Book picks similar to
Unaccountable: Truth and Lies on Parliament Hill by Kevin Page
politics
non-fiction
canadian
canadian-politics
Pills, Powder, and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs
Antony Loewenstein - 2019
Pills, Powder, and Smoke explains why.The War on Drugs has been official American policy since the 1970s, with the UK, Europe, and much of the world following suit. It is at best a failed policy, according to bestselling author Antony Loewenstein. Its direct results have included mass incarceration in the US, extreme violence in different parts of the world, the backing of dictatorships, and surging drug addiction globally. And now the Trump administration is unleashing diplomatic and military forces against any softening of the conflict..Pills, Powder, and Smoke investigates the individuals, officials, activists, victims, DEA agents, and traffickers caught up in this deadly war. Travelling through the UK, the US, Australia, Honduras, the Philippines, and Guinea-Bissau, Loewenstein uncovers the secrets of the drug war, why it’s so hard to end, and who is really profiting from it.In reporting on the frontlines across the globe — from the streets of London’s King’s Cross to the killing fields of Central America to major cocaine transit routes in West Africa — Loewenstein reveals how the War on Drugs has become the most deadly war in modern times. Designed and inspired by Washington, its agenda has nothing to do with ending drug use or addiction, but is all about controlling markets, territories, and people. Instead, Loewenstein argues, the legalisation and regulation of all drugs would be a much more realistic and humane approach. The evidence presented in this book will persuade many readers that he’s right.
Dance on the Earth: a Memoir
Margaret Laurence - 1989
She relates her experiences living in different cultures; the issues and causes she so passionately upheld; her personal battle against censorship. She also pays tribute to the three women from whom she drew important spiritual strength. Including a selection of her articles, speeches, and letters – many never before published – and photographs selected by Margaret Laurence from her personal family albums, Dance on the Earth is a book in which Margaret Laurence speaks about her place in the world as a woman, a writer, and a concerned human being.
Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet
Sarah Elton - 2013
The world population is expected to reach nine billion people by 2050— that’ s nine billion hungry humans in need of food. The challenge of feeding this rapidly growing population has already been made greater by climate change, which will wreak havoc on the way we produce our food. Disruptions to industrial-scale agriculture, along with rising sea levels, will create millions of environmental refugees, fleeing their homes in search of nourishment and safety. We have also lost touch with the soil— few of us grow our own food or even know where it comes from— and we are at the mercy of the multinationals that control the crops with little foresight about the damage their methods are inflicting on the planet. This puts our very future at risk.In Consumed, award-winning writer Sarah Elton walks fields and farms on four continents, investigating not only the potential— and very real— threats to our food, but also telling the stories of those who are working hard to preserve our future. From Bogot� to Beijing, Delhi to Rome, Nairobi to Toronto, people from all walks of life are creating an alternative to the industrial food we have grown accustomed to piling into our shopping carts, and in the process giving us hope not for a daunting future but for a future in which we can all sit at the table.
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
Ronan Farrow - 2019
As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family.All the while, Farrow and his producer faced a degree of resistance that could not be explained - until now. And a trail of clues revealed corruption and cover-ups from Hollywood, to Washington, and beyond.This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability and silence victims of abuse - and it's the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement.Both a spy thriller and a meticulous work of investigative journalism, Catch and Kill breaks devastating new stories about the rampant abuse of power - and sheds far-reaching light on investigations that shook the culture.In a dramatic account of violence and espionage, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ronan Farrow exposes serial abusers and a cabal of powerful interests hell-bent on covering up the truth, at any cost.
I Can't Believe It's Not Better
Monica Heisey - 2015
Created to help you live your Best Life, this book offers tips on everything from workplace politics to sexting, from how to make your apartment look like you read design blogs to where to cry in public. Important guides like "How To Watch Literally Hours of TV At A Time" will help you sort your life out for good, while thought—provoking personal essays such as "Pizzas I Have Loved" and helpful exercises like "Are You Being Flirted With, A Quiz" provide some gravitas and perspective to help you navigate this modern world. Plus there is a very weird short story about bees.Funny, smart and charming, this book is the perfect accompaniment to your next life crisis, or at least an easy and appropriate gift for the niece you don't know very well but want to impress.Monica Heisey is a writer and comedian from Toronto. She has written for VICE, Playboy, the Guardian, Rookie, Cosmopolitan, The Hairpin, The Toast, Hello Giggles...
Faisal
Rebecca Stefoff - 1989
A biography of the Saudi Arabian king who ruled from 1964 until his assassination in 1975 and who became, during his reign, an important world leader through his control of his country's vast oil resources.
Alone Against the North: An Expedition into the Unknown
Adam Shoalts - 2015
What he discovered surprised even him, and made him a media sensation. Shoalts was no stranger to the wilderness. He had hacked his way through jungles and muskeg, had stared down polar bears and climbed mountains. But one spot on the map called out to him irresistibly: the Hudson Bay Lowlands, a trackless waste of muskeg and lonely rivers, moose and wolf, much bigger than the Amazon. Little of it has ever been explored. Cutting through this forbidding landscape is a river no hunter, no explorer, no Native guide has left any record of paddling. It is far from any important waterways, even further from any arable land, and about as far from civilization as one can get. It was this river that Shoalts was obsessively determined to explore. It took him several attempts, years of research, and two friendships that collapsed under the strain of Adam's single-minded thirst to explore this river. But finally, alone, he found the headwaters of the Again. He believed he had discovered what he had set out to find. But the adventure had just begun. Paddling his way back to Hudson Bay, where a float plane would pick him up, Shoalts discovered something that seemingly shouldn't exist: a towering unmapped waterfall. He also discovered edenic islands, and braved rock-strewn rapids, but the waterfall captured both his imagination and the world's. Adam did a single interview, with The Guardian, and once the story hit, he was a celebrity. He appeared on morning TV and was made the Explorer in Residence of the Canadian Geographic Society. What struck a chord with people was the realization that the world is bigger than we think. We assume that because we have mapped it from space, it must be exhaustively known. But it is wilder, stranger, less homogenous than we assume. We hardly know it. And, contrary to popular wisdom, it is certainly not flat. In other words, the age of exploration is not over.
Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls
Elizabeth Renzetti - 2018
Drawing upon Renzetti’s decades of reporting on feminist issues, Shrewed is a book about feminism’s crossroads. From Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to the quest for equal pay, from the lessons we can learn from old ladies to the future of feminism in a turbulent world, Renzetti takes a pointed, witty look at how far we’ve come — and how far we have to go.If Nellie McClung and Erma Bombeck had an IVF baby, this book would be the result. If they’d lived at the same time. And in the same country. And if IVF had been invented. Well, you get the point.
White House, Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency into a Business
Dan Alexander - 2020
is the definitive book on money and politics in the Trump era. It examines every aspect of the president's portfolio: his exclusive clubs, D.C. hotel, overseas partnerships, commercial properties, personal mansions and private planes.It also investigates Trump associates. The president's disregard for norms set the tone at the top of the federal government, sparking a trickle-down ethics crisis with no precedent in modern American history. Trump appointed an inner circle of centimillionaires and billionaires--including Jared Kushner, Wilbur Ross and Carl Icahn--who all arrived in Washington with their own conflict-ridden portfolios. With the president as their guide, they busted through barriers meant to separate their financial holdings from their government roles.Alexander tracks hundreds of millions flowing freely between big businesses and President Trump. He explains, in plain language, how Donald Trump bought and sold the presidency. In the tradition of game-changing political exposés like Dark Money, White House, Inc. represents the most complete financial account of the Trump presidency.
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
Anne Case - 2020
In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year--and they're still rising. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. They demonstrate why, for those who used to prosper in America, capitalism is no longer delivering.Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today's America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this critically important book, Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.This book charts a way forward, providing solutions that can rein in capitalism's excesses and make it work for everyone.
The Storm: The World Economic Crisis What It Means
Vince Cable - 2009
This paperback edition has been fully revised and updated to include Vince Cable’s latest assessment of the recession.
Death on the Barrens: A True Story of Courage and Tragedy in the Canadian Arctic
George James Grinnell - 1996
George Grinnell was one of six young men who set off on the 1955 expedition led by experienced wilderness canoeist Art Moffatt. Poorly planned and executed, the journey seemed doomed from the start. Ignoring the approaching winter, the men became entranced with the peace and beauty of the arctic in autumn. As winter closed in, they suddenly faced numbing cold and dwindling food. When the crew is swept over a waterfall, Moffatt is killed and most of the gear and emergency food supplies destroyed. Confronting freezing conditions and near starvation, the remaining crew struggled to make it back to civilization. For Grinnell, the three-month expedition was both a rite of passage and a spiritual odyssey. In the Barrens, he lost his sense of identity and what he had been conditioned to think about society and himself. Forever changed by the experience, he unsparingly describes how the expedition influenced his adult life and what powerful insights he was able to glean from this life-altering experience.
Cry Havoc
Simon Mann - 2011
On March 7, 2004, former SAS soldier and mercenary Simon Mann prepared to take off from Harare International Airport. His destination was Equatorial Guinea; his was intention to remove one of the most brutal dictators in Africa in a privately organized coup d'etat. The plot had the tacit approval of Western intelligence agencies and Mann had planned, overseen, and won two wars in Angola and Sierra Leone. So why did it go so wrong? Here he reveals the full involvement of Mark Thatcher in the coup d'etat, the endorsement of a former prime minister, and the financial involvement of two internationally famous members of the House of Lords. He also discusses how the British government approached him in the months preceding the Iraq War, to suggest ways in which a justified invasion of Iraq could be engineered. He also discusses the pain of telling his wife Amanda, who gave birth to their fourth child while he was incarcerated, that he believed he would never be freed.
The Mad Trapper of Rat River: A True Story of Canada's Biggest Manhunt
Dick North - 1972
Now author Dick North (of course) may have solved the mystery of the Mad Trapper's true identity, thereby enhancing the saga."--Thomas McIntyre, author of Seasons & Days: A Hunting Life "A courageous and unrelenting posse on the trail of a furious and desperate wilderness outlaw . . . Lean and bloody, meticulously researched, The Mad Trapper of Rat River is a dark and haunting story of human endurance, adventure, and will that speeds along like the best fiction."--Bob Butz, author of Beast of Never, Cat of God They called it "The Arctic Circle War." It was a forty-eight-day manhunt across the harshest terrain in the world, the likes of which we will never see again. The quarry, Albert Johnson, was a loner working a string of traps in the far reaches of Canada's Northwest Territories, where winter temperatures average forty degrees below zero. The chase began when two Mounties came to ask Johnson about allegations that he had interfered with a neighbor's trap. No questions were asked. Johnson discharged the first shot through a hole in the wall of his log cabin. When the Mounties returned with reinforcements, Johnson was gone, and The Arctic Circle War had begun. On Johnson's heels were a corps of Mounties and an irregular posse on dogsled. Johnson, on snowshoes, seemed superhuman in his ability to evade capture. The chase stretched for hundreds of miles and, during a blizzard, crossed the Richardson Mountains, the northernmost extension of the Rockies. It culminated in the historic shootout at Eagle River.
I Do Not Consent: My Fight Against Medical Cancel Culture
Simone Gold - 2020