Unusual Histories

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Octopus Books — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:07:11 -0400

Ishmael Beah
Douglas & McIntyre, 2007
Paperback, 229 pages
ISBN: 9781553653981

This book is not currently in stock, but is available to order (1-2 weeks).

It is estimated that in the more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide, there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now in his mid-twenties, tells how, at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels in his homeland of Sierra Leone and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice

Octopus Books — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:47:05 -0500

Joya, Malalai
Simon & Schuster; 2009
9781439109465

Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America

uncle_zio — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:55:29 -0500

Paul Avrich, editor
AK Press; July 2005
Paperback; 574 pages
9781904859277

This book is not currently in stock, but is available to order (1-2 weeks).

Anarchist Voices contains 180 interviews conducted by Avrich over a period of 30 years. Their stories provide a wealth of personal detail about Emma Goldman, Sacco & Vanzetti, the modern schools, ethnic politics, and legal and labor history. Finally back in print, the complete, unabridged tome!

Burmese Lessons: A Love Story

Octopus Books — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:53:57 -0500

Karen Connelly
Random House; 2009
Hardcover; 480 pages
9780207256680

Burmese Lessons is a love story. Unlike conventional love stories, this one takes the reader into a world as dangerous and heartbreaking as it is enchanting.

When Karen Connelly finds herself in Burma in the late 1990s, she is immersed in a world of students staging mass demonstrations in opposition to Burma’s dictators, revolutionaries fighting an armed insurgency against that same military regime, and refugees living in hellish limbo in Thailand. Connelly first comes to love a wounded, remarkably beautiful country, then a gifted man who has given his life to its struggle for political change. Burmese Lessons is illuminated by the sensual language and flashes of humour that have won her fans around the world.

"Connelly is a sensualist, as a writer; this memoir is redolent with the smells of food, the stink of bodies, the weight of stones carried on her head as she helps the women in a camp. . . . Readers familiar with The Lizard Cage will experience several shocks of recognition of characters and images and ideas...especially the sweet wisdom of monks, and the fleeting encounter with a feral boy who becomes one of the most memorable characters in Canadian fiction."
— The Globe and Mail

"The enchanting story of a highly erotic love affair, one made wonky and dangerous by politics. . . . Connelly's personal loss has become her book's gain."
— Winnipeg Free Press

Canadians: A Portrait of a Country and Its People

Octopus Books — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:15:52 -0400

Roy MacGregor
Penguin, 2008
Paperback, 344 pages
ISBN: 9780143053088

Who are we? Not since the publication of Bruce Hutchison’s bestselling The Unknown Country has there been as ambitious, entertaining, and incisive an answer to that eternal question.

As a journalist and author for more than thirty years, Roy MacGregor has travelled this vast country more than any other Canadian in pursuit of the often elusive national identity. A modern-day Canadian Zelig, he has gained privileged entrée into the most interesting and significant moments in recent Canadian history, and spent time with some of its most memorable people.

In this perceptive and entertaining work, MacGregor takes the full measure of Canadian life as he has known and observed it. Against the backdrop of pivotal events such as Meech Lake, the funeral of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and the 2006 Winter Olympics, and in a sparkling blend of historical, anecdotal, and reflective writing, MacGregor captures essential truths about who we are and what makes us tick, shedding light on everything from hockey, our “national id,” to our highly exportable, and perhaps highly debatable, sense of humour, to our ever-shifting self-image, both at home and abroad. With trenchant wit and deep intelligence, he maps the fault lines of our national psyche, finding it rife with contradiction on everything from our attachment to the land to our fatalism about the future, our complex relationship with each other to our on-again, off-again affair with our neighbour to the south.

Comrades: A Local History of the Black Panther Party

uncle_zio — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:32:03 -0500

Judson L Jeffries, editor
Indiana UP; December 2007
Paperback; 336 pages
978-0-253-21930-5

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in Oakland, California, in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. It was perhaps the most visible of the Black Power groups in the late 60s and early 70s, not least because of its confrontational politics, its rejection of nonviolence, and its headline-catching, gun-toting militancy. Important on the national scene and highly visible on college campuses, the Panthers also worked at building grassroots support for local black political and economic power. Although there have been many books about the Black Panthers, none has looked at the organization and its work at the local level. This book examines the work and actions of seven local initiatives in Baltimore, Winston-Salem, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. These local organizations are revealed as committed to programs of community activism that focused on problems of social, political, and economic justice.

Judson L. Jeffries is Professor of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University and Director of the African American and African Studies Community Extension Center. He is editor of Black Power in the Belly of the Beast. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Frost/Nixon: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews

Octopus Books — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:09:27 -0400

Sir David Frost & Bob Zelnick
Harper Perennial, 2007
Paperback, 368 pages
ISBN: 9780061445866

Following the resounding success of the eponymous West End and Broadway hit play, Frost/Nixon tells the extraordinary story of how Sir David Frost pursued and landed the biggest fish of his career—and how the series drew larger audiences than any news interview ever had in the United States, before being shown all over the world.

