Canada Books

Candles is the kind of book that stays with you long after you've finished it. It is thought-provoking and brings up a lot of issues regarding faith, identity, fitting in, and history. There are numerous twists and turns in the plot, and the ending is something I never would have expected. Although the story focuses on the Jewish background of the main character, the issues that Kositsky writes about are universal.

This was an excellent book. I started to read it, and once I started, could not put it down. It's about a girl who enters into her grandmother's life as a girl her age (or so she believes). An outcast because she is Jewish, the person she is 'visiting' faces many hardships, including leaving her family to try and find a better life somewhere else, and being rejected by her best friend because of her religion. The surprise ending turns an otherwise somewhat predicatable book (though with interesting twists and turns) into, basically, one big surprise. It's one of those endings where you read it and then say to yourself " Wow!" It's definately not one of those surprise endings you can predict, and it livens the whole book up. Another great thing about it was that, at times, I felt like I was the main character. I felt how she felt, and I could almost see the world through her eyes. I would definately reccommend this book to anyone, but in particular children ages eight to 12.

I love Bill's art. He had a simple way of capturing the moment and beauty of the land, his land here in Canada. I'm so glad we've been able to see these marvellous paintings and sketches in a book format. In this way his work, which never gained him the notoriety he deserved while alive, allows us all to enjoy them around the world.

Bill Mason brings alive the Canadian wilderness in a way that I only imagined possible. The emotion in his paintings and words took me to the remote corners of canoe country like nothing short of being there would. The deep understanding that Mason had for the north country came out strongly in this book; so much so that I often found myself wandering into the corners of one of his paintings, remembering a trip to a similar lake, or waterfall, or wilderness escape. This is a MUST read for anyone who enjoys the outdoors

Very helpful and well written. Thanks for a great book.

.
This is the most advanced book I have seen on licensing. Until I read this book, I hadn't fully appreciated the extent to which licensing is a business.

Any inventor of technology, from low-tech to high-tech, could apply the business strategies laid out in this book. I am not aware of any book that adds so much to the licensing field. This author really has something new to contribute, and does so in plain language.

Although this book is written for Canadian innovators, the strategies it lays out apply to innovation in any country. The same is true of the strategies it lays out on global transfer pricing, something I had never considered in the business of technology licensing.

It is logical, though, that this book originates in Canada because almost half of Canada's GDP is generated globally (much higher than most other countries) and therefore global licensing and transfer pricing are particularly important to Canadians and to Canada's role in the new economy.

I would buy this book just for the analysis of the business of licensing, or just for the analysis of transfer pricing. As a Canadian reader, I would also buy this book just for the final chapter, which exposes the true nature of Canada's international tax law regime.

New England captivity narratives---accounts by those early Americans who had been captured by Indians or French raiders and later ransomed or escaped their captivity---have become recently popular among historians and literary studies scholars for the information they contain about gender. The prevailing image of the captive is that of a young woman. Several of these women remained with their captors despite the payment of ransom and the pressures of their families to return to America because they found in French Catholic Canada empowerment denied them in Puritan America. Despite the stereotype, Bill Foster has found that boys and men constituted more than 80% of those taken from 1675-1763. Bill's discovery and scholarship significantly and importantly opens up the gender discussion for early American history because these Puritan men found themselves working for and taking orders from French and former American Catholic women many of whom were quite young. This condition the men found shameful and degrading and only a handful became assimilated to the French Catholic culture. Those who returned frequently would not name their captor because of the shame of having been bossed by a woman. Bill's research in the archives in Canada and the U.S. sheds new light on these highly prejudiced male captivity narratives.

As an amateur historian, I found this book a carefully considered and refreshingly factual historical evaluation of an important topic in early American History. The author, a sophisticated prose stylist, writes in a muscular style that carries the reader with ease through the narrative. His wry turn of phrase belies his deep understanding of the complexities of this time period. I heartily recommend this book.

I started reading this novel in my Canadian literature course.
I wasn't sure exactly what to expect, especially seeing how this is a school thing.
This woman brings you right into her life, showing you the different demented ways that some people on this planet live.
She tells you about her insanely horrifying life.
Everything from her marriage, her drug addicted ways, her affair with a married man in prison, giving birth to her baby boy in a morgue next to a dead woman whom she had just seen a few days before in a restaurant where she was having breakfast with her kidnapper,who is also the wife of her childs father.
This novel gets better by the paragraph. It grasps your interest so tight that you don't want to put it down until it's finished.
I would honestly rate this non-fiction novel the best I have ever read.

I was a bit skeptical to read this book, all I knew about the author was that she wrote poems - and I hadn't read any of them. Much to my pleasure - this book was fascinating. It was raw, real, honest and utterly irrisistable. I found myself reading slower and slower as I got to the end - simply because I didn't want it to end. The reader is immediatly brought into the narrator's world, you feel her feelings, her fright and her pain. It's a great read - one that you won't ever forget.

