History
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The Mi’kmaw Concordat
James (Sekej) Youngblood Henderson
This important work, written primarily as a Native Studies text, fills a large gap in the history of Native peoples in the Americas. It is a fascinating multidisciplinary journey covering intellectual history, law, political science, religious studies, and Mi’kmaw legends, oral history and perceptions from the arrival in America by Columbus and other Europeans in the fifteenth century to the Mi’kmaw Concordat in the early seventeenth century. There is virtually nothing else in print… (more information)
Challenge and Change
A History Of The Dalhousie School Of Nursing, 1949-1989
Peter Twohig
Challenge and Change offers an innovative perspective on Dalhousie University School of Nursing’s first four decades of growth and transition. This book draws on rich archival sources and oral interviews to critically examine the school. Its analysis is highly relevant to contemporary debates within the history of nursing and the education of nurse practitioners. Most importantly, this book situates university nursing schools within their many and varied contexts of community, health care… (more information)
Myth, Migration and the Making of Memory
Scotia and Nova Scotia, c.1700-1990
Edited by Marjory Harper, Michael E. Vance
The essays in this volume, which are drawn from a wide range of disciplines, challenge us to consider critically the commonly held assumption that Nova Scotia is essentially Scottish in character. They do so by exploring the origin of the mythic understanding of the link between Scotland and Nova Scotia, by expanding the examination of Scottish influences from the customary focus on Highland migrants to also include mercantile, philanthropic and professional transatlantic connections, and by studying… (more information)
The People’s Co-op
The Life and Times of a North End Institution
Nancy Kardash, Jim Mochoruk
Located in the heart of Winnipeg’s Northend, the most class-conscious and ethnically diverse part of the city, the People’s Co-op was always a different kind of institution. Founded and then successfully run for over sixty years by members of Winnipeg’s vibrant left-wing Eastern-European community, this co-op mixed Marx, milk and the masses into a heady brew of social activism and co-operative enterprise. Beginning with a small coal and fuel yard in 1928-and a much larger dream… (more information)
History in the Making
Raymond Williams, Edward Thompson and Radical Intellectuals, 1936-1956
Steven Woodhams
For a generation of political activists growing up in the 1930s opposing fascism was a priority. The policy of appeasing Hitler and the non-partisan stance of the Labour Party in the face of the Spanish Civil War made the Communist Party an attractive alternative. From this generation emerged key figures in academia and publishing: Eric Hobsbawm, Ralph Miliband, John Saville, Martin Eve, Dorothy and Edward Thompson and Raymond Williams. Woodhams studies the experiences of this generation, the motives… (more information)
Industry and Society in Nova Scotia
An Illustrated History
Edited by James E. Candow
In 1990 the steam locomotive Samson was relocated to its current home in Stellarton’s Museum of Industry, where it was dismantled, conserved, re-assembled and put on display as the centerpiece of the Museum’s permanent collection. It is now the oldest surviving locomotive in Canada, and one of the oldest in the world. Samson, Hercules and John Buddle arrived in Nova Scotia in September 1839, the most conspicuous evidence yet that this British North American province had joined the industrial… (more information)
The Gardens of Their Dreams
Desertification and Culture in World History
Brian Griffith
Over the past 7,000 years, a desert slowly spread through the center of the Old World. Our ancestors watched as patches of desolation appeared in the landscape like holes in worn-out cloth. The affected regions had been wastelands before in previous arid ages, but this time human civilizations were on hand to intensify the effect. Eventually, the “true deserts” came to resemble the moon or the sandstorm plains of Mars. Where the web of life is stripped to the bone, this is how it looks… (more information)
Out of the Depths (New Extended Edition)
The Experiences of Mi’kmaw Childrn at the Indian Residential School at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia
Isabelle Knockwood
“The Residential School experience had serious negative consequences for many of our people who have suffered in silence for too long. It is time to take the first step and let others know they are not alone in their suffering. No matter how painful, the stories of our people must be told and heard. Through sharing our past, we can begin to heal ourselves, our communities, our people as we look to a better tomorrow.” —Phil Fontaine, Grand Chief, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, former… (more information)
Voices of Nova Scotia Community
