

A collection of essays grounded in the author's belief that our largest problems have grown from the earth's remotest corners as well as from our own backyards, and that answers may lie in those places, too.

Spring is a deeply moving novel about family, our everyday lives, our joys and our struggles. "Today is Wednesday the thirteenth of April 2016, it is twelve minutes to eleven, and I have just finished writing this book for you. What happened that summer nearly three years ago, and its repercussions, are long since over. Sometimes it hurts to live, but there is always something to live for." Spring follows a father and his newborn daughter through one day in April, from sunrise to sunset.

Donald Hall has lived a remarkable life of letters, a career capped by a National Medal of the Arts, awarded by the president.

A rollicking debut book of essays that takes listeners on a trip through the muck of American myths that have settled in the desert of our country's underbellyEarly on July 16, 1945, Joshua Wheeler's great grandfather awoke to a flash, and then a long rumble: the world's first atomic blast filled the horizon north of his ranch in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

From modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos-in this classic collection of essays, Ursula K. Le Guin roves with her customary audacity over the intersecting arenas of literature, feminism, and social responsibility, exploding any received notions she comes across and revealing visionary possibilities in their stead.

In the summer of 1948, E.B. White sat in a New York City hotel room and, sweltering in the heat, wrote a remarkable pristine essay, Here is New York. Perceptive, funny, and nostalgic, the author's stroll around Manhattan with the reader arm-in-arm remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America's foremost literary figures. Here is New York has been chosen by The New York Times as one of the ten best books ever written about the city. The New Yorker calls it "the wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city."

Although there is considerable historical literature describing the social and economic impact of drought on the prairies in the 1930s, little has been written about the challenges presented by drought in more contemporary times. The drought of 2001-02 was, for example, the most recent large-area, intense, and prolonged drought in Canada and one of Canada's most costly natural disasters in a century. Vulnerability and Adaptation to Drought on the Canadian Prairies describes the impacts of droughts and the adaptations made in prairie agriculture over recent decades.

The verb esperar means to wait. It also means to hope.—“The Past Was a Small Notebook, Much Scribbled-Upon”, Cora Siré Waiting, that most human of experiences, saturates all of our lives. We spend part of each day waiting—for birth, death, appointments, acceptance, forgiveness, redemption. This collection of thirty-two personal essays is as much about hope as it is about waiting. Featuring literary voices from the renowned to the emerging, this anthology of contemporary creative nonfiction will resonate with anyone who has ever had to wait.

With these 61 readable essays, Cape Breton's Tom Urbaniak brings a courageous, critical and constructive eye to problems of our time. Whether it's revitalizing struggling communities, harnessing the power of small investors, reforming tired institutions or protecting parliamentary democracy, he is able to point to workable solutions. In this practical and thought-provoking reader, Prof. Urbaniak challenges students and citizens to engage with their region and with the world.