Canada Books

Peter Jennings was taken from us at the pinnacle of his
career. He shaped the news in many areas like the
ABC Nightly News. The book provides many specifics about
his life and career. There are memorable pictures
contained throughout the book. i.e.
o The Miss Canada Pageant of 1965
o various political conventions
o the Munich Olympics
o the Clinton Presidential Inaugural of 1997
o a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991

The acquisition would be perfect for persons interested
in journalism, politics and government.

This book is purchased for our Book Club for next year's books. Several of our members had read it to be sure it was okay. It was difficult to purchase - first we had to wait till it was published (you know how THat goes!) and then the price was exhorbitant (that was overcome) and finally it joined the other books we purchased for the Club. Oh, and say, did I mention that this is a book for next year's selections? and that it will be much like "saving it for dessert?" I haven't read it yet either - just scanned through it, and therefore I know it to be the "icing on the cake."

I was never a regular viewer of Peter Jennings' news broadcast or any of his documentaries, but now I wish I was.

This book pointed out all the great time, effort and blood, sweat and tears that Peter Jennings put into all segments of his broadcast and documentaries. He did not take his anchor position lightly and wanted all viewers to share his same passion and understanding of the subjects he was speaking.

It also went into great depth to speak of the man that none of us saw on his nightly newscasts. One who was such a humanitarian and lover off people from all different walks of life.

This book kept my attention and made me feel sad that I did not pay closer attention to his newscast while he was still with us.

If you loved Peter Jennings you will love this book. It was written in an innovative style by way of an amalgam interviews with his colleagues. If you are looking for dirt on Peter skip this book, but if you want to relive the hundreds of wonderful hours you spent with him on your TV, this book does the trick. Your memory might also be jogged when you read the many adjectives describing him in the book: charming, distinctive, exuberant, thoughtful, reflective, gracious, caring, sincere, whimsical, questioning, authentic, direct, gentle of spirit, warm, great sense of humor, intelligent.

I loved the insight many of the contributors gave, as well as the quotes from Peter: "He connected with every person he met. He didn't use them." "He had this life force that seemed to surround him--his enthusiasms, his boundless energy and curiosity. He was one of those people that was just a great sense of nirvana to be around." "And when he was faced with the actual test, he instantly did the right thing." Peter: "Be spare, be precise, take your time, and don't say too much. Let each work carry the weight of the story....communicate in a concise way."

Peter would ask, "What are we going to do today what will distinguish us?" He despised predictability, mediocrity of any kind, laziness." "Listening to Peter was...riveting." Peter WAS riveting, and so is this book!

Bill Kizorek, CEO, Two Parrot Productions

When ABC newsman Peter Jennings died from lung cancer in 2005, he left a void in the industry that has yet to be filled. Along with the likes of Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, Jennings helped revolutionize television news, sitting on both sides of the desk, transforming the genre from a 15-minute afterthought to a major component of network broadcasting.

The editors of PETER JENNINGS: A REPORTER'S LIFE, including his wife, have collected the thoughts and memories of scores of family, friends and colleagues who are universal in their praise and turned these stories into an oral biography. It seems as if Jennings was almost predisposed to the profession. As the son of one of Canada's most respected radio broadcasters, he got an early start, hosting his own children's show as a nine-year-old. Formal education held little interest for Jennings; these days he might have been diagnosed with ADD. His success, despite dropping out of high school, was truly remarkable.

Jennings was just 26 when he was handed the anchor assignment for ABC News in 1965, a job to which he admitted he was not suited at the time. He earned his stripes by going out into the field --- far, far afield to Europe and the Middle East where he thrived on the exotic surroundings and the action.

The entries in A REPORTER'S LIFE reveal a man in a hurry, ever curious and always willing to do whatever it took to get the job done, even when that meant putting himself in harm's way. Jennings was no "Scud-stud," a term used to describe reporters who made a name for themselves during the first war in Iraq; he didn't even like to fly. But he impressed everyone, from his sound men to heads of state, with his ability to soak up information and present it to his audience.

When he stepped down as an active reporter to once again take over the anchor desk for ABC News, he brought that same restlessness with him. He was a demanding boss, always expecting the reporters to do the same thorough job he did. But his humanity was always evident. During the coverage on 9/11, he wanted the audience to see the devastation of the World Trade Center rather than in-studio shots of him. And he was never afraid to defer to experts or admit he did not know every issue involved.

Many of those interviewed said that Jennings never wanted to be the center of attention, which made his on-air revelation of his illness all the more conflicting. For him, it served as an abject lesson, another chance to educate his viewers.

The format of A REPORTER'S LIFE both works and doesn't work. Since it's not a straightforward biography, it appears choppy at times, a series of mini-monologues interspersed with Jennings's own words. It is also understandably biased; you won't find too many speaking ill of him. On the other hand, these are the people who knew Jennings best, and the book serves as their final chance to pay him tribute.