A Written Democracy
Scott Milsom
From Birchtown and Harbourville, Kennetcook and Oxford, Lincolnville and Orangedale, these stories explore why the people of small communities across Nova Scotia value the quality of life they enjoy. The author ensures that it is the voices of the people who live in these communities that ring truest, allowing both neighbours and those visiting for the first time a better understanding of life in rural and small-town Nova Scotia. “The plain-spoken, visionary journalist Scott Milsom reminds… (more information)
John Saville
Memoirs from the Left
John Saville
John Saville has been one of the most influential writers of the second half of the twentieth century in the field of British Labour History. He was a Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Hull. He has written or edited over twenty books including 1848, The Consolidation of the Capitalist State, and the Dictionary of Labour Biography. His political memoirs touch upon: • Early life; joining the Communist Party at the LSE, travels in France and Nazi Germany • Stories… (more information)
Accounting for Genocide
Canada’s Bureaucratic Assault on Aboriginal People
Dean Neu, Richard Therrien
Accounting for Genocide is an original and controversial book that retells the history of the subjugation and ongoing economic marginalization of Canada’s Indigenous peoples. Its authors demonstrate the ways in which successive Canadian governments have combined accounting techniques and economic rationalizations with bureaucratic mechanisms—soft technologies—to deprive Native peoples of their land and natural resources and to control the minutiae of their daily economic and social… (more information)
The Three Waves of Globalization
A History of a Developing Global Consciousness
Robbie Robertson
A new reading of western history argues that human interconnections achieved global proportions for the first time 500 years ago, producing three waves of destabilizing globalization. The first wave, post-1500, devastated America and contributed to European wars and revolutions. In the nineteenth century, the rush to monopolize wealth and power escalated into rivalries between classes, nations, empires. After 1945, a new global social architecture with transnational capital as its main factor… (more information)
Escape!
Young Adult Fiction
John Reid
The exciting events of this tale begin with young Russian emigre, Alexi Gertoff, meeting a mysterious boy on the streets of Amherst, Nova Scotia. The boy, who barely speaks English, turns out to be the son of Leon Trotsky, and he has come to town to spring his father from the wartime prison camp. Alexi and his family become involved in a dangerous attempt to reunite Trotsky with his wife and children. Based on the real-life imprisonment of Trotsky at the Amherst prison camp during the month of April… (more information)
My Union, My Life
Jean-Claude Parrot and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Jean-Claude Parrot
Jean-Claude Parrot was National President of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers for fifteen years and its chief negotiator for eighteen. During that time he provided the leadership which built what became Canada’s most militant and democratic union. When Pierre Trudeau decided to make the post office a crown corporation Parrot was there to guide the transition. He was also there to oversee the merger of the various postal unions into “one union for all.” As well as Jean-Claude… (more information)
A Threat from Within
A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism
Yakov M. Rabkin
His profound and extensive grounding in history and political science enabled the author to examine a variety of Judaic scholars whose views, however diverse, reflect the supremacy of Torah ethics over nationalism. I hope that their views, expressed mostly before the establishment of the State of Israel, will, in our post-Zionist times, help reduce anti-Semitism and show the way towards peace and security in the Middle East. —Rabbi Baruch Horovitz, Dean, Jerusalem Academy of Jewish Studies… (more information)
Butterbox Babies
Baby Sales, Baby Deaths o New Revelations 15 Years Later
Bette L. Cahill
A young woman in Nova Scotia gives birth to a child out of wedlock. A childless couple in New Jersey desperately searches for a baby to adopt. These people never meet but their lives become forever linked through a tiny baby girl. Natalie, that baby, spent the first two years of her life in the Ideal Maternity Home on Canada’s rocky East Coast. Louis and Mabel Goldman of Newark adopted her in August 1945. Natalie was one of the survivors. Many babies born at the home were not adopted. They… (more information)
We Were Not the Savages (3rd Edition) First Nations History
Collision between European and Native American Civilizations
Daniel N. Paul
