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All Books in this Collection
Showing 4593–4608 of 9481 results
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Miah
$22.95“‘Half century under Japan then half century under Kuomintang . . . too much,’ my mother would sigh and shake her head.”
Miah means “fate” in Taiwanese. Spanning much of the twentieth century, these linked, subtly understated stories trace the destinies of simple folk from the brutal Japanese occupation of the early twentieth century through to the “White Terror” of the exiled Chinese Mainlanders and the Kuomintang, and finally to modern Taiwan and Canada.
In the powerfully gripping “Miah,” a woman from Vancouver accompanies her mother to Taiwan for her grandmother Ah Mah’s funeral. There she discovers the tragic story of Fifth Uncle, who was hounded by Kuomintang forces until he took pesticides and died . . . In “The Colonel and Mrs Wang” a Mainlander officer and his Taiwanese-raised son confront each other over politics. One day, the son is betrayed to the authorities. Who was the anonymous informer? . . . In the touching story “Lysander,” a modern day Taiwanese boy is sent to Vancouver for his education. A diamond cannot be polished without friction, he has been taught. He must bear the hardship in an alien teenage culture where he tries to desperately cope and eventually loses himself.
Miah is a rare look at Taiwanese and modern Canadian life, historical, and personal, and completely honest.
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Michael Moore
$29.95Love him or hate him, the world over cannot ignore Michael Moore. Left and right can both agree that this son of a Flint autoworker has single-handedly revitalized liberal politics, and turned his unique style of political filmmaking into an expectation-defying brand. But long before he shocked the nation on the Academy Awards stage, he was picking fights with everyone from big business to friends and compatriots. Without an agenda to prove Moore right or wrong, Michael Moore by Emily Schultz is the first book to tell Moore’s life story—from the shy Eagle Scout to the most vocal critic of the Bush Presidency.
Moore’s detractors on both sides of the fence claim that he flubs facts, personally and professionally. Schultz sorts truth from lies with in-depth research and interviews, and presents a man honestly passionate and professionally conflicted. In his cap and windbreaker—always aware of the power of media—Moore has spent a life refining his image as the everyday rebel. He is a man who, at age 18, ran for the local school board so he could fire his principal, and who spent three years suing a magazine where he worked for two issues. With information never before revealed, Schultz looks into Moore’s mysterious and disastrous jump from local muckraker to editor of Mother Jones, the runaway success of his first film Roger & Me, and the scandal it caused that lost him an Oscar. Regardless of scandal, Roger & Me became his ticket from his economically devastated hometown of Flint to Hollywood. Was he a hero or villain for his portrayal of the death of small town America? The people of Flint were as divided as the rest of the world would soon be.
As the ’90s saw Moore becoming a powerhouse television producer of the cult hit TV Nation, and a best-selling author, the contradictions between success and his roots became ever more apparent. Is the ball cap and jeans uniform incongruous with his Upper West Side Manhattan life? With Fahrenheit 9/11 catapulting Moore to the front of pop cultural recognition, many from his past say that the line between the man and the myth has vanished. Moore has spent his life walking that line, and Schultz has written an incisive account that lets readers see beyond the myths surrounding one of the most important public figures of our age.
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Michael Ondaatje
$15.95Michael Ondaatje’s life is as intense — and at times as dramatic — as his poetry and fiction. His writing is usually inspired by a single persistent image or vision — and no wonder, for as Ed Jewinski’s biography reveals, much of Ondaatje’s life has been a series of intense moments followed by ruptures and dislocations. This illustrated biography links Ondaatje’s relationships with his family to the later mature works, such as Running in the Family, and The English Patient (for which he won the Booker Prize).
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Michel and Ti-Jean
$17.95In this probing character study, Rideout fashions a hypothetical 1969 meeting in a bar in St. Petersburg, Florida, between Quebec playwright Michel Tremblay and an individual whom he believes to be a truly great writer – beat generation author Jack Kerouac, whose Francophone mother affectionately called him Ti-Jean. At the time of their meeting, Kerouac is forty-seven years old and only months away from death, destroyed by drink in an attempt to live up to the wild image of the “beatnik” stereotype he coined in his novel On the Road. Michel Tremblay is twenty-seven and his first widely produced play, Les Belles Soeurs, has premiered a year before.
As he encounters his writing idol, the younger man must break through the older man’s emotional barriers to establish common ground. Ultimately, Kerouac’s Québécois background helps Tremblay understand his work, recognize the role religion takes, and the place women play in his psyche, as stated metaphorically in the various female characters who populate Les Belles Soeurs.
