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Me Against my Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda
Sometime in the future, historians will look back amazed at how little attention North American media paid to African issues in this time in history. In Scott Peterson's memoir Me Against my Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda (Routledge), h
Meta Incognita: A Discourse of Discovery: Martin Frobisher's Arctic Explorations, 1576-1578
The Canadian Museum of Civilization is to be commended for Meta Incognita: A Discourse of Discovery: Martin Frobisher’s Arctic Explorations, 1576-1578, a two-volume compilation of everything there is to know about the series of disasters known as the
Meta Incognita: A Discourse of Discovery: Martin Frobisher's Arctic Explorations, 1576-1578
The Canadian Museum of Civilization is to be commended for Meta Incognita: A Discourse of Discovery: Martin Frobisher’s Arctic Explorations, 1576-1578, a two-volume compilation of everything there is to know about the series of disasters known as the
Misconceptions: Truth, Lies and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood
Child-rearing manuals cropped up with a vengeance in the latter half of the twentieth century after Dr. Benjamin Spock produced Baby and Child Care—the all-time best-selling book in American history, second only to the Bible, despite advice such as “
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I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identity
Attention-grabbing fact: ninety-nine percent of “serious” writing about “popular” music is one hundred percent useless. One reason for this is an ingrained belief that the social significance of the entertainment industry is more interesting than any
I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity
In between films I read Hal Niedzviecki’s new book, Hello I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity (Penguin). It was inspired by the author’s crisis of faith in underground culture, precipitated by a Hallmark card reading “Happy Birth
In Her Own Words: Women's Memoirs from Australia, New Zealand, Canada & the United States
In Her Own Words: Women's Memoirs from Australia, New Zealand, Canada & the United States (Vintage), edited by Jill Ker Conway, is a book that invites browsing. All twelve of the memoirs here are excerpts of longer works, so many of the paragraphs en
In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed
Carl Honoré isn’t the first author to investigate the phenomenon of slow living, but his book In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed (Vintage Canada) is the most comprehensive explanation of recent attention to s
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The Main
Last summer, during a visit to Vancouver, my nine-year-old son climbed the pediment of a cast-iron traffic-light standard and put his palm on the glowing hand that warns pedestrians to stay put. My mother pointed out afterwards that my photograph of the event contained its own French caption, in the word visible over his shoulder: main.
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A Few Essential Words
I met Alejandra Pizarnik in Buenos Aires, in 1967, five years before her death. I had asked her to contribute to an anthology of texts that purported to continue an interrupted story begun in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: “There was a man dwelt by a churchyard.” She agreed and wrote a haunting piece called “Los muertos y la lluvia,” “The dead and the rain.” The book was never published, but we became friends.
Dog Show Dancing
The next performer, Coco, a six-year-old Belgian shepherd, stood on his back legs and hopped alongside a woman wearing white go-go boots who jiggled her hips in time to “ymca.” Coco weaved between her legs, rolled across her feet, lay on his back and kicked his legs in the air. The woman’s brow was furrowed and sweat ran down her face. Coco bounded in front of her, then backed through her legs and sneezed twice. The judges looked at each other and one of them wrote somethingdown.