As a person of First Nation ancestry I cannot help but wonder if the failure of Caucasian Americans and Canadians to reveal and teach about the horrors their ancestors carried out against North American First Nation Peoples is a deliberate cover-up, or an indication they hold within their minds a notion the life of a First Nation person is valueless—not worthy of human considerations. The latter is probably the more plausible, because it is an unchallengeable fact that the crimes against humanity… (more information)
Enriched by Catastrophe
Social Work and Social Conflict after the Halifax Explosion
Michelle Hébert Boyd
When social workers arrived on the scene after the Halifax explosion it marked the beginning of the transition from a charity model of social welfare to a profession of trained and paid social workers. The newly arrived social workers had to practise their skills in the context of Halifax’s prevailing class structures, where, traditionally, well-off volunteers passed judgment on their poorer neighbours and great care was taken not to improve the conditions of people beyond their station in… (more information)
Pubs, Pulpits and Prairie Fires
Elroy Deimert
History professor Paul Wessner hangs out at BJ’s Bar and Cue Club on Tuesday nights sharing his accounts of the On-to-Ottawa Trek and the Regina Riot in 1935. Due to local interest in his research, he invites Doc Savage and Matt Shaw, real-life leaders on the Trek, to deliver first-hand accounts of the Trek and the Riot. He encourages listeners to contribute when no guests are scheduled to tell their stories. The narratives broaden to the evolution of the Social Credit and CCF prairie fires… (more information)
The Dirt
Industrial Disease and Conflict at St. Lawrence, Newfoundland
Rick Rennie
In the cemeteries of St. Lawrence and several neighbouring towns on the south coast of Newfoundland lie the remains of some 200 workers, killed by the dust and radiation that permeated the area’s fluorspar mines. The Dirt chronicles the many forces that created this disaster and shaped the response to it, including the classic ‘jobs or health’ dilemma, the contentious process of determining the nature and extent of industrial disease and the desire of employers to ‘externalize… (more information)
Blowback
A Canadian History of Agent Orange and the War at Home
Chris Arsenault
The village of Enniskillen, a sleepy cluster of a few dozen houses in New Brunswick’s Queens County, has never been invaded by a foreign power. But during the 1950s to 1970s, the village was ground zero for a different kind of offensive, this one launched by the American and Canadian military against its own people with the deadly dioxin Agent Orange. Between 1956 and 1984 the Canadian military and its private subcontractors sprayed more than 1 million litres of rainbow herbicides around New… (more information)
African Nova Scotian – Mi’kmaw Relations
Paula C. Madden
The Indigenous people of Nova Scotia, the Mi’kmaq, have been dispossessed of their lands and, since the early 1820s, confined to reserves. African Nova Scotians have also been dispossessed of lands originally granted to them by white colonial governments and settled in communities with names like Africville, Preston or Birchtown. Yet “the story of Africville, and other stories of dispossession,” argues author Paula C. Madden, “cannot be told and understood outside the context… (more information)
Nova Scotia
A Pocket History
John Reid
Before it was known as Nova Scotia, the province formed part of Mi’kma’ki and then of Acadie. This book provides a concise history of the province to the beginning of the 21st century. “The history of Nova Scotia,” says the author, “is not quaint. It is made up of the efforts of people of many backgrounds to make their way as best they could. Sometimes they succeeded, often they fell short. The reasons for either outcome were always complex. This book tries to sort… (more information)
Inventing Collateral Damage
Civilian Casualties, War, and Empire
Edited by Rick Halpern, Stephen Rockel
The term collateral damage, a euphemism for civilian casualty, came into usage during the Vietnam Ware and over several decades became entrenched in U.S. armed forces jargon. But long before the phrase was coined there were non-combatant victims of wars. Emerging from a major international conference on the subject, Inventing Collateral Damage is a collection of excellent and varied studies of civilian casualty through history: in early modern Europe, 18th- and 19th-century North America, colonial… (more information)
Glamour
Women, History, Feminism
Carol Dyhouse
How do we understand “Glamour”? Has it empowered women or turned them into objects? Once associated with modernity and the cutting edge, is it entirely bound up with nostalgia and tradition? This unique and fascinating book tells the story of glamour. It explores the changing meanings of the word, its relationship to femininity and fashion, and its place in twentieth century social history. Using a rich variety of sources–from women’s magazines and film to social surveys… (more information)
Black Canadians Second Edition
History, Experience, Social Conditions, Revised Edition