Cast of 2 men.
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Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg
$22.00In this deeply engaging oral history, Doug Williams, Anishinaabe elder, teacher and mentor to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, recounts the history of the Michi Saagiig Nisnaabeg, tracing through personal and historical events, and presenting what manifests as a crucial historical document that confronts entrenched institutional narratives of the history of the region. Edited collaboratively with Simpson, the book uniquely retells pivotal historical events that have been conventionally unchallenged in dominant historical narratives, while presenting a fascinating personal perspective in the singular voice of Williams, whose rare body of knowledge spans back to the 1700s. With this wealth of knowledge, wit and storytelling prowess, Williams recounts key moments of his personal history, connecting them to the larger history of the Anishinaabeg and other Indigenous communities.
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Mickalene Thomas
$40.00Mickalene Thomas’s vivid paintings, collages, and photographs explode off the wall. Their larger-than-life women stare back and down at the viewer, confronting them head on. Over the course of her prolific career, Thomas has created a body of work that expands notions of beauty, gender, sexuality, and race, offering a complex vision of what it means to be a Black woman.
In Femmes Noires, Thomas moves breezily between pop culture and the long history of Western and African art, inserting images of Black women into iconic paintings. At times she poses them nude; at other times, she draws on elements as diverse as 1970s black-is-beautiful images of women, Edouard Mamet’s odalisque figures, the mise-en-scène studio portraiture of James Van Der Zee and Malick Sidibé, and her own collection of personal portraits and staged scenes. Her ability to detect and contain contradictions and to wrestle with stereotypes translates into powerful, self-possessed depictions of Black women that confront and subvert stereotypes.
Femmes Noires is a bold examination of Thomas’s work and her artistic practise at an important moment in history. It blends writing from iconic Black writers and essayists (Alice Walker, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Edwidge Danticat, and Lorraine O’Grady) with 120 reproductions from Thomas’s oeuvre (collages, paintings, film stills, and photographs). Original essays by Andrea Andersson, visual arts curator of the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans; Julie Crooks, curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario; and writer-art critic Antwaun Sargent complete the book.
Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires accompanies an international touring exhibition organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Contemporary Art Centre in New Orleans..
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Mickey Cohen
$29.95Go deep into the L.A. underworld with the true story of one obsessive gangster’s unparalleled quest for privilege, power, and paydays
This biography of celebrity gangster Mickey Cohen digs past the sensational headlines to deliver a remarkable story of a man who captivated, corrupted, and terrorized Los Angeles for a generation.
When Bugsy Siegel was murdered, his henchman Mickey Cohen took over the criminal activity in Los Angeles. Mickey Cohen attained such power and dominance from the late 1940s until 1976 that he was a regular above-the-fold newspaper name, accumulating a remarkable count of more than 1,000 front-pages in Los Angeles papers alone, and was featured in hundreds of articles in national and international periodicals. His story and the history of mid-century L.A. are inextricably intertwined.
Mickey Cohen is a seductive, premium-octane blend of true crime and Hollywood that spins around a wildly eccentric mob boss. Author Tere Tereba delivers tales of high life, high drama, and highly placed politicians, among them RFK and Richard Nixon, as well as revelations about countless icons, including Shirley Temple, Lana Turner, Frank Sinatra, and the Reverend Billy Graham. Meticulously researched, this rich tapestry presents a complete look at the Los Angeles underworld.
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Mickey Cohen
$16.95Go deep into the L.A. underworld with the true story of one obsessive gangster’s unparalleled quest for privilege, power, and paydays
This biography of celebrity gangster Mickey Cohen digs past the sensational headlines to deliver a remarkable story of a man who captivated, corrupted, and terrorized Los Angeles for a generation.
When Bugsy Siegel was murdered, his henchman Mickey Cohen took over the criminal activity in Los Angeles. Mickey Cohen attained such power and dominance from the late 1940s until 1976 that he was a regular above-the-fold newspaper name, accumulating a remarkable count of more than 1,000 front-pages in Los Angeles papers alone, and was featured in hundreds of articles in national and international periodicals. His story and the history of mid-century L.A. are inextricably intertwined.
Mickey Cohen is a seductive, premium-octane blend of true crime and Hollywood that spins around a wildly eccentric mob boss. Author Tere Tereba delivers tales of high life, high drama, and highly placed politicians, among them RFK and Richard Nixon, as well as revelations about countless icons, including Shirley Temple, Lana Turner, Frank Sinatra, and the Reverend Billy Graham. Meticulously researched, this rich tapestry presents a complete look at the Los Angeles underworld.
