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If Peace
Is… Mondo Publishing, NY $22.05 (hc) ($15.95 US). ISBN 1590344480.
What is peace? To
each of us, it is something different. You might think of it as a bell you can
ring so all the world can hear, or a special gift to open with care. Or is peace
a candle we light at night to keep the darkness away?
"Stephanie Carter's jewel-like images harmonize perfectly with Jane Baskwill's
inspiring text to illuminate the many ways people can make a more peaceful world."
Jane
Baskwill was born in Queens, New York, but has lived most of her adult life
in rural Nova Scotia. Author of many books, articles and video series, Jane
is a six-time recipient of the Education Quality Award from the NSTU and received
the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Educational Press Association of
America for her series of articles in Teaching K-8 magazine. She lives with
her husband and three children in Lawrencetown.
Late in a
Slow Time.Mansfield Press, 2003. $15.95.ISBN 1-894469-13-5.
A. F. Moritz wrote
of Late in a Slow Time: "'Late' in Carole Glasser Langille's new
book comes to mean not 'too late' but 'recently achieved, after long experience.'
Her poetry takes the always provisional knowledge derived from living and thinking,
and produces the delight of fine and fresh perception - a delight constantly
enacted in memorable language, sparkling and original yet direct and simple.
Wise and funny, private and public, various in their tones and subjects, Langille's
poems never lose their thread, they project "To eat life's brevity/the
way the North wind eats winter/and grows strong."
Carole
Langille's earlier collection of poetry, In Cannon Cave, was nominated for
the Governor General's Award (1997) and the Atlantic Poetry Prize (1998). Originally
from New York City, Carole lives in Lunenburg County with her husband and two
sons.
The Canadian
Federalist Experiment: From Defiant Monarchy to Reluctant Republic. McGill-Queens
University Press, 2003. $65. ISBN 0773525335.
The Canadian Federalist Experiment is a provocative account of how the Canadian
Fathers of Confederation defiantly determined to perpetuate the monarchical
form of government in the face of pressure from the Enlightenment philosophers
who insisted that republican government was the only legitimate form. The Canadian
framers of the Constitution of 1867 embraced the Hobbesean principles of the
English constitution which have led to the concentration of power in the office
of the prime minister. The book then argues that Trudeau's 1982 Charter of Rights
and Freedoms quietly undermined the monarchic character of the constitution
by introducing republican principles of government. The result has been old
institutional structures at odds with the new republican ambitions, leaving
Canada "clinging to the wreckage" of the old aristocratic order while
attempting to provide a new one founded on republican equality.
Frederick Vaughan is a native son of Nova Scotia, raised and educated
in Halifax. This is his fifth book which he completed in retirement on the Aspogotan
peninsula where he has lived for the past four years with his wife Carol, a
watercolor artist. Fred is completing his next book, a judicial biography of
the late Justice Emmett Hall, the real father of Canadian medicare.
ÖR.
Brick Books, 2003. $15. ISBN 1-894078-27-6.
Hilary Clark wrote of OR: "Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen's poems seduce
and trouble the reader. Syllable by syllable, synapse by synapse, the poems
develop by association, laying down intricate tracks of sense and sound; they
follow the archaic poetic logic of "jumping mind," of trance states
and dreams. These poems fuse a rich imagery of bodily experiences - birthing,
illness, insomnia, sex - into a dense, insistent music. The reader learns to
listen again, returning to the child's earliest pleasures of rhythm and singing
sound."
Tonja
Gunvaldsen Klaassen was born in Saskatoon and grew up on the prairies. Her
first book, Clay Birds, won the Saskatchewan Book Award for poetry in 1996 and
was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Tonja lives in Halifax with her
husband and their two small boys.
The Twelfth
Vulture of Romulus: Attila and the Fall of Rome. The KLYO Press, 2003 $23.75;
$15.75 US. ISBN 0-9730534-0-2.
The Twelfth Vulture
of Romulus recreates the principal events that led to the collapse of the western
Roman empire. The events are chronicled in a fictive manuscript written by the
grandson of Cassiodorus Aurelius, chief of the Imperial Secret Service and ambassador
to Attila. The story opens in AD 448, at the onset of the Century of the Twelfth
Vulture, when according to an ancient prophesy made to Romulus, the city would
fall. Barbarians are infiltrating its porous frontiers. Alien generals are commanding
its remaining legions. Attila the Hun threatens invasion. Struggles for wealth
and power are creating a miasma of corruption and sexual licence.
Boris Raymond
began his university studies at the University of California in Berkeley. After
service in the US army in Europe during World War II, he returned to earn Masters
degrees in sociology, librarianship, and history, and completed a Doctoral degree
from the University of Chicago. From 1974 until his retirement, Raymond taught
at Dalhousie University.
Jennifer Overton
Snapshots
of Autism: A Family Album. Jessica Kingsley Publilshers, 2003 $28; $18.95 US.
ISBN 1-84310-723-6.
Starting and ending
with her son Nicholas' birthday, Jennifer Overton uses key calendar events in
the year to illustrate the roller coaster of emotions that accompany life with
Nicholas. Written with sensitivity and lightness of touch, the book does not
flinch from describing the grief involved in parenting an autistic child, yet
the overall sense is one of
joy in Nicholas' accomplishments. Entertaining and insightful, parents and professionals
alike will reach for this empathic book, which includes a variety of easy to
read vignettes ranging from reflection, description, poetry, and a quiz, to
short play texts which bring alive the life of the participants.
Jennifer Overton is a Halifax actor, director, writer, and educator. Her writing related to autism started five years ago on CBC Radio's First Person Singular, and since then has expanded to include magazine articles, periodicals, and other worldwide publications related to autism. She currently teaches Acting in the Theatre Department at Dalhousie University.
Dorothy Perkyns
In addition to appearing in Alan Ayckbourn's Just Between Ourselves,
directed by Richard Perkyns at Chester Playhouse, Dorothy Perkyns has been working
on the final details of her latest book, Last Days in Africville, due
from Beach Holme Publishing in October. As its title suggests, this is a fictionalised
account of one girl's experience as Africville, the only home she has ever known,
is gradually destroyed.
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