National Network for Equitable Library Service

Twenty-five years after the Berlin Wall was pulled down by Berliners fed up with the division of their city, Stan Persky returns to Eastern Europe. In essays informative and insightful, he illuminates what some consider the final act the Second World War: the end of the occupation by the Soviets of Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltic nations.

As a teenager, legendary Canadian poet George Bowering lived the life of an ordinary boy. He loved baseball, read Westerns, held a part-time job, and fantasized about girls and women. George was due for a sexual awakening, which arrived when he was fifteen. But what took place was anything but ordinary when George found himself vying for the affections of three very different women: his first love, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and one of his high school teachers.

"Canada's first woman trained for combat, a decorated officer in the "Van Doos" the legendary Royal 22nd Regiment, comes up against a system of institutional sexism. Throughout her training, Sandra Perron was repeatedly identified as top of her class, but was also subject to "pranks" that included stripping her uniform of insignia (which is a not-so-subtle way of informing her that her platoon did not have her back). The lessons she learned, however, weren't all negative - through several deployments, including Bosnia and Croatia, she forged lasting friendships with men and women.

"Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits," proclaims the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Simon Brault takes these words to heart and goes one step further. In No Culture, No Future, he establishes that arts are not just a right but a necessity. A longtime advocate of the arts in Montreal, Brault has taken action to re-establish that city as one of the most culturally accomplished communities in Canada.

Few moments in Canadian history are as intriguing as the political battle between Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and the “Gang of Eight” provincial premiers who opposed his plans to “patriate” Canada’s constitution from Britain. Patriation and Its Consequences revisits these constitutional negotiations, including the personalities, visions, and political struggles that shaped the resulting constitutional agreement.

Following Mao Zedong’s Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957–58, Chinese intellectuals were subjected to “re-education” by the state. In Banished to the Great Northern Wilderness, Ning Wang draws on labour farm archives and other newly uncovered Chinese-language sources, including an interview with a camp guard, to provide a remarkable look at the suffering and complex psychological world of intellectuals banished to China’s remote north.

Much critical scholarship has detailed the punitive effects of accusations that lead to criminalization. Less well documented is the founding role that accusation plays in creating potential criminals. In an attempt at redress, this collection foregrounds how ideas and rituals of accusation initiate criminalization processes. It offers various perspectives on the mechanisms by which legal persons come to be identified as suitable subjects for criminal justice arenas.

In the thousand-channel universe, politicians must find innovative ways to reach citizens via television. Viewership for news and current affairs television programs has dropped dramatically. Meanwhile, the rise of programming that blends information with entertainment – infotainment – on French Canadian television has provided new opportunities for today’s politicians. Breaking News? traces the development of infotainment and exposes the impact of these kinds of programs on modern political communication.

Going Public responds to the urgent need to expand current thinking on what it means to co-create and to actively involve the public in research activities. Drawing on conversations with over thirty practitioners across multiple cultures and disciplines, this book examines the ways in which oral historians, media producers, and theatre artists use art, stories, and participatory practices to engage creatively with their publics.

Following significant increases in women's electoral representation in the 1980s and '90s, progress has stalled. Today, there are only a few more women in Canada's parliament and legislatures than a decade ago. What has happened to the representational gains for women and why does gender parity remain so elusive? To answer these questions, Stalled provides a detailed road map of women's political representation as candidates, office-holders, cabinet ministers, party leaders, and as representatives of the Crown at all levels of government across Canada.