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Micro Miracle
$19.95Micro Miracle is the moving account of a first-time mother whose expectations of childbirth and parenting are dramatically altered when she gives birth sixteen weeks prematurely to Madeline. Weighing just over a pound, with eyes fused shut, and thin, fragile skin, Madeline could fit in a hand, but she’s too ill to be touched. Unflinchingly honest, Micro Miracle is a true story of a medical triumph.
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Micrographia
$22.00As Jennifer Bowering Delisle was on her path through infertility towards motherhood, she was simultaneously losing her own mother to a rare degenerative neurological disease and an approaching medically-assisted death. The lyric essays in Micrographia explore how losses can collide and reverberate both within our own lives and in our relationships with the rest of the world. How much do we share of our stories, and how much do we understand of what others are experiencing? Ultimately, this is a book about connection; “micrographia” is both the term for the diminished handwriting caused by neurological disease, and the narrative fragments offered here.
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Midday at the Super-Kamiokande
$19.95Midday at the Super-Kamiokande is part existentialist cry, part close encounters of the other kind. Think Kierkegaard in a spacesuit, Kubrik in a Left Bank café.
Like the neutrino observatory of its title, Midday at the Super-Kamiokande seeks “glimpses of the obscure” to carve out meaning, alternately a resistance to rationalism and its champion. It aims to tear through abstraction with the concrete, either catastrophic – road accidents, nuclear explosions, floods, extinction, eviction, suicide – or quotidian, finding threads of love, empathy, and belief within the fray. These poems delight in aphorism, paradox, puns, and wit, each stanza a closure that moves tangentially to the next, each poem more bricolage than narrative, more shuffle than playlist. These are poems with no middle. These are poems of beginnings, and of ends. -
Middle-Aged Boys & Girls
$20.00We all know adults who are stranded in the amber of adolescence. Growing older but not necessarily growing up is the central theme of Middle-Aged Boys & Girls, featuring characters who, to varying degrees, are stuck in adolescent roles of rebel, outcast, enfant terrible and cool kid. All are linked by losses–of looks, of status, of job security, of health, of confidence–which forces them to life’s inevitable turning point. Given that we are living in an age where fifty is the new forty, and forty is the new thirty, and twenty is the new god-knows-what, these stories, with their sometimes painful, sometimes funny and always unflinching truths, resonate.
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Middlemen
$32.95Toronto, mid-2010s: the economy is tanking, the opioid crisis is about to explode, and Beau Larky is drifting through the city in a drug-fuelled haze, photographing extravagant weddings in order to bankroll his habit. When he learns that Cam, his former roommate and one-time lover—now a celebrity academic on the West Coast—has suffered a breakdown, Beau is seized by an unexpected need to see him after years of silence. His impulsive trip to California ignites the resentment of Stacey, the professor’s soon-to-be wife, and Cliff, their former drug dealer turned real-estate shark, now too busy riding the housing boom to care about anything but the market.
To “middle” is to sell drugs to support one’s own habit, but also to linger, to stall, to refuse to decide. Middlemen is a dark, unflinching story about class, distance, addiction, and the blurry line between human and financial relationships. Above all, it is a break-up letter to Toronto, the novel’s meanest character.
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Midgic
$18.95Midgic is a small community on the edge of New Brunswick’s Tantramar marshes, thought by historian William Francis Ganong to have been named for a Mi’kmaq descriptive for “a point of highland into a marsh.” In this new suite of poems, Douglas Lochhead displays the sure, grid-laying eye of the archeologist, mapping each small detail in his concise lyric shorthand. Like Lochhead’s High Marsh Road (1980) and Dykelands (1989), Midgic employs a method of repeated encounters with a specific place to reveal over time a rhythm and logic otherwise invisible in both the landscape and the visitant. Lochhead’s gift lies in his ability to amplify the truths of the greater world while speaking of a single place in whispers.
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Midland
$19.95A traumatized young man steps away from his protective family and embarks on a transformative two-month stint as a tree planter in Northern Ontario. There he seeks comfort and healing in new friends, a mix-tape and letters to his dead brother.
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Midland Swimmer
$12.95Reading John Reibetanz, one is struck with the way language, closely attended to, kept oiled and sharp, can give experience back its bite. And conversely, how experience can be the whetstone for language, chastening its presumptions and requiring from it fresh exactitudes of music and insight. Whether the subject is a cord of wood, a painting, or the New York Times (deeply and dancingly read) John Reibetanz brings a nearly invisible craft into close attunement with the details of life, hearkening with words. Again and again the glass slipper fits the foot.