Doors Open

'Rankin is a master story-teller ... I read this in one sitting' Guardian Mike Mackenzie is a self-made man with too much time on his hands and a bit of the devil in his soul. He is looking for something to liven up the days and settles on a plot to rip-off one of the most high-profile targets in the capital - the National Gallery of Scotland. So, together with two close friends from the art world, he devises a plan to lift some of the most valuable artwork around. But of course, the real trick is to rob the place - whilst persuading the world that no crime was ever committed...

Why is leadership not diverse and what can be done about it? Opening Doors to Diversity in Leadership provides evidence and options for businesses to build a more diverse workforce, leadership team and corporate culture.

Will You Open Your Heart and Home to Children in Need? As a teenager, Kristin Berry had heard all the horror stories surrounding foster care and adoption—abuse, neglect, rejection, anger, and misunderstandings. But instead of closing her heart, God opened it wide. This is Kristin’s honest, unvarnished story of some of her experiences as a foster parent of twenty-three children over the course of nine years. What she learned is that living in a foster home is like living with a revolving door. You never know who will arrive or who you will have to say goodbye to. Leaving the door open means there will be heartache and pain, but also adventure and unexpected joy. Kristin and her husband, Mike, have been through it all in their unique parenting journey. If you have ever wondered what it’s really like to be a foster parent, this book will help you gain a true understanding of the everyday trials and triumphs these moms and dads face. It will also inspire you to consider opening your door…and to leave it wide open.

From the award-winning, groundbreaking author of A Brief History of Anxiety...Yours and Mine comes a touching, exhilarating, challenging exploration of the inexplicable gleamings of another world many of us experience, in life, in grief, and near death. Sparked by extraordinary experiences that occurred in her family when her father and her sister both died in 2008, Patricia Pearson was launched on a journey of investigation into what she calls "a curious sort of modern underground--a world beneath the secular world, inhabited by ordinary human beings having extraordinary experiences that they aren't, on the whole, willing to disclose." Roughly half the bereaved population, about 20% of those near death who recover, and an unreported number of the dying witness or experience a sensed presence, the mystery of near-death awareness, and, if they are not in horrible pain or medicated into unconsciousness, rationally inexplicable feelings of transcendence and grace as they depart on the journey from which none of us return. Pearson brings us effortlessly into her illuminating quest for answers, inspiring us to own up to experiences we may never have shared with anyone. Secular or religious, all of us wonder deeply about these things if we let ourselves, and also about the medical, social and psychological implications of understanding what it means to pass through heaven's door.

"There was nothing but parties in Hogan's Alley," a black musician named Austin Phillips reminisced in 1977, "Night time, anytime, and Sundays all day. You could go by at 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning and you could hear the juke boxes going, you hear somebody hammering on the piano, playing the guitar, or hear somebody fighting." The black ghetto of Hogan's Alley was just one of the ethnic neighbourhoods that made the historic Strathcona district the most cosmopolitan and colourful quarter in Vancouver for over a hundred years. Home to Chinatown, Japantown, the Loggers' Skid Row and Little Italy among others, it had been the city's first residential neighbourhood but became the refuge of the city's working and immigrant classes when better-off Vancouverites migrated westward around 1900. By the 1950s planners had declared it a slum slated for demolition, but in the 1960s residents united in a spirited defense that guaranteed Strathcona's survival and revolutionized city planning across Canada. It had long been known that some of Vancouver's best stories lurked behind the closed doors of the Strathcona district (rock legend Jimi Hendrix spent part of his childhood living there with his grandmother, who is interviewed in this book.) Between 1977 and 1978, Strathcona writers Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter undertook to open those doors and collect 50 oral histories representing the best of the stories. First published in 1979 as a double issue of the journal Sound Heritage, Opening Doors has been celebrated as one of the best books about Vancouver you couldn't obtain for love nor money. To help mark Vancouver's 125th Anniversary, Harbour is republishing this underground classic as a Raincoast Monograph richly illustrated with vintage photographs.

'The Door Is Open' is a compassionate, reflective, and informative memoir about three-and-a-half years spent volunteering at a skid row drop-in centre in Vancouver's downtown eastside. In an area most renowned for its shocking social ills, and the notorious distinction of holding the country's "very poorest forward sortation area of all 7,000 postal prefixes," Bart Campbell dismantles our hard-held notions about poverty, the disenfranchised, substance abuse, and the nature of charity.'The Door Is Open' is one man's story of a transformative journey into the complicated and complex world of poverty.Finalist BC Book PrizeHubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize"His narrative reads like a 1930s 'noir' journey into the seamier sides of cities once prowled by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. It is this straight-up style that is both the book's strength and, on occasion, its only weak link. Readers looking for a sense of hope will find little of it in Campbell'sgritty descriptions. Indeed, some readers might mistake his unrelenting portrayl of skid row inhabitants as representative of the homeless population across Canada, most of whom are not victims of addiction or mental illness, but of an economy that has been stacked against them for most of their lives, if not for generations before." - Quill & Quire"What is most refreshing about Campbell's memoir is that it neither self-aggrandizes nor propagates a misinformed political message. His work has an objective tone and each chapter is well researched...this is one of the best books I've read all year." - DiscorderFinalist City of Vancouver Book Prize

"Doors Close, Doors Open is based on Morton Lieberman's interviews with seven hundred widows and widowers over the course of seven years. In this book he shares the wisdom he has gained, retelling women's stories about the pain and anger and challenges they face in the first few months of being widowed. But most important, Lieberman has made discoveries that expose many of the pernicious myths about widows, and discloses the surprising sources of help for women and the fact that there is light at the end of the tunnel. The vast majority of women, after a painful time, found themselves flourishing - living different but satisfying lives, and changing and growing in ways they never could have dreamed of. This is a book that offers comfort and consolation by understanding so much of what so many women go through and by revealing the truth about widows: that women of all ages have the ability to respond to tragedy, to deal effectively with challenges, and to realize new ways to live and be well."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

In the sixties, architecture fell in love with concrete. Architecture has since shifted its fondness to glass and steel, and concrete buildings have fallen out of favor and into disrepair. But they represent an exciting era of faith in architecture and technical innovation that has yet to be documented.Concrete Torontoacts as a guidebook to the city's extensive concrete heritage. Architects, journalists, professors, concrete experts, and even the original architects use a wealth of new and archival photos, drawings, interviews, articles, and case studies to celebrate Toronto's concrete past.