--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan

I have enjoyed Carly Milne's writing since her days blogging, through "Naked Ambition" and now including her honest, heartbreaking, insightful, cathartic and also funny "Sexology". It deals with very tough, personal topics but I appreciate that Ms Milne has shared so much of her past, through the terrible, the joyous and the sublime. Admittedly, the abuse she endures, verbal, emotionally and physical, can be difficult to learn about and make one aghast in anger at her abusers, but again I appreciated being allowed along on her journey from start to present, to see how these events affected her different at different times, how they were incorporated into her total person and how she emerged as victorious... I often read several books at once and switch off every other day but with "Sexology" it was the first time in awhile that I could not put the book down and didn't want to be diverted by another book on my shelves!

When I picked up my copy of Sexography, the store clerk said to me that she had read it and had met the author, and was "proud of her"... I thought that was a funny thing to say so I asked her what she meant -- did she know Carly? She said no, but "I just think she's so brave." I wasn't sure what to make of that, until I read the book for myself.

Time for some full disclosure: I've known Carly for several years and have always known her to take a more or less "open book" approach in her writing. So I wasn't surprised to find the same quality in Sexography. But I do think it's a brave book, for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, I think it takes courage to talk about sexual abuse and rape when one has had the experience (as Carly did) of being disbelieved by your parents. But the other place her courage really shines through is in her remarkable resilience. This book tells the story of a woman who comes through some pretty intense emotional stuff, and who isn't content to just stop feeling bad -- she pushes well beyond that to a place of real wholeness and health. It's inspiring, and a story well worth telling.

Before reading this book, I knew Carly well enough to know that she had some battle scars from her past; but I didn't know quite what a survivor she is. Actually, survivor is the wrong word -- she's a thriver.

Carly's book left a strong and lasting impression on me. I found it to be a journey that every woman should travel, as I felt myself grow in strength and resolve as she does, overcoming the odds to find her voice--and one with an amazingly discerning eye and superior sense of humor.

It's an inch, by inch description of how one young girl, then woman searched and earned her own sense of self, and self esteem. There are no short cuts or platitudes that can erase an abusive past--the secret to healing really lies in hard work and perseverance. Struggling to create your own anchor, (one's sense of self, and a grid of values of your own making) is a universal, coming-of-age-and-beyond struggle. What makes this book so intriguing is that the subject matter, a "Sexography" throws in sharp relief many of the issues women face, from wanting and needing a man who is not good for them, to how to fathom and take advantage of the great experience sex can be. But basically, this book is about LIFE, how to make peace with the one you've got, and embrace all the possibilities it has to offer in the midst of sacrifice, pain and disappointments...this should be required reading for every young woman.

I found Carly Milne's powerful memoir almost impossible to put down. It is profoundly moving, at times humorous and often heartbreaking, but just as the author comes to feel gratitude for the strength she's gained from her life's challenges, the reader too will feel thankful for the courage and honesty of this book. Even if you haven't personally experienced sexual abuse, every woman (and man) will recognize the issues raised here--the struggle to move from sexual object to sexual agent, to find nourishing intimacy with others, and to love and respect ourselves and in a society that is often hostile to these goals. Milne reminds us that when we write thoughtfully about sex, we're also writing about all of the deep, dark, scary and beautiful reasons we do it. Popular magazines these days are full of broken promises to reveal the secrets of sex to readers hungry for the truth--Sexography actually delivers some genuine answers. Highly recommended.

With a title like SEXOGRAPHY and a cover image so enticing, if one is to judge this book by its cover, one might guess that this book is filled with lurid, shocking, and downright naughty stories about sex, sex, sex!

And while there are some very naughty stories indeed, notice line underneath the title of the book: One Woman's Journey from Ignorance to Bliss!

This is not just a book about sex; it's an honest account of Carly's sexual journey through her first three decades of life... the good, the bad, and the ugly... set in the context of how her sexuality affected her life in the larger picture. Instead of a one-sided analysis of her sex life, Carly delves deep into the various aspects of all the emotions, behaviors, life-changing decisions, and other ways that sex gets wrapped in our lives.

I hope that in another 30 years, Carly will consider a follow-up sex memoir book to tell all about her next 3 decades!

Another weird book by Munsch.

Kristen's clueless parents drive to the zoo instead of the hospital when her mom is in labor. Three times, they ignore their daughter's warnings that their son is another's, and three times they get whapped in the face by the not-a-people-baby.

Finally, Kristen has to save the day, which she does in a quick and admirable way (the illustrations in the zoo are funny in and of themselves, by the way). Everybody gets their own baby back, and we're told that everything is fine from then on... until Kristen's mom had twins. (Uh-oh.)

This book is so absurd, you can't not love it. I really recommend it to anybody having a second child. It's a wonderful change of pace from standard "new baby" books.

My 20 month old daughter loves it. I'm not sure that she connects it to her 2 month old brother, but she sure enjoys having us read it to her. She pulls it out again and again and screams along!