Joseph Mensah
Black Canadians provides an authoritative reference for teachers, students and the general public who seek to know more about the Black Diaspora in North America. Arguments made in this book may be unpleasant for those with little appetite for pointed, provocative views and analysis from the standpoint of Black people. For those with a genuine interest in venturing beyond established orthodoxies and simplistic solutions to the contentious ethno-racial problems in Canada, this book will be insightful… (more information)
Down But Not Out
Community and the Upper Streets in Halifax, 1890-1914
David Hood
An examination of poverty and homelessness in Halifax at the turn of the twentieth century, this book challenges the notion that the poor are deviants who are responsible for their own misfortune. Historians have too often accepted this characterization of poverty without question and, in so doing, have allowed for its perpetuation into current discourse. Through an exploration of public records and the stories of real people, David Hood breathes life into Halifax’s sordid past — and… (more information)
Between Terror and Democracy
Algeria since 1989
James D. Le Sueur
Algeria’s democratic experiment is seminal in post-Cold War history. In this book Le Sueur shows that Algeria is at the very heart of contemporary debates about Islam and secular democracy. Between Terror and Democracy is a lively examination of how the fate of one country is entwined with much greater global issues. (more information)
Zapatistas
Rebellion from the Grassroots to the Global
Alex Khasnabish
In 1994 a guerilla army of Indigenous Mayan peasants in Southeast Mexico emerged and declared ‘Enough!’ to 500 years of colonialism, racism, exploitation, oppression and genocide. The effects of the Zapatista uprising were profound and would be felt beyond the borders of Mexico. At a time when state-sponsored socialism had all but vanished and other elements of the left appeared defeated in the face of neoliberalism’s ascendancy, the Zapatista uprising sparked a powerful new wave… (more information)
Hidden Histories
Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean
Basem L. Ra’ad
For thousands of years, the region of Palestine and the East Mediterranean has been denied an indigenous voice for an inclusive history. Three religions ascribe their origins to this part of the world, appropriating and re-appropriating the “Holy Land” time and again. This book offers a powerful corrective to common understandings. It emphasizes Palestine’s long history and dispels many old and new myths – covering issues of religious origins and sacred sites, identity… (more information)
500 Years of Indigenous Resistance
Gord Hill
The history of the colonization of the Americas by Europeans is often portrayed as a mutually beneficial process, in which ”civilization” was brought to the Natives, who in return shared their land and cultures. A more critical history might present it as a genocide in which Indigenous peoples were helpless victims, overwhelmed by European military power. In reality, neither of these views is correct. This book is more than a history of European colonization of the Americas. In this… (more information)
Staying Power
The History of Black People in Britain
Peter Fryer
Staying Power is recognized as the definitive history of black people in Britain, an epic story that begins with the Roman conquest and continues to this day. In a comprehensive account, Peter Fryer reveals how Africans, Asians and their descendants, previously hidden from history, have profoundly influenced and shaped events in Britain over the course of the last two thousand years. This new edition includes a foreword by Paul Gilroy explaining the genesis of the book and its continuing significance… (more information)
Global History
A View from the South
Samir Amin
Responding to the need to take a fresh look at world history, hitherto dominated by Eurocentric ideologues and historians in their attempt to justify the nature and character of modern capitalism, Samir Amin looks in this book at the ancient world system and how it has influenced the development of the modern world. It also analyses the origin and nature of modern globalisation and the challenges it presents in achieving socialism. Amin examines the role played by Central Asia in determining… (more information)
Reclaiming African History
Jacques Depelchin
Depelchin’s thought-provoking essays show that through African histories it is possible to reconnect to all the histories of those who have been disconnected: shackdwellers, the poor, the dispossessed. His analysis of African history demonstrates how peoples have been forced into looking at their own histories through a shattered mirror, deliberately and forcefully crushed so as to render the exercise impossible. But, Depelchin says, history could be written in a way that would help break… (more information)
Class and Gender in British Labour History
Renewing the Debate (or starting it?)
