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Podcast: A Brief History of Books in Indigenous North America, by Matt Cohen
On November 7, University of Texas at Austin Professor Matt Cohen spoke to the Toronto Centre for the Book about early printing and indigenous communities. Read Cohen’s abstract below, or listen to the full talk here: [audio: Fall2013/CohenTRBpodcast.mp3] The first Bible printed in North America was in a Native language. Many of the influential early printed…
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Drones in Theory and in Practice
Reviewed in this essay: Killing by Remote Control: The Ethics of an Unmanned Military, edited by Bradley J. Strawser, Oxford University Press, 2013. Academic philosophers working on topics in applied ethics, such as drone usage, insist on distinguishing between permissibility in theory and permissibility in practice. In claiming that current U.S. drone policies are impermissible in practice,…
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Will Munro, The Andrew Project, and Our Very Own Tasting Menu: T.O. Events for Nov 22 – Dec 5
Shan Syed, the Toronto artist responsible for The Andrew Project, is launching his new book at Scrap Metal Gallery. 4PM. November 23. Free. Support Canadian authors, free-thinkers and magazines and small presses at the LeftWords Festival of Books and Ideas. Enjoy thoughtful presentations on Food Activism, Body Activism, and Women in a Globalizing World. 12…
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Nowhere Land: Writing Eastern Europe in Canada
When I was a child reading Batman comics and Hardy Boy books in the fifties and early sixties, it seemed as if Canada was a nowhere land compared to the United States. Nothing happened here, and never would. If a man had put on a Batman cape in Canada, he would have been arrested. If…
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Buy Tasting Menu at The Paper Hound
Good news! The TRB’s Tasting Menu has landed at The Paper Hound, Vancouver’s most charming new indie bookshop. TRB collaborator and Vancouver expat Katherine McLeod sent us this picture to prove it. Vancouver readers! You know where to go and what to do. Toronto folk: why not pick up your copy at the…
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CanLit Canon Review #18: George Grant’s Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism
There is a lot of great stuff jammed into the 100 pages of Lament for a Nation: it is a short history of conservatism, liberalism, and socialism; it is an analysis of Canada’s changing place in the world during the Cold War; and it’s an emotional tirade by a brilliant thinker who no longer recognizes…
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TRB Podcast: Ken Setterington’s Branded by the Pink Triangle
On September 25th, the Lillian H. Smith Library invited Ken Setterington to talk about his latest book, Branded by the Pink Triangle, and why he specifically wrote it for young adult readers. In World War II, a pink triangle was sewn onto uniforms to mark homosexuals who were imprisoned in concentration camps alongside Jews and other groups the Nazis…
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Blood and Lost Treasures: New Books of Note
Much-anticipated, curious, or simply thrilling, here are some new and notable books. The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty by Nina Munk (Signal) – Munk offers an incisive portrait of development economist (and mercurial egoist) Jeffrey Sachs. Focusing on Sachs’s UN-supported project to alleviate extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, she launches a…
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Chester Brown, Ann Patchett, and a Party in a Library: T.O. Events for Nov 7-21
Berlin videographer and media artist Nina Konnemann will be in conversation with curator Kim Simon about her art, culture, and international exchange. 5PM. November 8. Goethe-Institut Toronto. Free. Join innovators in contemporary art from Paris and Toronto including Isabelle Alfonsi, Barbara Fischer and David Liss in The Ecology of an Art Scene: a two-day symposium dedicated to creating…
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A Mushroom Trip Worth Taking: A Review of Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England
Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England (2013) is a British historical (although revisionist) thriller shot entirely in black-and-white and set during the mid-17th century English Civil War. The film is a gumbo concoction odyssey that breaks free of the historical thriller genre through the use of experimental film techniques: mixing humour, horror and hallucination, with…
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Adrian Johns on the Cultural Origins of the Printing Revolution: a TRB Podcast
In this talk, “The Cultural Origins of the Printing Revolution,” celebrated book historian Adrian Johns reveals his transformative view of Gutenberg’s origins and impact and offers a “novel account of what remains one of the most resonant episodes in Western history.” The Toronto Centre for the Book presented this Jackson Lecture on October 3rd, 2013, in association with the UofT’s iSchool. Listen and enjoy!…
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A Fantasy of Indigenous Experience: Cherie Dimaline’s The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy
Reviewed in this essay: The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy by Cherie Dimaline. Published by Theytus Books (June 2013). The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy, written by celebrated Ojibway and Métis author Cherie Dimaline, weaves together a story of struggle, hope, and magic. As the main character, Ruby Bloom, experiences a series of traumatic childhood…