I read Alligator Baby. I liked this book because it has funny pictures. In the book I read that the "gorilla grabbed her mom's ear and the father's ear and they both yelled Aaaaaaahhhhhaaaaa!" This helped convince me that it was a good book.

I love Robert Munsch and this is one of his books that the kids in my 2nd grade class loved the most!

This is a good book for when bringing home baby. We bought it for our toddler as a fun way to explain that we are bringing him a baby brother from the hospital.

I flew through this book because I could not stop reading it. The details of life growing up in the Bronx were truly mind blowing, especially for someone who grew up in a super sheltered environment.

However, the best part of this book is how Canada relates how the gun culture has doomed inner city children to an adolescence of violence and how something must be done to change this.

This is the most powerful anti-gun books I have ever read, and the message isn't shoved down your throat, it's told through the author's own life experience which makes it that more powerful.

A must read.

This is hands down one of the best books I have read. Not only does Geoffrey Canada explain in gritty detail the inner workings of ghetto society, he also lists solid well-thought solutions, which would enable inner city youth and residents to rise above poverty and despair. We, the people, have turned a cheek for much too long. Something really can be done. This book should be required reading for high school and college-level coursework.

Dr. Canada presents an emotive argument for gun control through story and eclecticism. He makes an interesting case for the slide from Fist to Gun without ever dealing with the reason for the violence of fist and/or gun. One might argue with his conclusions though one cannot argue with his heart's concern as to the results caused by the increased violence. Overall, a good read for thought and/or argument.

I personally have had the opportunity to hear Geoffrey Canada speak at my college twice, he an alumni of Bowdoin College. Not only is his book inspiring, he spoke to my class about joining the "losing team", and making a difference in the lives of others, like those of the South Bronx and Harlem, NY. Not only has he lived to tell, he has taken his experiences and turned them into something very positive, by developing and running the Harlem Children Zone, making a difference to those children there. The book is a great read for anybody who is an urban educator, or involved in social services.

Canada grew up poor in the South Bronx in the '50s. Violence, then, as now, was a way of life. All boys fought - life was worse for those who refused. Violence and the rituals surrounding it established the social pecking order. In the preface to his memoir Canada says, "The difference is that we never had so many guns in our inner cities."

Canada's first memory of street violence came at age 4, when his two older brothers had a jacket stolen at the playground. The boys' mother sent them right back to fetch it, promising them a beating "ten times as bad as what that little thief could do to you," if they failed.

They left the house in tears and returned triumphant, with the jacket. Their mother sat them down and told them it was a lesson in not becoming a victim. The author, her youngest, was unconvinced.

Then a neighborhood boy who habitually refused to fight was "stretched" over a car and savagely beaten by a group of boys. "The lesson was brutal and unmistakable. No matter who you fought, he could never beat you that bad."

Canada's memoir is a thoughtful, moving portrayal of social behavior in a culture of violence. A quick study, Canada learned to use posturing, attitude and negotiation as well as his fists to minimize the number and severity of violent encounters.

But he is absolutely convinced that violence is a learned response, not innate. He and the other small boys, says Canada, were aghast at the prospect of fighting. Only fear of worse violence and a life of cowering in corners spurred them to fight.

Today, says Canada, the same imperatives operate. But guns have shattered the rituaized formality of the pecking order. Toughness is no longer determined by fighting skills or "heart" but by willingness to pull the trigger.
This is the book's most chilling precept. The streets are now ruled by those whose most important attribute is a lack of compunction about killing.

Canada's own experience as a gun carrier is a perfect illustration. Home from college he found a nearby street ruled by a gang of toughs so intimidating he would take a circuitous route to avoid them. So he bought a gun. Carrying it, he found his whole personality changed.

Instead of avoiding the block or even crossing the street he would swagger through the gang, his whole attitude provoking a challenge. But back at school in bucolic Maine he saw his behavior in a different light. Appalled at how close he'd come to shooting someone, he threw away the gun.

Those who don't leave the ghetto don't have the luxury of contemplation.

Canada has devoted his life to helping poor children and reducing street violence. Today he runs a program which offers classes and recreational activities which involve the whole community. The Rheedlen Center uses public school buildings, open 17 hours a day, in an effort to provide children and families with safety.

At the end of the book, Canada offers a program for solving the problems of violence in the inner cities. Chief among them is getting handguns off the streets by using buyback programs, registration at the place of manufacture (so any gun can be traced) and registration of ammunition.

Whether the reader agrees with his solutions or not, Canada's memoir is powerful testimony of a future of little hope without major change. It is also a riveting and convincing personal history.

I remember reading this book way back in Grade 12. Its not so way back considering that it was probably two or three years ago. This book ranks among the best war books I have ever read. In some places, I laughed so hard I nearly dropped a lung. In other places, I remember being so sombre and imaging the horror experienced by Mowat and his band of Hasty Ps.