Mary Davis
Politics constructs gender and gender constructs politics: this is a central theme in this collection of essays which seek not only to write a history that focus on women’s experiences but seeks also to analyze those dynamic forces that have shaped that history. It examines the ‘making’ of the other half of the working class women- as workers, trade unionists and political activists, and seeks to weave together intricate relationships between class and gender, particularly within… (more information)
Devil’s Milk
A Social History of Rubber
John Tully
From the early stages of primitive accumulation to the heights of the industrial revolution and beyond, rubber is one of a handful of commodities that has played a crucial role in shaping the modern world, and yet, as John Tully shows in this remarkable book, laboring people around the globe have every reason to regard it as “the devil’s milk.” All the advancements made possible by rubber have occurred against a backdrop of seemingly endless exploitation, conquest, slavery, and… (more information)
Inventing Africa
History, Archaeology and Ideas
Robin Derricourt
Inventing Africa is a critical account of narratives which have selectively interpreted and misinterpreted the continent’s deep past. Writers have created alluring images of lost cities, vast prehistoric migrations and golden ages of past civilisations. Debates continue on the African origins of humankind, the contributions of ancient Egypt to the world and Africa’s importance to global history. Images of ‘Africa’, simplifying a complex and diverse continent, have existed… (more information)
Bathtubs but No Water
A Tribute to the Mushuau Innu
Gerry Steele
In 1967, the Mushuau Innu — the Aboriginal people of Labrador — were resettled on Davis Inlet by the Canadian government. Originally a land-based people, this move to the coast created cultural, economic and spiritual upheaval, and Davis Inlet became synonymous with shocking substance abuse and suicide rates. In Bathtubs but No Water, Gerry Steele offers the reader a participant observer’s perspective on Davis Inlet. An employee of the federal government working with the Mushuau… (more information)
Angry Nation
Turkey Since 1989
Kerem Öktem
Since Turkey was catapulted back onto the world stage in 1989 it has turned into a major power broker and has developed into one the largest economies in the world. The country has, however, failed to peacefully resolve its ethnic, religious and historical conflicts. Today, as the foundations of the ethno-nationalist Kemalist state are eroding rapidly, Turkey appears to be coming to terms with the many sources of its anger, if cautiously and slowly. At this historical turning point, Angry Nation… (more information)
People’s History of Poverty in America
Stephen Pimpare
In A People’s History of Poverty in America, political scientist Stephen Pimpare brings the human lives and real-life stories of those who struggle with poverty in America to the foreground, vividly describing life as poor and welfare-reliant Americans experience it, from the big city to the rural countryside. Prodigiously researched, A People’s History of Poverty in America unearths rich, poignant, and often surprising testimonies—both heart-wrenching and humorous—that range… (more information)
Three Kings
The Rise of an American Empire in the Middle East After World War II
Lloyd Gardner
From F.D.R. to L.B.J., Three Kings reveals a story of America’s scramble for political influence, oil concessions, and a new military presence based on airpower and generous American aid to shaky regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Iraq. Marshaling new and revelatory evidence from the archives, Lloyd Gardner deftly weaves together three decades of U.S. moves in the region to offer the first history of America’s efforts to supplant the British empire in the Middle East. From the… (more information)
Vanishing Schools, Threatened Communities
The Contested Schoolhouse in Maritime Canada
Paul Bennett
Traditional schoolhouses and neighbourhood schools are disappearing at an alarming rate, making way for ”big box” schools that serve multiple communities and adhere to the logic of modernization, centralization and uniformity. In Vanishing Schools, Threatened Communities, author Paul W. Bennett explores the phenomenon of school closures, focusing on Maritime Canada from 1850 until the present day. Here is a lively, stimulating book that examines the rise of common schooling from one-… (more information)
Bemocked of Destiny
Centenary Edition
Edited by Martin McAllister, Aenaes McCharles
Bemocked of Destiny was first published in 1908, a condition of the last will and testament of an extraordinary Canadian pioneer. Teacher, speculator, geologist, prospector, community organizer and outspoken advisor to provincial and federal politicians, McCharles’s first-person account of life in the heady days of the late-19th-century frontier offer us more than a glimpse into the age in which he lived. The story begins with McCharles’s boyhood on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia,… (more information)
Birth of Capitalism
A Twenty-First-Century Perspective
