Utopia


Thomas More
    The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society as described by the character Raphael Hythloday who lived there some years, who describes and its religious, social and political customs.

Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present


Robyn Maynard - 2017
    Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada.While highlighting the ubiquity of Black resistance, Policing Black Lives traces the still-living legacy of slavery across multiple institutions, shedding light on the state's role in perpetuating contemporary Black poverty and unemployment, racial profiling, law enforcement violence, incarceration, immigration detention, deportation, exploitative migrant labour practices, disproportionate child removal and low graduation rates.Emerging from a critical race feminist framework that insists that all Black lives matter, Maynard's intersectional approach to anti-Black racism addresses the unique and understudied impacts of state violence as it is experienced by Black women, Black people with disabilities, as well as queer, trans, and undocumented Black communities.A call-to-action, Policing Black Lives urges readers to work toward dismantling structures of racial domination and re-imagining a more just society.

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It


Lawrence Lessig - 2011
    Federal Election Commission trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature.With heartfelt urgency and a keen desire for righting wrongs, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes a clear-eyed look at how we arrived at this crisis: how fundamentally good people, with good intentions, have allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, and how this exploitation has become entrenched in the system. Rejecting simple labels and reductive logic-and instead using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left-Lessig seeks out the root causes of our situation. He plumbs the issues of campaign financing and corporate lobbying, revealing the human faces and follies that have allowed corruption to take such a foothold in our system. He puts the issues in terms that nonwonks can understand, using real-world analogies and real human stories. And ultimately he calls for widespread mobilization and a new Constitutional Convention, presenting achievable solutions for regaining control of our corrupted-but redeemable-representational system. In this way, Lessig plots a roadmap for returning our republic to its intended greatness. While America may be divided, Lessig vividly champions the idea that we can succeed if we accept that corruption is our common enemy and that we must find a way to fight against it. In REPUBLIC, LOST, he not only makes this need palpable and clear-he gives us the practical and intellectual tools to do something about it.

Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights


Will Kymlicka - 1995
    This book presents a new conception of the rights and status of minority cultures. It arguesthat certain collective rights of minority cultures are consistent with liberal democratic principles, and that standard liberal objections to such rights can be answered. However, the author emphasizes that no single formula can be applied to all groups, and that the needs and aspirations ofimmigrants are very different from those of indigenous peoples and national minorities. He looks at issues such as language rights, group representation, religious education, federalism, and secession--issues central to an understanding of multicultural politics, but which have been neglected incontemporary liberal theory. Scholars of political theory and philosophy, as well as the general reader, will find this work to be the most comprehensive analysis to date of this crucial political issue.

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth


Margaret Atwood - 2007
    She doesn’t talk about high finance or managing money; instead, she goes far deeper to explore debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies. By looking at how debt has informed our thinking from preliterate times to the present day, from the stories we tell of revenge and sin to the way we order social relationships, Atwood argues that the idea of what we owe may well be built into the human imagination as one of its most dynamic metaphors. Her final lecture addresses the notion of a debt to nature and the need to find new ways of interacting with the natural world before it is too late.

Strength of Conviction


Tom Mulcair - 2015
    He’s won the respect of his opponents for his political skill, and the trust and admiration of observers for his unwavering conviction and proven integrity. His personal story, how he rose from modest beginnings in a hard-working family to the threshold of forming government, is less well known.Now, in this fascinating autobiography, we discover the man behind the headlines, who he is, how he thinks, and how he comes by the values that shaped his character. Learn about his vision to empower Canadians to build a more prosperous, hopeful country, to reduce disparities, to protect our rights and freedoms, and to preserve our land and waters for future generations.

The Rule of Law


Tom Bingham - 2010
    The idea of the rule of law as the foundation of modern states and civilisations has recently become even more talismanic than that of democracy, but what does it actually consist of?In this brilliant short book, Britain's former senior law lord, and one of the world's most acute legal minds, examines what the idea actually means. He makes clear that the rule of law is not an arid legal doctrine but is the foundation of a fair and just society, is a guarantee of responsible government, is an important contribution to economic growth and offers the best means yet devised for securing peace and co-operation. He briefly examines the historical origins of the rule, and then advances eight conditions which capture its essence as understood in western democracies today. He also discusses the strains imposed on the rule of law by the threat and experience of international terrorism.The book will be influential in many different fields and should become a key text for anyone interested in politics, society and the state of our world.

The Longer I'm Prime Minister: Stephen Harper and Canada, 2006-


Paul Allen Wells - 2013
    Oh, he may win again but he won’t get a majority. Oh, his trick bag is emptying fast, the ads are backfiring, the people are onto him, and soon his own party will turn on him. And let me tell you, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy . . .Despite a constant barrage of outrage and disbelief from his detractors, Stephen Harper is on his way to becoming one of Canada’s most significant prime ministers. He has already been in power longer than Lester B. Pearson and John Diefenbaker. By 2015, and the end of this majority term, he’ll have caught up to Brian Mulroney. No matter the ups and downs, the triumphs and the self-inflicted wounds, Harper has been moving to build the Canada he wants—the Canada a significant proportion of Canadian voters want or they wouldn’t have elected him three times. As Wells writes, “He could not win elections without widespread support in the land. . . . Which suggests that Harper has what every successful federal leader has needed to survive over a long stretch of time: a superior understanding of Canada.”In The Longer I’m Prime Minister, Paul Wells explores just what Harper’s understanding of Canada is, and who he speaks for in the national conversation. He explains Harper not only to Harper supporters but also to readers who can’t believe he is still Canada’s prime minister. In this authoritative, engaging and sometimes deeply critical account of the man, Paul Wells also brings us an illuminating portrait of Canadian democracy: “glorious, a little dented, and free.”