Perhaps the most stiking feature about Don. D. Marshall's book is its positive optimism in the absence of idealism. As the title suggests, the bleak apocalyptic picture so commonly forcasted of the Caribbean future, is not presented. Instead OPTION is the key part of the narrative of his argument. The precise aim of his argument was to not only identify the problems of Caribbean economy but also to present economic-political prescriptions that go beyond the rhetoric of common literature. Theoretically, the argument presents itself within the more eclectic framework of neo-structuralism. This theoretical framework is influenced by traditioal theories based on the Marxist type historical materialism found in world systems theory and dependency schools. However the emphasis is not on how the Structure affects the world's actors (primarily the state) but how the actors do and can indeed effect change on and exploit the structure. As he defines it neo-structuralism encompasses structuralist economics and concepts of conjuncture and geopolitics.(1998, p.9) This inturn informs his interpretation of the global challenges of today, to which some have attached the term Globalization. Central to the issue of response to global challenges, is the role of the State. Contrasting with Strange's(1996) argument about the decline of the role and autonomy of the state, Marshall's emphasis is that state role is underscored by the global challenges not minimized by it. However the concept of the state as traditionallly understood within populist or welfare typologies must be transformed. This echoes Ian Clark's (1999)work. Much like Marshall he recognises that states are not merely products of the global structure but they also create the structure by their own actions.

'. . . globalization becomes a phase in the continuing historical adaptation of the state, and not. . . its impending demise.'

Converging on the point of state transformation vis-a-vis the new global challenges, Clark (1999, p.103) says that state transformation involves the imperatives of change in state identity and that this change is linked to the evolving and unfolding of broader systemic changes. Marshall's historical illustrations in Chapter 2 elucidate the inadequacy of the concept and function of Caribbean states' role which contribute to the 'structural weakness of the Caribbean sub-region', which help perpetuate patterns of peripheralization. It is true that exogenous factors present difficulties in development but the role of the state is crucial to overcome these hurdles impeding advancement. Paraphrasing from Serbin, the Caribbean is a product of deliberate political acts but to rise successfully, the region must acquire a substance that trancends the origins of its birth.(Serbin, 1998, p. 10 quoting Giacalone 19956, p.5) The other aspect of the theoretical framework defined by Marshall was the importance of conjuncture and geopolitics. Structural opportunites arise at sensitive moments in history (conjuncture) and this in addition to the existence of the developmental state explain ascent. Empirically this was illustrated with his example of the ascent of Malaysia. Chapter 5 presented an interesting proposal of NAFTA/FTAA as an example of the link between structural opportunity and the developmental state. Mexico with a similar economic history to Caribbean states (IMF and World Bank interludes for example) and similar challenges of liberalization, provided a basis for Marshall to further deploy his argument. Despite the problems of debt and the exogenos pressures of liberalization, Mexico was able to secure for itself through politically and economicallly strategic negotiations and geopolitcal initiatives via the NAFTA/FTAA aggreement, the space for its paticualr sectors and industries. The point here for the Caribbean, is that an export-oriented economy driven by market forces but guided by a developmental state can be the answer to Caribbean ascent. Cognisance of the other limitations that impede Caribbean global competitiveness,like limited bureaucratic capactiites, is important. Marshall suggests that regional integration is essential to counter this. Unlike the rhetoric of functional integration perspectives that present integration as the cure-all prescription for Caribbean economic pathology, for Marsahll integration is only a tool to correct the structural weaknesses of the Caribbean region. As he pointed out, the national option and self-determination have desolved into archaisms. The requirements of global competitiveness - a vigourous entrepreneurial class and the capacity to negotiate an intensive neo-liberal course of action - are not possibly attainable by the indidvidual economies. It is the congruency of industrial and development policies that integration offers, that can allow the Caribbean to harness the structural opportunity that is to be found within NAFTA/FTAA. Marshall outlined extensively the technicalities of political and institutional reform and industrial policies that must occur in Chapter 6. Despite the clarity of his argument and the inclusion of sound empirical evidence, his argument fails to incorporate an in depth analysis of the kind of social transformation that his prescriptions entail. Considering the inextricable linkage of the social with the political, Marshall's casually borrowed prescription (p. 193) from Sir Arthur Lewis, recommending education campaigns and effective public relations to transform attitudes, seems altogether too flippantly dismissive of the weight of the social as an impedement to Caribbean ascent. The fragmenting power of the heterogenous social character of the Caribbean region aptly described by Serbin (1998, p. 108)must be dealt with in any discussion of the road to ascent and global competitiveness of the Caribbean. The logic of an export-oriented economy entails the attraction of foreign direct investment, of which Marshall is supportive. The dangers of increasing unchecked capital flows in an economy are ilustrated grimly by crises like the East Asian crisis of 1997. To guard against such vulneralbiltiies, Marshall advocates the 'disciplining' of capital. The feasibility of this for the Caribbean developmental state was not however convincingly argued by his vague allusions to the imposition of high taxation.(p.198) However, the surprisingly easy narrative of this book, general clarity and ingenuity of its theoretical progression and its sound empirical grounding make this book not only refreshing but useful for policy makers and all concerned abut the future of the Caribbean political economy.