This is a must read for any Canadian even remotely interested in the Canadian role in World War II.

I didn't really want to read another war book, but a friend convinced me he thought this was the best one ever written. However, I came away from it thinking it wasn't as good as "The Forgotten Soldier". The last chapter about the battle over the Moro river was just as good. However, the depth of the first three chapters I felt was diminished by the author's sense of humor and his tendency to exaggerate. For example, the dying of the inscrutable A K Long - taking out his pipe for a smoke and a book to read when he was so seriously wounded, calm in the midst of terror - struck me as unrealistic. In sum, this was a good book but I would say, not really memorable.

I bought this book almost in a state of doubt. I had seen the name Farley Mowat and automatically assumed it was a good piece of writing as is most if not all of his other pieces of work. He is perhaps one if not the best Canadian writer ever to pick up a pen and paper. And after reading this book, i quickly realized why.

I had been searching for a book that could possibly inform and educate me on a Canadian's standpoint of the second world war. I quickly realized that I had picked out a good book. It puts you in the mind of a young man reaching adulthood and as had every other young man at the time, had his mind set in joining his fellow Canadians and Allies in the battle. This mindframe had been to be fairly excited and actually happy to go to the frontlines. As it had obviously not been programmed to the unfortunate reality of the war itself. Farley Mowat tells a great and wonderful story of his life before and during the timeline of the Canadian military's part in the war itself. Whether it was the obvious anxiety of waiting to be shipped overseas to the frontlines, or the brutal and graphic reality of the battle itself, Mowat unveils a true and dramtically emotional story of World War II.

Myself I was seaching for a book such as this one. It retold the historically correct graphic and terrifying nature of war, more specifically that of the Second World War. I know that one such as myself will never know and hopefully never experience the reality of war but, I can honestly say that I have infinite gratitude and thanks for those who fought for our freedom. All in all, a WONDERFUL book and I highly recommend it to any Farley Mowat fans or anyone who likes great historical literature. I just cannot seem to express how great of a book this really was. Hope you like it too!

Undeniably the best war memoir written by a Canadian who served in the Second World War. The book chronicles Mowat's experiences in 1943 as a participant in the invasion of Sicily and Italy, and in classic Mowat style captures both the stark reality and lighter side of his experiences. Mowat also wrote a history of his unit--one of the first books he published, and which was later revised (and is somewhat difficult to find at the moment)--entitled The Regiment.

This book was a great surprise for me. I picked it up at a local library because I saw the name Mowat and thought, "Funny, Isn't he a Canadian naturalist? What's he doing in the History section?" What followed was a fascinating voyage of war,adventure,hilarity and,ultimately,tragedy and pain. Walking into the experience of WWII with a completely innocent demeanor, anxious to get into a fight, this brilliant writer has many funny and almost fatal false starts. When the fighting gets serious, the glib descriptions of his units treacherous challenges are positively riveting. I COULD NOT PUT THIS BOOK DOWN. If you like your war personal, exciting and honest, get this book to a comfortable chair and be prepared to not move for a night and a day. A brilliant book by a Canadian national treasure.

I read this book and thought, yes this Frenchman makes many derogatory and embarassingly insensitive remarks about the Inuit. However, contrary to what one reviewer said below in "Good descriptions, bad insights, July 27, 2005", the author slowly develops a great respect for the intelligence, culture and abilities of these people so much so that he begins to emulate them. It is a subtle conversion story wrapped in a fabulous adventure; thoroughly enjoyable and well worth reading.

My good friend and I were talking a while back after I had watched the movie The Fast Runner, which he had recommended. Talk got around to my deciding to send him my old childhood copy (out of print, I believe) of Peter Freuchen's Book of the Eskimos, and his deciding to send me his old childhood copy of Kabloona. Neither of us had ever heard of the other's book. I must say, as much as I've always liked Freuchen, I got the better of the deal!

What a wonderful book. So well written, such nice storytelling, so enjoyable, refreshingly honest, and unexpectedly insightful. It is haunting. It really is in a class by itself, although I have trouble putting my finger on exactly why this is so. All I know is that I did not want it to end, as I'm sure the author did not want his time in the North to end. And, like him, I don't think it will be the same if I go back and try it again. And I know I also had a strange feeling throughout which only later I identified as a form of envy, envy for the experiences this man had and for his ability to experience them so deeply. I've seldom felt envy mixed with awe and admiration like this before.

Of all the book, I was most deeply moved by his account of the priest out in the middle of nowhere who had survived and kept warm in incredible cold merely through the power of faith and prayer. Humbling.

A man comes out of nowhere, lives these experiences, writes this incredible book, and disappears back into nowhere. Amazing. Read it.