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment


Anthony Lewis - 2007
    The media can air the secrets of the White House, the boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or penalty. The reason for this extraordinary freedom is not a superior culture of tolerance, but just fourteen words in our most fundamental legal document: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution. In Lewis's telling, the story of how the right of free expression evolved along with our nation makes a compelling case for the adaptability of our constitution. Although Americans have gleefully and sometimes outrageously exercised their right to free speech since before the nation's founding, the Supreme Court did not begin to recognize this right until 1919. Freedom of speech and the press as we know it today is surprisingly recent. Anthony Lewis tells us how these rights were created, revealing a story of hard choices, heroic (and some less heroic) judges, and fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face-to-face with one of America's great founding ideas.

India's Legal System: Can It Be Saved?


Fali S. Nariman - 2006
    But how are lawyers and the judicial system in India perceived today? It is no secret that the very thought of facing the courts in India leaves the common man with a sense of dread and despair; cases drag on interminably, and justice sometimes seems like an afterthought. Who or what is responsible for this situation? Where have we lost our way? It is at times good to see ourselves as others see us, and the picture is not a very flattering one, argues Fali S. Nariman, renowned constitutional expert, practising lawyer and president of the Bar Association of India. In this frank and thought-provoking book, he realistically appraises the performance of those in the profession and what they need to do in the years ahead, and addresses some home truths about our country's legal system.

The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World (CBC Massey Lecture)


Wade Davis - 2009
    In Polynesia we set sail with navigators whose ancestors settled the Pacific ten centuries before Christ. In the Amazon we meet the descendants of a true lost civilization, the Peoples of the Anaconda. In the Andes we discover that the earth really is alive, while in Australia we experience Dreamtime, the all-embracing philosophy of the first humans to walk out of Africa. We then travel to Nepal, where we encounter a wisdom hero, a Bodhisattva, who emerges from forty-five years of Buddhist retreat and solitude. And finally we settle in Borneo, where the last rain forest nomads struggle to survive. Understanding the lessons of this journey will be our mission for the next century. For at risk is the human legacy--a vast archive of knowledge and expertise, a catalog of the imagination. Rediscovering a new appreciation for the diversity of the human spirit, as expressed by culture, is among the central challenges of our time.

Party of One


Michael Harris - 2014
    Harris looks at Harper’s policies, instincts, and the often breathtaking gap between his stated political principles and his practices.Harris argues that Harper is more than a master of controlling information: he is a profoundly anti-democratic figure. In the F-35 debacle, the government’s sin wasn’t only keeping the facts from Canadians, it was in inventing them. Harper himself provided the key confabulations, and they are irrefutably (and unapologetically) on the public record from the last election. This is no longer a matter of partisan debate, but a fact Canadians must interpret for what it may signify.Harris illustrates how Harper has made war on every independent source of information in Canada since coming to power.Party of Oneis about a man with a well-defined and growing enemies list of those not wanted on the voyage: union members, scientists, diplomats, environmentalists, First Nations peoples, and journalists.Against the backdrop of a Conservative commitment to transparency and accountability, Harris exposes the ultra-secrecy, non-compliance, and dismissiveness of this prime minister. And with the Conservative majority in Parliament, the law is simple: what one man, the PM, says, goes.

Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In


Bernie Sanders - 2016
    In the book, Sanders shares experiences from the campaign trail and outlines his ideas for continuing a political revolution to fight for a progressive economic, environmental, racial and social justice agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all.

Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985-95


Michael Barclay - 2001
    Bands like The Tragically Hip, Blue Rodeo, and Sloan created a fever pitch for Canadian music, but there were also numerous others in the underground who created equally exciting work. This vital, lively, and entertaining examination of a groundbreaking decade contains vivid original photographs and interviews with all the major players.

A Matter of Confidence: The Inside Story of the Political Battle for BC


Robert Shaw - 2018
     British Columbia's political arena has always been the site of dramatic rises and falls, infighting, scandal, and come-from-behind victories. However, no one was prepared for the historic events of spring 2017, when the Liberal government of Christy Clark, one of the most polarizing premiers in recent history, was toppled.A Matter of Confidence gives readers an insider's look at the overconfidence that fuelled the rise and fall of Clark's premiership and the historic non-confidence vote that defeated her government and ended her political career. Beginning with this pivotal moment, the book goes back and chronicles the downfall of Clark's predecessor, Gordon Campbell, which led to her unlikely victory in 2013, and traces the events leading up to her defeat at the hands of her NDP and Green opponents. Told by reporters Richard Zussman and Rob Shaw, who covered every moment of the election cycle, and illustrated by candid and extensive interviews with political insiders from both sides of the aisle--including Christy Clark and John Horgan--this book is a must read for anyone who cares about BC politics and the future of the province.