National Network for Equitable Library Service

In a provocative and thoughtful essay, Estonia's preeminent poet and cultural critic, Jüri alvet, investigates the role of culture in the postmodern world. Against the large background of historical values in western and world culture, Talvet inveighs against monologues and grand narratives launched by Western centers, envisaging instead a cultural symbiosis that would create a new and fertile dialogue between the centers, borders, and peripheries of the world, enrich cultural sensibility, and broaden concern for the Other.

In this duologue, Kosta Gouliamos and William Anselmi bring to a head their radical revisioning of the stale concepts of (multi)cultural politics. They discuss and dissect the irrationalities and destructiveness that have undermined the modern techniques of the neocolonial elites and demonstrate how these hegemonic elites have brought about social disruption and ethnocultural extermination on a scale never before conceivable. Instead of being an anti-thesis to the elites' practices, Happy Slaves: A Duologue on Multicultural Deficit seeks to establish an organic critical apparatus.

The story of the growth and destruction of Toronto’s first 'priority neighbourhood.' From the 1840s until the Second World War, waves of newcomers who migrated to Toronto - Irish, Jewish, Italian, African American and Chinese, among others - landed in 'The Ward.' Crammed with rundown housing and immigrant-owned businesses, this area, bordered by College and Queen, University and Yonge streets, was home to bootleggers, Chinese bachelors, workers from the nearby Eaton's garment factories and hard-working peddlers.

Since the election of Mayor David Miller in November 2003, Toronto has experienced a wave of civic pride and enthusiasm not felt in decades. At long last, Torontonians see their city as a place of possibility and potential. Visions of a truly workable, liveable and world-class city are once again dancing in citizens’ heads.

How do we build cities where we aren't just living within the same urban space, but living together? Greater Toronto is now home to a larger proportion of foreign-born residents than any other major global metropolis. Not surprisingly, city officials rarely miss an opportunity to tout the region’s ethno-cultural neighbourhoods. Yet there’s strong evidence that the GTA is experiencing widening socio-economic disparities that have produced worrisome divisions.

What do your Eggs Benedict say about your notions of class? Every weekend, in cities around the world, bleary-eyed diners wait in line to be served overpriced, increasingly outré food by hungover waitstaff. For some, the ritual we call brunch is a beloved pastime; for others, a bedeviling waste of time. But what does its popularity say about shifting attitudes towards social status and leisure? In some ways, brunch and other forms of conspicuous consumption have blinded us to ever-more-precarious employment conditions.

Toronto is home to multiple and thriving queer communities that reflect the dynamism of a global city. Any Other Way is an eclectic and richly illustrated local history that reveals how these individuals and community networks have transformed Toronto from a place of churches and conservative mores into a city that has consistently led the way in queer activism, not just in Canada but internationally.

Drawing on fifteen years of work in the antislavery movement, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick examines the systematic oppression of men, women, and children in rural India and asks: How do contemporary slaveholders rationalize the subjugation of other human beings, and how do they respond when their power is threatened' More than a billion dollars have been spent on antislavery efforts, yet the practice persists. Why' Unpacking what slaveholders think about emancipation is critical for scholars and policy makers who want to understand the broader context, especially as seen by the powerful.

Anthony Cardenales was a stickup artist in the Bronx before spending seventeen years in prison. Today he is a senior manager at a recycling plant in Westchester, New York. He attributes his ability to turn his life around to the college degree he earned in prison. Many college-in-prison graduates achieve similar success and the positive ripple effects for their families and communities, and for the country as a whole, are dramatic. College-in-prison programs greatly reduce recidivism, leading to potential savings in the staggering cost of prisons.

Domesticity gets a bad rap. We associate it with stasis, bourgeois accumulation, banality, and conservative family values. Yet in Extreme Domesticity, Susan Fraiman reminds us that keeping house is just as likely to involve dislocation, economic insecurity, creative improvisation, and queered notions of family. Her book links terms often seen as antithetical: domestic knowledge coinciding with female masculinity, feminism, and divorce; domestic routines elaborated in the context of Victorian poverty, twentieth-century immigration, and new millennial homelessness.