Peter C. Newman0.0 Now aged 75, Peter C. Newman at last tells the story of his stranger-than-fiction life. Try to keep up as we follow his many lives: as a pampered child in a Czech chateau; a Jewish kid in short pants being machine-gunned by Nazi fighter planes on the beach at Biarritz, en route to the last ship to escape from France in 1940; as a refugee on an Ontario farm; as an outsider on a scholarship at Upper Canada College; as a" Financial Post" journalist, then an author whose "Renegade in Power" made Canadian politics dramatic and disrespectfully exciting for the first time; as the man who revealed the secrets of the rulers of the Canadian business world in "The Canadian Establishment," and other huge business success stories, including "The Establishment Man," on Conrad Black; or the millionaire who turned his back on business books and tackled Canadian history ("Company of Adventurers" and other triumphs), in a career where his work has dominated the bestseller lists in politics, business, history, and current affairs.
In the midst of all this were his years at the "Toronto Star" and "Maclean's" where, as editor, he took the magazine weekly - a huge accomplishment. He is still a legend there, where his columns continue to run.
He knew and wrote about every prime minister from Louis St. Laurent to Paul Martin and every prominent Canadian - hero or villain - in between. Yet his most interesting character is - Peter C. Newman. Incredibly, this central figure known to millions of Canadians sees himself as a perennial outsider. In personal terms, the rich little Czech boy whose nannies never stayed talks frankly about his marriages and the women he has known before his ultimate marriage to his beloved Alvy. His enthusiasms - from jazz to the Canadian Navy, not to mention his adventures on his beloved sailboat - make for a rich portrait of an astonishingcharacter, one who never stops being controversial.
Бишоп-Столл Шонесси0.0 For some young men, climbing Everest or sailing solo into polar seas isn’t the biggest risk in the world. Instead it is venturing alone into the deepest urban jungle, where human nature is the dangerous, incomprehensible and sometimes wildly uplifting force that tests not only your ability to survive but also your own humanity.
One cold November day, Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall heads out on just such a quest. He packs up a new tent, some clothes, his notebooks and a pen and goes to live in Tent City, twenty-seven lawless acres where the largest hobo town on the continent squats in the scandalized shadow of Canada’s largest city. The rules he sets for himself are simple: no access to money, family or friends, except what he can find from that day on. He’ll do whatever people in Tent City do to get by, be whatever bum, wino, beggar, hustler, criminal, junkie or con man he chooses to be on any given day.
When he arrives, he finds a dump full of the castaways of the last millennium, human and otherwise. On the edge of the world, yet somehow smack in the middle of it all, fugitives, drug addicts, prostitutes, dealers and ex-cons have created an anarchic society, where the rules are made up nightly and your life depends on knowing them. Not only does Bishop-Stall manage to survive until the bulldozers come, but against all odds his own heart and spirit slowly mend. An astonishing account of birth, suicide, brawls, binges, tears, crazed laughter, good and bad intentions, fiendish charity and the sudden eloquence and generosity of broken souls, Down to This is Bishop-Stall’s iridescent love song to a lost city like no other.
Чарльз Монтгомери0.0 In 1892, the Bishop of Tasmania set sail for Melanesia with the intent of rescuing islanders from lives of fear, black magic and cannibalism. Over 100 years later, his great grandson, Charles Montgomery, followed the bishop's route through the South Pacific, seeking out the spirits and myths his missionary forebear had sought to destroy.
Montgomery explored remote shores where gospel and empire never took hold. He rubbed shoulders with barefoot preachers, witch doctors and gun-toting rebels, only to discover that the pagan spirits were more tenacious than the missionaries had imagined. Melanesians had stirred Jesus and Mary into an already spicy broth of ancestor worship, ghosts, shark gods and magic. Through confrontations with a bizarre cast of characters -- the randy ethnographer, the soft-talking assassin, the leper prophet -- the journey becomes a debate on the nature of magic, myth and faith, and a metaphor for the transforming power of story.
The Last Heathen marks the debut of an exciting young writer who charts his adventures with passion, insight and grace.
Harry Thurston0.0 Based upon childhood memory and his naturalist's journals, A Place between the Tides is the story of Harry Thurston's return to the beloved environment of his boyhood when he moves to the Old Marsh on the banks of the Tidnish River in Nova Scotia. The book describes the seasons in the life of the marsh as filtered through two decades of Thurston's living there.
Blending acute analysis and a poet's lyricism,Thurston explores and examines one of the most productive and biologically diverse habitats on Earth. This is a story of the salt marsh, but it is also the story of a personal odyssey, a homecoming for Thurston as a naturalist, culminating in the re-discovery of the bounty of nature where land meets sea.
