National Network for Equitable Library Service

Literature, literacy, and citizenship took on new and contested meanings in early twentieth-century Canada, particularly in frontier work camps. In this critical history of the reading camp movement, Jody Mason undertakes the first sustained analysis of the organization that became Frontier College in 1919.

Like England's Arthur and France's Charlemagne, the Cid is Spain's national hero, and for centuries he has served as an ideal model of citizenship. All Spaniards are familiar with the story of the Cid and the multifarious ways in which he is visualized. From illuminations in medieval manuscripts to illustrations in twenty-first-century editions, depictions of the Cid vary widely, revealing just how much Spain's national identity has transformed throughout the centuries.

In The Democracy of Suffering philosopher Todd Dufresne provides a strikingly original exploration of the past, present, and future of this epoch, the Anthropocene, demonstrating how the twin crises of reason and capital have dramatically remade the essential conditions for life itself. Images, cartoons, artworks, and quotes pulled from literary and popular culture supplement this engaging and unorthodox look into where we stand amidst the ravages of climate change and capitalist economics.

The years when John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservatives were in office were among the most tumultuous in Canadian history. This book provides a fresh assessment of foreign policy in the Diefenbaker era to determine whether its failures can be attributed to the prime minister's personality traits, particularly his indecisiveness, or to broader shifts in world affairs.

During the First World War, Henri Bourassa - fierce Canadian nationalist, politician, and journalist from Quebec - took centre stage in the national debates on Canada's participation in the war, its imperial ties to Britain, and Canada's place in the world. In Duty to Dissent, Geoff Keelan draws upon Bourassa's voluminous editorials in Le Devoir, the newspaper he founded in 1910, to trace Bourassa's evolving perspective on the war's meaning and consequences.

Private James Herbert (Herb) Gibson was 26 years old when he volunteered for service in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the First World War. Born near Perth, Ontario and descended from Scottish settlers, Gibson enlisted against his father's wishes because he viewed the war as justified and felt he needed to do his part. "Without fear and with a manly heart" collects his personal letters and diaries as well as those sent to him by family and friends. They reveal his beliefs, hopes, realizations, and tragedies through an account of his contribution to the war.

Levelling the Lake explores a century and a half of social, economic, and legal arrangements through which the resources and environment of the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake watershed have been both harnessed and harmed. Jamie Benidickson traces the environmental consequences of resource extraction and recreation as well as their impacts on local residents, including Indigenous communities, which encouraged new legal and institutional responses.

Private Charles Smith had been dead for close to a century when Jonathan Hart discovered the soldier's small diary in the Baldwin Collection at the Toronto Public Library. The diary's first entry was marked 28 June 1915. After some research, Hart discovered that Charles Smith was an Anglo-Canadian, born in Kent, and that this diary was almost all that remained of this forgotten man, who like so many soldiers from ordinary families had lost his life in the First World War.

From the mid-eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century, the English Old Poor Law was waning, soon to be replaced by the New Poor Law and its dreaded workhouses. In Writing the Lives of the English Poor, 1750s-1830s Steven King reveals colourful stories of poor people, their advocates, and the officials with whom they engaged during this period in British history, distilled from the largest collection of parochial correspondence ever assembled.

A Samaritan State Revisited brings together a refreshing group of emerging and leading scholars to reflect on the history of Canada's overseas development aid. Addressing the broad ideological and institutional origins of Canada's official development assistance in the 1950s and specific themes in its evolution and professionalization after 1960, this collection is the first to explore Canada's history with foreign aid with this level of interrogative detail.