Taking Back Our Roads

Our dependence on cars is damaging our health — and the planet’s. Movement asks radical questions about how we approach the biggest urban problem, reflecting on the apparent successes of Dutch cities. Making our communities safer, cleaner, and greener starts with asking the fundamental question: who do our streets belong to? Although there have been experiments in decreasing traffic in city centres, and an increase in bike-friendly infrastructure, there is still a long way to go. In this enlightening and provocative book, Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet confront their own underlying beliefs and challenge us to rethink our ideas about transport to put people at the centre of urban design.

Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche.

Prepare to understand contemporary politics as never before! Prepare to see the future of American democracy! A recent study at Princeton University came to a shocking conclusion. Our system has been so corrupted by money and influence peddling, America is no longer a democracy. This manifesto offers a detailed, step-by-step plan for cleaning up the corruption in Washington DC, replacing the current crop of pay-for-play politicians with progressive, independent, minor-party candidates, who will be bound by legal contract when elected, to faithfully serve the interests of the voting public. This is electoral reform so radical that in one master stroke, it puts America on the path to a healthy economy and directly addresses its #1 and #2 challenges: the suicidal march to war and the destructive impact of a historically high level of wealth inequality. Brace yourself for a real game-changer which will redefine politics for the foreseeable future.

In Scotiabank Giller Prize–longlisted author Andrée A. Michaud’s genre-defying, ethereal mystery, a writer encounters her double and must grapple with an undetermined crime — and her own identity. In the dubious sanctuary of a wintry forest, a writer encounters a woman who she suspects may be her double. So begins a journey of inquiry in which nothing, not even the author’s own identity, is certain. Who is Heather Thorne? Is she a stranger dangerously out of place in the woods, the victim of an accident or of a crime? Who is the author? Is her own name not in fact Heather Thorne? Brimming with the snowy menace and mystery of the boreal woods, where nothing is ever entirely known, the celebrated and prize-winning Quebec noir novelist Andrée A. Michaud once again defies categorization in an ethereal story that is also a meditation on the very process of literary creation.

From the earliest settler policies to deal with the “Indian problem,” to contemporary government-run programs ostensibly designed to help Indigenous people, public policy has played a major role in creating the historical trauma that so greatly impacts the lives of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. Taking Back Our Spirits traces the link between Canadian public policies, the injuries they have inflicted on Indigenous people, and Indigenous literature’s ability to heal individuals and communities. Episkenew examines contemporary autobiography, fiction, and drama to reveal how these texts respond to and critique public policy, and how literature functions as “medicine” to help cure the colonial contagion.

The conclusion to an epic interstellar trilogy of war from master of science fiction, Greg Bear. Marooned beneath the icy, waxy crust of Saturn's moon, Titan, Skyrine Michael Venn and his comrades face double danger from Earth and from the Antagonists, both intent on wiping out their growing awareness of what the helpful alien Gurus are really doing in our solar system. Haunted by their dead and by the ancient archives of our Bug ancestors, the former combatants must now team up with their enemies, forget their indoctrination and their training, and journey far beyond Pluto to the fabled Planet X, the Antagonists' home world, a Sun-Planet in the comet-generating Kuiper belt. It's here that Master Sergeant Venn will finally understand his destiny and the destiny of every intelligent being in the solar system-including the enigmatic Gurus.

“Enlightening and inspiring.” — Walter Isaacson “Barry probes the American soul, finding its biases, but also, nurtured by its complicated past, our better angels — with an opportunity to move forward.” — Ken Burns Bringing together two of America’s unifying loves — road trips and Abraham Lincoln — Frank Barry takes readers on a thought-provoking journey into the heart of our democracy and the soul of our country A year into his marriage and having never driven an RV, Frank and his wife Laurel set out from New York City in a Winnebago to drive the nation’s first transcontinental route, the Lincoln Highway, which zigzags through small towns and big cities from Times Square to San Francisco. Using the spirit of Abraham Lincoln to guide them across the land, they hope to see more clearly what holds the country together — and how we can keep it together, even amidst political divisions have grown increasingly rancorous, bitter, and exhausting. Along the way, Frank and Laurel meet Americans whose personal experiences help humanize the nation’s divisions, and they encounter historical figures and events whose legacies are still shaping our sense of national identity and the struggles over it. This unforgettable journey is full of what makes any great road trip memorable and enjoyable: music, conversation, and laughter. By the end, readers will have a clearer picture of how we have arrived at a period that carries echoes of the Civil War era, and — using Lincoln as a guide — where the path forward lies.