Moon Madness: Dr. Louise Aall, Sixty Years of Healing in Africa by Alan Twigg Vancouver: Ronsdale Books, 2019 $21.95 / 9781553805939 Reviewed by Valerie Green * In writing the true-life story of Dr. Louise Aall (pronounced All), author Alan Twigg has produced a spellbinding biography about an incredible woman. For sixty years, Dr. Aall devoted…
Read more 1007 Love affair with Africa
Dear Readers of History, and all that Jazz by Mariken van Nimwegen * What does the Oxford historian Peter Frankopan’s hefty 2015 book The Silk Roads have in common with “Vancouver man about town,” Andreas Nothiger’s skinny 1984 synchronoptical World History Chart? I think I have a case, and a story. Frankopan gives us an…
Read more #994 Letters from the Pandemic 8: Dear readers of history
Gone Viking: A Travel Saga by Bill Arnott Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2020 $25.00 / 9781771604475 Reviewed by Howard Macdonald Stewart * Most of the stories in Bill Arnott’s Gone Viking describe travel around Britain and the North Atlantic world. A unifying theme is the imprint left on many of these places by those Scandinavian…
Read more #982 Notable Viking networks
A Story of Karma: Finding Love and Truth in the Lost Valley of the Himalaya by Michael Schauch Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2020 $25.00 / 9781771604673 A review essay by Trevor Carolan * Adventure travel goes through phases. In the Sixties you went off to Formentera in the Balearics or Corfu to find yourself. India…
Read more #964 Travelling the higher heights
ESSAY: Remembering John Foster Paton Nash by Michael Sasges For Remembrance Day 2020, Michael Sasges presents the life of Nicola Valley rancher John Foster Paton Nash (1866-1916). John Nash’s name is on three Great War memorials. The first is at his school in England, King William’s College on the Isle of Man; the second is…
Read more #961 From Quilchena to Flanders
The Larder of the Wise: The Story of Vancouver’s James Inglis Reid Limited by M. Anne Wyness, with a foreword by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2019 $32.99 / 9781773271187 Reviewed by Mary Leah de Zwart * In The Larder of the Wise: The Story of James Inglis Reid Limited, M. Anne Wyness promises…
Read more #949 Haggis and Scotch pies
Riding the Continent by Hamilton Mack Laing, edited by Trevor Marc Hughes, foreword by Richard Mackie Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2019 $19.95 / 9781553805564 Reviewed by Steve Koerner All B&W photos courtesy of H.M. Laing Collection, Comox Archives and Museum Society * The hit 1969 movie Easy Rider featured two hippies, the self-styled “Captain America” and…
Read more #940 Mack the transcontinentalist
Maison Rouge: Memories of a Childhood in War by Liliane Leila Juma Vancouver: Tradewind Books, 2020 $12.95 / 9781926890302 Reviewed by Howard Stewart * Like many of us, I often find myself reading a couple of books at the same time. So, when I picked up Leila Juma’s thin tome I was also reading another…
Read more #864 Crossing Lake Tanganyika
A Woman in Between: Searching for Dr. Victoria Chung by John Price with Ningping Yu Vancouver: Canadian Chinese Historical Society of British Columbia and UBC Initiative for Student Teaching and Research in Chinese Canadian Studies, 2019 $30.00 / 9780993659324 Reviewed by May Q. Wong * An immigrant girl, born in Victoria in 1897 and a…
Read more #862 The remarkable Victoria Chung
Chainsaws: A History by David Lee, in conjunction with Mike Acres Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2020 (updated 2nd edition; first published 2006) $34.95 / 9781550179118 Reviewed by Robert Allen * This book captured my interest right from the beginning with its retro cover showing a 1951 IEL Super Pioneer “one-man power chainsaw,” a 1950s style…
Read more #858 Enter the one-man power saw
Vanishing Fish: Shifting Baselines and the Future of Global Fisheries by Daniel Pauly, with a foreword by Jennifer Jacquet Vancouver: Greystone, 2019 $34.95 / 9781771643986 Reviewed by Loys Maingon * …fish are in dire peril, and, if they are, then so are we. — Daniel Pauly (p. 24) In a remarkable collection of essays drawn…
Read more #857 Oceans as sustainable commons
The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art by Bruno David and Ian J. McNiven (editors) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019 $175.00 (U.S.) / 9780190607357 Reviewed by Chris Arnett * “Rock art,” for those who don’t know, is a general term for Indigenous paintings or carvings found on rock surfaces inside caves,…
Read more #856 Alas, poor British Columbia
ESSAY: The Will to Pleasure: Hedonism, Ethics, and Aesthetics from the Ancient World to the Present Age by Eryn Holbrook * When Christianity and Marxism end their shared reign, we will need visions of new possibilities. There is always one fixed point: the body. Not a body of Platonic ideas, nor a body cut in…
Read more #847 Hedonism, pleasure, ethics
My Favourite Crime: Essays and Journalism from Around the World by Deni Ellis Béchard Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2019 $24.95 / 9781772012323 Reviewed by Howard Stewart * Deni Béchard’s My Favourite Crime is a powerful collection of writing. The book’s cover blurb, not something I usually put much faith in, contains much truth: this really is an…
Read more #837 The global frame of Deni Béchard
Moments of Glad Grace: A Memoir by Alison Wearing Toronto: ECW Press, 2020 $16.99 / 9781770415133 Reviewed by Graeme Wynn * This splendid memoir recalls the week that Alison Wearing spent researching family history with her father in Dublin. It is, on the face of it, a beautifully-crafted, bitter-sweet story of an excellent adventure. Anxious…
Read more #825 Alison’s excellent adventure