The audio CD is outstanding...indeed the best I have ever listened to. For one thing, the narrator is marvelous in recreating both the 1930's world of France and Frozen Canada. I can't think of any other book or audio that so successfully transported me into an alien culture. Considering that there are quite a few films and books about Eskimos, why buy this one written 70 years ago? Answer: the literary quality of this work surpasses the prose of the last quarter century. When you listen to the narrator weave his tale, it mirrors the experience of hearing a tobacco chewing explorer slowly recounting his adventures in the wild. The story dives deep into the interior life of the author as much as it details an ethnographic examination of (primitive) Inuit life. The myths and values of the Eskimos contrast sharply with the borgeouis morals of a gentleman of Paris. For example, in Eskimo culture, there is little concept of private property...that's why an Eskimo man will let you borrow his wife or a snow knife. Language in the arctic is far more concrete. A polar bear is HE WHO HAS NO SHADOW. Far away, in the cold Arctic, author Grontran De Poncins learns what it means to be human, a man preeminently. This is a romance, a classic reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe. If you buy the audio CD, you will not be disappointed.

This is a magical book which I first read when I was young. It inspired in me dreams of adventure which I did not follow, but which became a part of my inner life. Now that I am old, I am reading Kabloona again so that I can remember that I once was young.

I looked up at the bookshelf over my computer and spotted the battered 1941 edition of Kabloona that has been in my family for 40 years since I first read it in the village of Coppermine (now Kugluktuk) when I was a 12 year old boy in 1961. I decided to do an AMAZON.com search to see if anyone else knew of this marvel that had so enchanted me as a child, and found the site you are now visiting.

We were much more civilized in the Coppermine of 1961 than the same village the author had visited 20 years earlier. We had electricity, and communication with the outside world by a Morse code key at the Department of Transport office, plus we had a scheduled visit by a single-engine Otter every two weeks. It was a magical time for me (adults found it a difficult time, but they simply did not understand things)

The book Kabloona gave me insight into the minds of the people around me. We were a community of 200 Inuit (Eskimos) and 35 whites. The whites had as many of the amenities of civilization as they could garner, but the Inuit lived much as described in De Poncin's book.

I was enthralled by the awesome hunters with their dog sleds and their magnificent huskies, not show dogs or racing dogs, but working dogs that made the difference between life and death. The men would bring back the carcasses of seal and caribou, and the furs they had trapped. The women sewed the furs into beautiful garments that kept man, woman and child warm in intolerably hard winters. It was also the women's job to butcher the carcasses, which they did with incredible speed and skill using only the ulu, or woman's knife. I regularly witnessed the activities of this way of life. De Poncin described all this in his book, but he also gave me insight into the underlying culture I was immersed in.

You can't live the life I led 40 years ago as a boy in the high Canadian arctic, but you can vicariously journey there to an even more primitive time, and enter into the incredible peace and stillness of an arctic winter night in an igloo, or the warmth and safety of a house made of snow as an unbelievable storm rages outside around you.

I recently spoke by satellite telephone to a man in Coppermine from my home in Missouri where I now live, and found that the village I once knew is now a very different place. But you can go back to an earlier era with De Poncin. I assure you, you won't regret your wonderful voyage with him.

I don't know if I'm permitted to speak of it here, but I have described my life in those years in the Arctic in a book, The Boy Who Fell To Earth. It is available at Amazon.com for those would like to buy a hard copy, or can be read for free on my warmbooks.com web site.

This book is a must read for everyone who wishes to understand why so many Canadians are disadvantaged, forgotten about, and labelled because teachers and medical professionals have deemed them as being lazy, having poor problem solving skills or products of bad parenting.
This book will provide new and MUCH needed accurate and uncanny insights for all those struggling with FASD.

This book has a spectacular impact. The examples of the lives of children living with FASD and their families struggling to cope are portrayed with accuracy and empathy that is rare and profound.

This book portrays the lives of children living with FASD and their families struggling to cope with accuracy and empathy that is rare and profound. The author's examples are so vivid and unassuming , they can change your life!

I am an adoptive mother of three school-aged children. I read an article by Bonnie Buxton re: her daughter, Collette. That article would change our lives. Our eldest, then 5, exhibited numerous secondary characteristics of fetal alcohol effects. I called Bonnie and she put us in touch with the fine people at St. Michael's Pediatric Clinic. Since then, we have been involved with a wonderful support group and are familiar with FASWORLD.
Bonnie's book is loaded with information for parents such as ourselves, not informed about our children's disabilities prior to adoption. It is a must read for all, especially your kids in their child-bearing years. I read it feverishly, as I reflected on the testimonials that appeared to reflect the complexities of our own lives. Buy copies and share them with your friends, doctor, children's schools, psychologist, etc. It is the one book that could literally save a child. Be informed. Pass it on!

Upon starting this book I found it was very difficult to put down.The story line even, though it was a biography, was very smooth and free of too much graphic detail. There was no feeling of "Ah, gee, poor me" while reading. Very professional.
This book should be mandatory reading material for all educators, legislators, CAS workers, medical practitioners and caregivers.
Would highly recommend as being up there with The Broken Cord.