Henry Heller
In the light of the deepening crisis of capitalism and continued non-Western capitalist accumulation, Henry Heller re-examines the debates surrounding the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe and elsewhere. Focusing on arguments about the origin, nature and sustainability of capitalism, Heller offers a new reading of the historical evidence and a critical interrogation of the transition debate. He advances the idea that capitalism must be understood as a political as well as an economic… (more information)
Committing Theatre
Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada
Alan Filewod
Committing Theatre offers the first full-length historical study of political intervention theatre and theatrical spectatorship in English Canada. Building on twenty years of research and engagement in the field, this book’s historical narrative frames close-up examples of how theatre artists have intervened in and engaged with political struggle from the mid-19th century to the present. Lumber-camp mock trials, Mayday parades and street protests, the Workers Theatre Movement, agitprop… (more information)
No Nonsense Guide to World History
Chris Brazier
Who was the first black queen? How much do you know about China’s history? Most people’s knowledge of world history is hazy and incomplete at best. This updated No-Nonsense Guide gives a full picture, revealing the hidden histories and communities left out of conventional textbooks – from the civilizations of Africa, Asia and Latin America to the history of women. This updated and revised edition of one of the best-selling No-Nonsense Guides includes a new chapter from the… (more information)
Side by Side
Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine
Sami Adwan, Dan Bar-On, Eyal Naveh
In 2000, a group of Israeli and Palestinian teachers gathered to address what to many people seemed an unbridgeable gulf between the two societies. Struck by how different the standard Israeli and Palestinian textbook histories of the same events were from one another, they began to explore how to “disarm” the teaching of the history of the Middle East in Israeli and Palestinian classrooms. The result is a riveting “dual narrative” of Israeli and Palestinian history. Side… (more information)
Ocean Ranger
Remaking the Promise of Oil
Susan Dodd
On February 15, 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland taking the entire crew of eighty-four men — including the author’s brother — down with it. It was the worst sea disaster in Canada since the Second World War, but the memory of this event gradually faded into a sad story about a bad storm — relegated to the “Extreme Weather” section of the CBC archives. Susan Dodd resurrects this disaster from the realm of “history&rdquo… (more information)
Stayin’ Alive
The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class
Jefferson Cowie
A wide-ranging cultural and political history that will forever redefine a misunderstood decade, Stayin’ Alive is a remarkable account of how working-class America hit the rocks in the political and economic upheavals of the 1970s. In this edgy and incisive book—part political intrigue, part labor history, with large doses of American music, film, and TV lore—Cowie, with “an ear for the power and poetry of vernacular speech” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), reveals America… (more information)
Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping
The Truth May Hurt
Yves Engler
Lester Pearson is one of Canada’s most important political figures. A Nobel Peace laureate, he is considered a great peacekeeper and ‘honest broker.’ But in this critical examination of his work, Pearson is exposed as an ardent cold warrior who backed colonialism and apartheid in Africa, Zionism, coups in Guatemala, Iran and Brazil and the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic. A beneficiary of U.S. intervention in Canadian political affairs, he also provided important… (more information)
Paved with Good Intentions
Canada’s Development NGOs on the Road from Idealism to Imperialism
Nik Barry-Shaw, Dru Oja Jay
“NGOs are as Canadian as hockey,” declared a 1988 Parliamentary report. Few institutions epitomize the foundational Canadian myth of international benevolence like the non-governmental organization devoted to development abroad. This book raises important questions about these organizations and their development projects: Just how “non-governmental” are organizations that get most of their funding from government agencies? What impact do these funding ties have on NGOs… (more information)
Jean Paul Marat
Tribune of the French Revolution
Clifford Conner
Jean-Paul Marat’s role in the French Revolution has long been a matter of controversy among historians. Often he has been portrayed as a violent, sociopathic demagogue. This biography challenges that interpretation and argues that without Marat’s contributions as an agitator, tactician, and strategist, the pivotal social transformation that the Revolution accomplished might well not have occurred. Clifford D. Conner argues that what was unique about Marat–which set him apart… (more information)