Slashburner

Nick Raeside worked at many jobs in the logging business but the one that he specialized in was starting fires—small, (hopefully) controlled fires used to clean up logging slash or debris-laden sites left after the merchantable timber had been removed. It was a crude way of reducing fire hazard and clearing the ground for replanting, and there was a constant danger that the controlled burns would get away and become real wildfires, destroying millions of dollars’ worth of standing timber. Raeside found this challenge irresistible. In Slashburner, Raeside recounts many hilarious anecdotes from his career in the woods during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, when he and his slashburning crews rampaged throughout southeastern BC armed with drip torches, chainsaws and explosives. They lit fires. They put some of them out. They survived rockslides, animal encounters and flare fights. Slashburner is a rollicking tale, capturing the good old times in the logging business, when danger and excitement were the order of the day and almost everyone you met was a memorable character.

A lively, hair-raising memoir about working in the British Columbia logging industry back in the days when anything went.

Writing for News Media is a down-to-earth guide on how to write news stories for online, print and broadcast audiences. It celebrates the craft of storytelling, arguing for its continued importance in a modern newsroom. With dynamism and humour, Ian Pickering, a journalist with 30 years’ experience, offers readers practical advice on being a news journalist, with step-by-step guidance on creating a great story and writing the perfect news copy. Chapters include: extracts from published news articles to help illustrate the dos and don’ts of storytelling; the ten golden rules for structuring and putting together a successful news article, including ‘Nail the intro’, ‘Let it flow’ and ‘Keep it simple’; instruction on writing stories for different specialist subjects, including politics, court cases, economics, funnies and celebrity; help for readers on how to write for broadcast news; tips on how to write headlines, how to use pictures, how to make the most of quotations and how to avoid common style and grammar mistakes; glossaries covering a range of different aspects of news journalism, including types of news story, online and data journalism, typesetting and broadcasting. This is an instructive and insightful manual which champions brilliant storytelling and writing with flair. It introduces a set of key creative and analytical techniques that will help students of journalism and young professionals hone and refi ne their story-writing skills.

Peregrinations: A Man's Journey is the story of a life that may never have been, that of a man who survived a plane crash, and escaped Portland, Oregon, to become a globetrotting private banker for wealthy Middle Eastern clients. After paying his dues in Liberia under President Tubman, and in Saudi Arabia just before the oil crisis of 1973, Cedric Grant experiences the heyday of international banking, as Walter Wriston transforms Citibank into the largest financial institution in the world. Luck and perseverance combine to turn ugly twists of fate into golden opportunities, and place Cedric in a position to help save Citibank from bankruptcy in the early 1990s.

Regenerating British Columbia's Forests will assist those responsible for planning reforestation projects to reach informed decisions and will challenge them to consider primarily the biological factors basic to reforestation success rather than short-term costs and production technology. Although its main audience is practising foresters and forestry students of British Columbia, the text will be of considerable interest to foresters in other parts of Canada, the United States, and Europe who manage reforestation.

Plague Journal is Michael O'Brien's fourth novel in the Children of the Last Days series. The central character is Nathaniel Delaney, the editor of a small-town newspaper, who is about to face the greatest crisis of his life. As the novel begins, ominous events are taking place throughout North America, but little of it surfaces before the public eye. Set in the not-too-distant future, the story describes a nation that is quietly shifting from a democratic form of government to a form of totalitarianism. Delaney is one of the few voices left in the media who is willing to speak the whole truth about what is happening, and as a result the full force of the government is brought against him. Thus, seeking to protect his children and to salvage what remains of his life, he makes a choice that will alter the future of each member of his family and many other people. As the story progresses he keeps a journal of observations, recording the day-by-day escalation of events, and analyzing the motives of his political opponents with sometimes scathing frankness. More importantly, he begins to keep a "mental record" that develops into a painful process of self-examination. As his world falls apart, he is compelled to see in greater depth the significance of his own assumptions and compromises, his successes and failures. Plague Journal chronicles the struggle of a thoroughly modern man put to the ultimate spiritual and psychological test, a man who in losing himself finds himself.

Telling the story of Tweetsie Railroad and the East Tennessee Railway, this book documents the history of the standard gauge ET & WNC after the narrow gauge was gone and is illustrated with many maps and photographs.