I have read this book twice and I loved it. Mowat wrote as if the tug was a living thing. It was wonderful. I actually cried at the end when Franklin came into the harbor with barely any power left and covered entirely with ice, thus ending her life. The people who captained Franklin intriqued me as well. In the book they were the only ones that really cared for her.

Farley Mowat can make the stars sing with the sheer beauty of his writing. His writing is a little old-fashioned by today's standards, (all the better) but his craftsmanship is unsurpassed. You ARE there. You feel everything his characters felt, you see what they saw. The book ends happily and I know it, but I cry through the last chapter every time I read it because his writing takes me there. One hedge: the book does start slow, but if you keep plugging away, you will be richly rewarded.

This book is an unexpectedly riveting episode-by-episode story of the Foundation Franklin, a marine salvage tug that sailed out of the ports of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in the 1930s and '40s. This working ship, built in Scotland in 1916 to craftsman's standards, eventually found itself unused in a Hamburg shipyard in depression-strapped 1930 where it was identified as a possible vessel for the Canadian maritime salvage fleet. From that day to its final heart-stopping drama, the trials of this unprepossessing high seas coal-fired tugboat are recounted in all their adrenalin-filled reality in Mowat's gripping and evocative prose. Managed by callous profit-seekers, officered by experience-hardened seamen and crewed by men desperate for employment, Foundation Franklin's story is, as well, a slice of social and commercial history. The mood is workaday danger, fortitude, struggle and courage, marred by a single passing dismissive remark about "union mechanics".

I first discovered "Grey Seas Under" about 15 years ago, appropriately enough as Able Seaman on an Ocean Salvage Tug. I was immediately enthralled. Out of the many books on the sea I have read, this one remains very dear to me (not that you have to be a mariner to enjoy it). Grey Seas Under is the true story of the ocean salvage tug, FOUNDATION FRANKLIN and the brave men who battled the North Atlantic to save hundreds of ships and thousands of lives. Farley Mowat, a master srory-teller, passionately desribes the exploits of FOUNDATION FRANKLIN with geat admiration and humor. Grey Seas Under is a true masterpiece saga of the sea. I've read this book probably 6 times in the last 10 years and I'm sure to re-read it for many years to come. I cannot recommend this book enough. I also highly recommend "The Serpents Coil" also by Farley Mowat, another first-rate tale of the sea.

The ocean-going salvage tug, `Foundation Franklin' was more than a match for the worst the North Atlantic could throw at her, including Force 10 hurricanes and Nazi U-Boats. Perfect Storm, eat your heart out! Here is the real book about the great-hearted men and their staunch little ships that survived blow after blow from the Atlantic and bobbed up for more.

If the author, Farley Mowat is sometimes guilty of over-the-top prose---well, he lived and worked on the Franklin, and he loved her sturdy lines, her jaunty roll, and every rivet that held her together while she rescued ships that were Goliaths to her chubby, little Baby Huey. No work could have been more dangerous; none required a higher degree of seamanship and courage than dropping a line on a berserk, lunging, steel-hulled freighter, and then towing her through the maw of a mid-December gale, or the shoals and `sunkers' of the Newfoundland coast---something the Franklin did so many times that her crew lost memory of all but their most freakish or man-killing expeditions.

"Grey Seas Under" will give you an interesting perspective on the true maritime heroes of World War II. Farley Mowat doesn't pull any punches when he describes the tension that existed between the expert seamen on the ocean-going salvage and rescue tugs, and their relatively `amateur' counterparts on Canadian and American naval warships. Some of the funniest scenes in the book involve convoys of merchant ships under the `protection' of corvettes and destroyers. Once a U-Boat had been sighted and the merchants steamed for cover, it was up to the Franklin to rescue the ones that ran into each other or shoaled themselves. Usually, the tug had to perform her duties without any cover from the warships.

"The days the salvors (tugboat seamen) spent tethered to fat and crippled merchantmen, crawling along on a straight course at a speed of two or three knots like mechanical targets in a shooting gallery, were the kind of days that would drain the courage from the most heroic man alive...The Germans knew, that for every rescue vessel sunk there would be a score of crippled merchantmen who would never make safe port."

This is a great book about men against the sea, even though the language gets very nautical at times. Read it and you will learn all about Lloyd's Open Form, and the tricks that wrecked merchant masters play to cheat tugs out of their salvage fees. You'll learn to tell the difference between `Monkey Island' and the poop deck---and the difference between `brass monkeys' and true seamen. You'll thrill to the dangers of sunkers, beam seas, and Arctic white-outs. You'll bite through your pipe-stem, just like the Franklin's captain did during those tows when his sturdy little tug steamed back into port with barely enough coal in her bunkers to "cook a pot of beans."