Notes See Ian Clark (1999), Globalization and International Relations Theory, p. 91

References Clark, I. (1999), Globalization and International Realtions Theory, New York: Oxford University Press. Serbin, A. (1998), Sunset Over the Islands, London: Macmillan Educated Ltd. Strange, S. (1996), The Retreat of the State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

I have just read Marshall's book explaining the source of the development crisis facing the Anglophone Caribbean. It is a text rich in analytical insight and valuable nuggets of empirical information. We learn here of the stymied role merchant capital in these parts, helped none by populist-driven politicians.

I was particularly excited about the theoretical framework in the book as it sought to go past global-centric and state-centric models for explaining underdevelopment in the Caribbean. Neostructuralism, as he explains, seeks to look at development opportunities that arise at historical moments and the catalytic role state and culture can play in producing successful development outcomes. Of course the record of the Caribbean has been about missed opportunities and he spends some time in Chapter 2 addressing these. More could have been said about the structure/agency debate and the kinds of institutional changes needed to improve Caribbean competitiveness, although both his opening chapter and Chapter 6 raise related issues. The Chapter on the Free Trade Area of the Americas was especially sharp about the importance of bargaining. The evidence brought to bear explaining how Mexico and Canada came to steer the NAFTA formation process in ways the US never imagined, make for interesting reading. It certainly exposes the lie which holds that countries of the South are always disadvantaged in North-South trade deals.

The final chapter features a discussion on the need to `reconstitute state power at the regional level'. It usefully combines earlier debates on the role of the state, synthesises old arguments about the problems shackling Caribbean integration, and open eyes as to the myriad possibilities that can flow provided politics is brought back to the centre of the integration process.

Where the book crosses over to a wider global audience is in its novel treatment of the globalisation phenomenon and the connection made between offshore banking and merchant capital. Pity these two strands were not brought together in his Chapter 3 on global restructuring. We are nonetheless reminded of world historical constants of boom and bust, core-periphery antinomies, inter-state/firm rivalry, and movement in the political economy of the world system. To wit, despite the myriad changes as it relates to computer technology, we should be reminded that the system's logic has not been fundamentally altered. We are back to the role capital plays and has played in human history for many centuries, millennia even (yes Frank and Gill's 1993/4 breakthrough work on world system history is read into his work as well!).

As a graduate student working in the field of Latin American studies, I find this book refreshing in its decomposition of the state, its nuanced reading of the role of capital domestically, and in its critique of neoliberal globalisation discourse. My only wish is that Macmillan Publishing & St. Martin's Press rush to get it in paperback.

Frontenac: The Courtier Governor is the absorbing and deftly researched biography of Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac (1622-1698), who was appointed governor general of New France in 1672. Though Louis de Buade was popularly credited with making a daunting and ruthless impression on the Iroquois, defying the military power of colonial Britain, and promoting the imperial expansion of France, his biographer W. J. Eccles (Professor of History, University of Toronto) deftly dissects these myths and steadfastly delves into a more sordid picture of the true Frontenac: a man out of his time who strived to hold on to power and status through corruption, favors at court, and the illicit drive for commerce in the West. A closely researched reexamination and interpretation of primary sources, Frontenac is seminal contribution to a colonial era portrait, and a welcome addition to Canadian and North American history and biography collections.

This is THE book on the fur trade, Canadian colonial government,
the Iroquois Wars, and Frontenac himself. It is not a biography of Frontenac, but an engaging history of French Canada. Highly recommended to me by an expert on the subject.

Dr. Hansen as compiled a complete guide to the carpenter ants of the US and Canada including keys, description of species, habitats, behavior, and other interesting facts. I recommend this publication to all who are involved with the identification and management recommendations of urban pests.

wanted to get information on carpenter ants as they have made many communities around my place...they're everywhere! this book is actually more than i asked for, a lot of information. slightly text bookish, but it is thorough and appears to cover all aspects of the carpenter ant. maybe i will make friends with the hundreds, thousands...millions of my "neighbors". need to read further. p.s. many different types of carpenter ants, and pictures very helpful.

I love this book! it is fun and lovely and really quite cuttie wootie~

I thought that Cassie Loves Beethoven was good because she could talk and play the piano.Then when she here's Beethoven's music her whole life changes.So then she goe's to a concert and she decides she need's to play an instrument,she tries almost every instrument but nothing seem's to work.Then Hallie and David's dad Myles made Cassie a 40 foot long piano.Then Cassie became very famous,then got mad at a newspaper review and got in a fight.From then on she just played for fun and with no audience.

If you want to read a book to give you just the right amount of Celine detail, you should read this book. Fans probably know most of the info in this book, but you can always know more. The pics are obviously beautiful and the author has a good point in writing...

I loved this book! It was amazing how Celine went from being part of a poor family in Quebec to being where she is today. It was a great story to read and seemed really well-researched. I'd recommend that any Celine fan buy this book!