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The Border
ISBN/GTIN

Product description

Insightful, prescient and often funny, The Border explores what it means to be Canadian and what Canada means to the giant to our south.

If good fences make good neighbours, do we have the sort of fence that will allow us to maintain neighbourly relations with the world's only superpower?

In The Border, well-known political scientist and journalist James Laxer explores this question by taking the reader on a compelling 5000-mile journey into culture, politics, history, and the future of Canadian sovereignty.

Long ignored (or celebrated) as "the world's longest undefended border, the line between us and the US is now a stress point. The attacks on the World Trade Center announced to the world that North America is no longer a quiet neighbourhood and made our relationship with the US one of the most pressing questions facing Canadians.

The porousness of the border is sure to be more problematic as the world becomes more troubled. Canadian officials complain of American pornography, drugs, untaxed cigarettes and, especially, guns moving northwards. For their part, the FBI and US Customs Service blame Canada for the infiltration of Chinese gangs smuggling immigrants and, more urgently, third-world terrorist cells based north of the border.

Drawing deeply from history and anecdote, Laxer shows that for all our neighbourly good will, the Canada-US border has been contentious since the American War of Independence. In the mid-1800s the Americans tried to seize the west coast up to the 54th parallel. On the other hand, until 1931 the Canadian Army's "Defence Scheme Number One was to launch a surprise attack on the US with Mexico and Japan as allies.

But beyond the fraught politics of the border, Laxer discovers another legacy as well. Travelling the country from Campobello island in the east to Richmond BC in the west all the way up to the Alaska panhandle in the north, Laxer meets people who live within a stone's throw of the foreigners on the other side, and who share with him tales of friendship and rivalry, smuggling and trade that have shaped the character of their communities.
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Details