Someone ought to make a movie out of "Grey Seas Under." It's got everything---romance (between man and ship, at least); life-and-death adventures; heroism; humor; and the treacherous ice, wind, and sea of what the author respectfully refers to as `the Great Western Ocean.'

I can't really add anything substantive to what the other reviewers have said but wanted to add my five star review - this is just a beautiful book that any artist or any person interested in painting would love to have.

I love the book! I wanted a book with more paintings than text and that's just what I got. Beautiful paintings on page after page. You won't be disappointed.

After viewing a Tom Thompson art show in Ottawa, Canada, I became mesmerized and hooked on Tom Thompson.(Previous to the show, he was an unknown to me. No references in my art history classes!) I read about his short life and mysterious death. I became enamored of his style of painting, anxious to try it myself.
I bought my first copy of this book as a gift for someone else. After seeing what a lovely reference it was to T.T. and the Group of Seven. . . I knew I needed my own copy! A nice chunky overview of all these great painters, their styles, their visions. A thumb's up!

If there were no words at all and just this incredible trove of pictures, this book would be worth its price many times over. These painters had an incomparable way of taking the ethereal and ineffable and turning it into thick literal frosting; so many of these pieces just floor me, wordless. I have been in large US art book stores and found no mention of this group (typical American myopia/hubris), so it is great to find such a vast and thorough collection at last. In particular it's great to see Lawren Harris' early urban pieces. I've already bought two extra copies as gifts, and they were breathlessly received. Brilliant book, very happy to own it.

This is an exquisite book filled with amazingly beautiful images of some of Canada's most amazing painters' work. I'd recommend it to anybody who loves landscape art or who is studying to be a painter as I am.

Marshall McLuhan's _The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man_ (University of Toronto Press, 1962) is 45 years ahead of its time because not very many persons have understood it very well. With bold strokes, McLuhan has delineated how Western culture is different from other cultures in the world today. For Western culture is still a residual form of print culture, whereas other cultures in the world today are to one degree or another residual forms of oral cultures.

Drawing on Walter J. Ong's account of visualist tendencies in Western philosophic thought in _Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason_ (Harvard University Press, 1958; 3rd ed. University of Chicago Press, 2004), McLuhan also calls attention to visualist tendencies in Western thought.

In the late 1950s, McLuhan, a Canadian convert to Roman Catholicism, read _Insight: A Study of Human Understanding_ by the Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan. Lonergan calls attention to the tendency in Western philosophic thought to equate knowing with "taking a good look." Thus McLuhan was drawing not only on Ong's account of visualist tendencies in Western philosophic thought, but also on Lonergan's.

In the 1994 "Introduction to the Transaction Edition" of his book _Belief and Unbelief_, Michael Novak, who studied under Lonergan as a young seminarian in Rome, nicely paraphrases Lonergan's critique of visualist tendencies in his own words:

"Rorty thinks that in showing that the mind is not "the mirror of nature" he has disproved the correspondence theory of truth. What he has really shown is that activities of the human mind cannot be fully expressed by metaphors based upon the operations of the human eye. We do not know simply through "looking at" reality as though our minds were simply mirrors of reality. One needs to be very careful not to confuse the activities of the mind with the operations of any (or all) of the bodily senses. In describing how our minds work, one needs to beware of being bewitched by the metaphors that spring from the operations of our senses. Our minds are not like our eyes; or, rather, their activities are far richer, more complex, and more subtle than those of our eyes. It is true that we often say, on getting the point, "Oh, I see!" But putting things together and getting the point normally involve a lot more than "seeing," and all that we need to do to get to that point can scarcely be met simply by following the imperative, "Look!" Even when the point, once grasped, may seem to have been (as it were) right in front of us all along, the reasons why it did not dawn upon us immediately may be many, including the fact that our imaginations were ill-arranged, so that we were expecting and "looking for" the wrong thing. To get to the point at which the evidence finally hits us, we may have to undergo quite a lot of dialectical argument and self-correction." (p. xv)

In summary, Western philosophical thought from antiquity down to the invention of the Gutenberg printing press around 1450 carried a strong visualist orientation, as Ong has detailed. Then with the advent of the Gutenberg printing press visualist tendencies were much more strongly culturally conditioned than ever before. As is well known, print culture in the West with its strong orientation toward visualism saw not only the spread of the Protestant Reformation, but also the emergence of modern science, modern capitalism, modern democracy, the Industrial Revolution, and the Romantic Movement. Thus the strong orientation toward visualism in the West has helped set Western culture off from other cultures of the world.

However, today modern capitalism as developed in print culture with its strong orientation toward visualism is being globalized through economic globalization. Thus capitalism today is making inroads into parts of the world where print culture did not have the historical impact that it had in Western culture. To varying degrees, the other cultures are residual forms of oral culture, as McLuhan describes oral culture in this book.

Thus McLuhan's pioneering study of print culture can enable us to better understand the world situation as we live through the upheavals of economic globalization.