This is Frost's absorbing story of his pursuit of Richard Nixon, and is no less revealing of his own toughness and pertinacity than of the ex-President's elusiveness. Frost's encounters with such figures as Swifty Lazar, Ron Ziegler, potential sponsors, and Nixon as negotiator are nothing short of hilarious, and his insight into the taping of the programs themselves is fascinating. Frost/Nixon provides the authoritative account of the only public trial that Nixon would ever have, and a revelation of the man's character as it appeared in the stress of eleven grueling sessions before the cameras. Including historical perspective and transcripts of the edited interviews, this is the story of Sir David Frost's quest to produce one of the most dramatic pieces of television ever broadcast, described by commentators at the time as "a catharsis" for the American people.

Hear Us Out: Lesbian and Gay Stories of Struggle, Progress, and Hope, 1950 to the Present

uncle_zio — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:29:23 -0400

Nancy Garden
Macmillan; April 2007
Hardcover; 240 pages
978-0-374-31759-1

What was it like being young and gay during the closeted 1950s, the exuberant beginnings of the modern gay rights movement in the 1970s, or the frightening outbreak of HIV and AIDS in the 1980s? In this unique history, Nancy Garden uses both fact and fiction to explore just what it has meant to be young and gay in America during the last fifty years. For each decade from the 1950s on, she discusses in an essay the social and political events that shaped the lives of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people during that era. Then, in two short stories, she explores the emotional experiences of young gay people coming of age during those times, giving vivid insight into what it really felt like.

Hear Us Out! is a comprehensive and rich account of gay life, both public and private, from one of the pioneers of young adult lesbian and gay literature.

I Live Here

uncle_zio — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 14:47:35 -0500

Mia Kirshner, J.B. MacKinnon, Paul Shoebridge, Michael Simons
Pantheon; October 2008
Hardcover; 320 Pages
9780375424786

I Live Here is a visually stunning narrative — told through journals, stories, images, and graphic novellas — in which the lives of refugees and displaced people become at once personal and global. Bearing witness to stories that are too often overlooked, it is a raw and intimate journey to crises in four corners of the world: war in Chechnya, ethnic cleansing in Burma, globalization in Mexico, and AIDS in Malawi.

The voices we encounter are those of displaced women and children, in their own words or in stories told in text and images by noted writers and artists. The stories unfold in an avalanche: An orphan goes to jail for stealing leftovers. A teenage girl falls in love in a city of disappeared women. A child soldier escapes his army only to be saved by the people he was taught to kill.

Mia Kirshner’s journals guide us through a unique paper documentary brought vividly to life in collaboration with J.B. MacKinnon, Paul Shoebridge, and Michael Simons, with featured works by Joe Sacco, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Phoebe Gloeckner, Chris Abani, Karen Connelly, Kamel Khelif, and many others.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Octopus Books — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:13:12 -0400

Azar Nafisi
Random House, 2008
Paperback, 380 pages
ISBN: 9780812979305

This book is not currently in stock, but is available to order (1-2 weeks).

The Red Indians

uncle_zio — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:11:09 -0500

Peter Kulchyski
Arbeiter Ring Publishing; Nov 2007
Paperback; 176 pages
978-1894037-25-9

This book is not currently in stock, but is available to order (1-2 weeks).

The Red Indians is a theoretically nuanced, frank, and accessible book about Aboriginal resistance in Canada, historical and contemporary. In the manner of Eduardo Galeano’s famous trilogy Memories of Fire, the book uncovers a critical, living history of conflict.

The Red Indians, with its polyvalent title that points to the many issues covered in the text, introduces readers to the history of colonial oppression in Canada, and looks at contemporary examples of resistance. Kulchyski clarifies the unique and specific politics of Aboriginal resistance in Canada.

Peter Kulchyski is a leading Canadian Native Studies scholar and has published numerous books on Aboriginal issues, including Like the Sound of a Drum: Aboriginal Cultural Politics in Denendeh and Nunavut, which won the 2005 Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction.

Unbowed

darrenp — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:33:17 -0400

Wangari Maathai
Anchor Books; September 2007
Paperback
978-0-307-27520-2

In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world stage. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a vital poor people’s environmental movement, focused on the empowerment of women, that soon spread across Africa. Persevering through run-ins with the Kenyan government and personal losses, and jailed and beaten on numerous occasions, Maathai continued to fight tirelessly to save Kenya’s forests and to restore democracy to her beloved country. Infused with her unique luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai’s remarkable story of courage, faith, and the power of persistence is destined to inspire generations to come.

Zeitoun

Octopus Books — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:26:46 -0400

Dave Eggers
Knopf Canada; 2010
Paperback; 368 pages
9780307399069

A riveting account of Hurricane Katrina and a shocking tale of wrongful arrest and racism, Zeitoun is the true story of one Syrian-American, plucked from his home and accused of terrorism, written by one of America's most high-profile literary writers, now available for the first time in paperback from Vintage Canada.

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four, chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. In the days after the storm, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. A week later Zeitoun abruptly disappeared. Eggers's riveting nonfiction book, three years in the making, explores Zeitoun's roots in Syria, his marriage to Kathy — an American who converted to Islam — and their children, and the surreal atmosphere in which what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun was possible. Like What Is the What, Zeitoun was written in close collaboration with its subjects and involved vast research — in this case, in the United States, Spain, and Syria.