Additional ISBN/GTIN9780385672900
Product TypeE-book
BindingE-book
FormatEPUB
Format noteDRM Adobe
FormatE101
Publishing date14/05/2010
LanguageEnglish
File size4112 Kbytes
Article no.4519219
CatalogsVC
Data source no.252556
Product groupBU949
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Auf einer Skala zwischen eins und fünf bekommt dieses Buch von mir eine glatte Zehn. - Es ist absolut faszinierend wie klug Rutger Bregman seine Argumentation aufbaut und damit einen Großteil dessen, was uns immer wieder an negativer Geisteshaltung vorgebetet wird, dekonstruiert. Dabei ist das Buch absolut lesbar geschrieben. Die radikale Botschaft motiviert gleich in zweifacher Hinsicht: Zum einen bestärkt sie uns in einer kritischen und mutigen Geisteshaltung, die wir derzeit alle gut gebrauchen können. Zum anderen spendet sie Hoffnung, dass wir unsere kleinen und großen Schützengräben verlassen und in ein neues Zeitalter übergehen können. Ein realistisches, wissenschaftliches Buch für Optimisten und solche, die es werden möchten.
Reading Obama's book, one is immediately overwhelmed by a surge of nostalgia and even some bafflement. Was it really only four years ago that America had a president whose discourse with the public could operate above the level of a tweet ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS? And was this president adept at compromise and working with his political opponents to achieve his goals, rather than sacking his allies VIA CAPS LOCK TWEET?
Nostalgia may well be one's first impression when reading this book but it will quickly be overcome by the realisation that Obama's differences to Trump extend to his ability to build a tense and gripping narrative about the driest of subjects (to be fair I haven't read "The Art of the Deal"), and by his ability to write in beautiful (sometimes a bit too flowery) prose. This isn't a memoir full of great revelations but instead of great insight and a reminder that maybe America was great enough already. BEST PRESIDENTIAL MEMOIR EVER! AMAZING!!!
It's not always easy to praise Nobel Prize juries but in bringing Svetlana Alexievich to global attention, they have (by contrast to giving a gong to a guy with a guitar) done great service to global literature. This is her first book and not only one of the best books on World War Two I have read but also a superb advertisement for oral history as a historical and literary form. Even today, it feels fresh and somewhat revolutionary for giving a voice to the huge range of women who fought in the Red Army nearly 40 years after its first publication. What makes the narrative so compelling that it shows which Soviet narratives were widely adopted by ordinary soldiers but also clearly demonstrates this was not a perfect process. And while the horror of war is its central theme, it also shows how fighting could for some (but again not all) female Soviet soldier be emancipatory. A stunning book which is set the stone for her subsequent entirely Nobel-worthy corpus of work.
In Kapuscinski's strange, genre-defying work, a choir of former courtiers whispers to him about the extravagances and eventual decline of the Ethiopian monarchy. The book sits somewhere between oral history and reportage but its strange magic is wrought through the voices of the disgraced king's servants, now in hiding and only to be met through secret doors. They describe the lavish palace, the absurd rituals and the absolute power of the king that everyone had to scrape under. Their flowery language of adoration and servitude masks hidden depths of resentment and glee. It is this contradiction, as well as the observations on possibly the last absolutist monarchy, that make this book the astonishing masterpiece it is.
Auch wenn ich Zweigs Sprache bisweilen als etwas schwulstig und altertümlich empfinde und die Miniaturen ein gewisses Maß an Geschichtswissen voraussetzen, haben mich viele der Handlungen gepackt. Besonders Scotts dramatische Südpolexpedition war fast unerträglich spannend.
Der ganz besondere Reiz dieses Buches ist, dass es sich um wahre Begebenheiten handelt und somit Geschichte lebendig werden lässt. Als Leser lernt man unter anderem Händel, Goethe und Tolstoi privat kennen und hat das Gefühl, mit ihnen in einem Raum zu sitzen.
Uki Goni's book about Nazi criminals escaping to Argentina is not new. It has instead been republished with a foreword by Philippe Sands who claims to have devoured it in one sitting. I freely admit to being a lot less intelligent that Sands (there is a reason why he pleads cases at the International Court of Human Rights) and I write very short reviews of history books. However I am not sure I quite believe him. Goni's book is incredibly important and it is also very compelling - he carefully and forensically constructs a case which proves beyond any reasonable doubt (maybe Sands could read it so quickly because it is like reading a more exciting version of a legal case) that Argentinia was not some randomly selected point of exile for Nazis in hiding but instead was deeply complicit in not only allowing them entry but actively welcoming them. But the forensic detail can be stifling with no character being too minor for a mention. Despite this, it is a shocking and important book.
It's not always easy to praise Nobel Prize juries but in bringing Svetlana Alexievich to global attention, they have (by contrast to giving a gong to a guy with a guitar) done great service to global literature. This is her first book and not only one of the best books on World War Two I have read but also a superb advertisement for oral history as a historical and literary form. Even today, it feels fresh and somewhat revolutionary for giving a voice to the huge range of women who fought in the Red Army nearly 40 years after its first publication. What makes the narrative so compelling that it shows which Soviet narratives were widely adopted by ordinary soldiers but also clearly demonstrates this was not a perfect process. And while the horror of war is its central theme, it also shows how fighting could for some (but again not all) female Soviet soldier be emancipatory. A stunning book which is set the stone for her subsequent entirely Nobel-worthy corpus of work.
Ein großes historisches Abenteuer, wie die legendäre Arktis-Expedition, zu der 1845 die damals modernsten Schiffe ihrer Zeit, die "Erebus" und die "Terror" unter der Leitung von Sir John Franklin aufbrachen, erzählt als Graphic Novel. Kann das funktionieren? Und ob.
In diesem ersten Teil der Trilogie erzählt Kristina Gehrmann, die hierfür 2016 mit dem Deutschen Jugendliteratur Preis ausgezeichnet wurde, in nahe am Manga-Stil gezeichneten, überzeugenden Bildern vor allem vom optimistischen Aufbruch und dem ersten Überwintern im Eis. Sie gibt Einblick in Leben und Gefühlswelten einzelner Figuren, vom Heizer und Schiffsjungen bis zum Kapitän, erzählt von Ängsten, Sehnsüchten und der Abenteuerlust, die all diese Männer vereint.
Durch den Prolog, in dem selbst ahnungslosen Lesern klar wird, wie tragisch diese Reise endet, wird die Geschichte so spannend , dass wohl jeder oder jede Leser*in ab 12 nach dem Ende dieses ersten Bandes sofort den zweiten Band "Gefangen" lesen muss.

Author

James Laxer is one of Canada's leading political thinkers and the author of fourteen books, including the most recent Stalking the Elephant: My Discovery of America. A professor of political science at York University's Atkinson College and a frequent media commentator on the economy, politics and social issues, he lives, and runs, in Toronto.