--Thomas J. Farrell, author of Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication (Media Ecology)

Definitely more of an academically written book than McLuhan's more famous "Understanding Media." For new McLuhan readers, I recommend reading "Understanding Me" or "Understanding Media" first.

This book expands on the views of McLuhan's teacher Harold Innis, who distingusihed oral and written cultures. The book argues that oral cultures are synaesthetic and work with synthetic logic, while cultures of writing push the mind toward singulation of senses, logic and 'perspective'.

McLuhan 'glosses' through a wide range of scattered historical pieces of information to show how oral, written and print cultures have different patterns. He ably shows how printing also transformed art, architecture, society and industry.

The book is thoroughly historical, dense and rich in informative detail. It forms the foundation for McLuhan's clearer theoretical articulation of his ideas in 'Understanding Media', but is more accessible to the layman.

This book belongs to a pantheon of books that revolve around similar ideas like Harold Innis's 'Empire and Communications' & 'The Bias of Communication'; Walter J. Ong's 'Orality and Literacy' and William J. Ivins's 'Print and Visual Culture' and 'Art and Geometry'. But this is the most sweeping, convincing, dramatic statement of the common theory proposed by these various writers.

And for those who love theory with a dose of history, this makes for really delightful reading.

The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan's second book, is one of his best, but the reader should be forewarned that it is also one of his most difficult to read and does not make a good introduction for the beginner. One of the reasons for this difficulty is that it is written in mosaic style, in which McLuhan -- like Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project -- creates a text that is largely composed of quotations from mostly obscure authors stitched together with his own commentaries in between. These quotations are from works written in classical academic style, and none of them are easy reading. They require concentration and the book itself takes time to read carefully.

The book is a cultural archaeology of the effects of the rise of print upon Western society in the period between 1450 - 1850. It is concerned with analyzing the new kinds of social and cultural structures which typography brought into being, such as nationalism, the concept of individuality, the idea of authorship and intellectual private property, new genres such as the literary essay and the novel. The rise of the printing press, McLuhan points out, was coincident with the rise of the mastery of depth perspective in Renaissance painting, and this is not an accident, for both the new Euclidean space conception and typography had in common an emphasis upon the organization of the world around the eye favored as a sense organ at the detriment and exlusion of all the other senses. During the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages, the senses were still synesthetically woven together like a tapestry, and no single one of them was favored to quite the degree of exclusion which the favoring of vision brought about in the Renaissance. Illuminated manuscripts, according to McLuhan, have a textural feel to them that still relies heavily on the sense of touch, and Medieval art, with its disproportionate sense of space in which one character -- such as Christ -- will be represented as larger than everyone else primarily due to the emphasis upon his spiritual importance rather than his inclusion as one individual among many occupying the same field of homogeneous space, is similarly haptic. Gothic lettering, he points out, is hard on the eye and difficult to read because it is tactile and still appeals to the sense of touch. Roman lettering, together with Arabic numerals, was favored by print, and this had the effect of streamlining the ability to read such that silent reading became common. Printers began to do new things like number the pages, create indices and Tables of Contents, and this had the effect of emphasizing authorship since it now became possible to track citations properly. Typography, McLuhan never tires of pointing out, favors the eye at the expense of all the other senses, and it tends to favor an abstract view of space as a container within which objects are placed in an arrangement that takes all spatial relations into account.

All of this began to change in the nineteenth century with the rise of electric technology and the favoring of discontinuities brought about by the telegraph and the newspaper. This kind of syncopated feeling for space, in which each object begins to occupy its own space no longer held in relation to other objects, began to erode and change the old typographic world of the Gutenberg Galaxy. Electric culture, which McLuhan does not discuss much in this book, favors tribalism, spatial discontinuity, erosion of individuality and the rise of corporatism, decentralization and so on.

This book should be read together with Understanding Media, for the latter volume picks up where The Gutenberg Galaxy leaves off, at the threshold of the Electric Society.

It is a masterpiece of scholarship by one of the greatest intellects America has ever produced, an intellect that easily puts the French po-mo philosophers in the shade. You will get more useful ideas out of any one of McLuhan's books than you would out of a whole crate of books by postmodern French philosophers.

--John David Ebert, author of Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of Electronic Society

This is the first McLuhan book I read, back in the late 1960s. It took me about a month to get through, because each short chapter contained so many new ideas and insights I had to think about them before going on. I didn't always understand them, but what I did comprehend was intoxicatingly exciting.

Many readers of McLuhan treat his probes as absolute statements of truth. Then, if they disagree with him, they reject his whole approach. One important fact to keep in mind while reading this or any of McLuhan's books is that he himself refers to the clever slogans which sum up many of his insights ("The medium is the message" being the best known, of course) as "probes", not facts. Their purpose is to explore an idea in order to stimulate thought. Even if you ultimately disagree with the concept set forth, if it makes you think about it, the probe has accomplished its principal purpose.