That Unknown Country

Soviet-era philosopher Merab Mamardashvili developed an original and subtle philosophical system distinct from both his orthodox and dissident colleagues. This volume provides English-speaking audiences with a range of his lectures and writings on ancient philosophy, civil society, the European project, and literature. After many decades hiding in plain sight, he emerges as a Soviet thinker who writes in the double-voiced manner of an ideologically surveilled academic and a potent literary and theoretical innovator independent of his context.

From one of Canada's greatest journalists comes this classic study of the country's history, culture, and society. First published in 1942, The Unknown Country won the Governor General's Award for non-fiction and cemented Hutchison's reputation as the nation's pre-eminent political commentator. More than 60 years later, The Unknown Country offers an unforgettable portrait of a country hauntingly familiar yet lost beyond recall.

In the winter of 1874-75, Edward Worrell Jarvis (1846 -1894) and Charles Francis Hanington (1848-1930) took part in an expedition on behalf of the Canadian Pacific Survey from Quesnel, British Columbia, to Winnipeg, Manitoba. It led them over the northern Rocky Mountains through what would come to be known as Jarvis Pass (Kakwa Provincial Park, British Columbia) and eventually onto the Canadian plains. The trip took them 116 days and covered over 3,000 kilometres, of which almost 1,500 was travelled on snowshoes. Through an Unknown Country brings together the day-to-day reports of Jarvis and the more entertaining narrative of the epic journey by Hanington into a single volume for the first time. Recounting harrowing treks through deep mountains, densely forested valleys, open foothills and wide prairie, this highly readable adventure story can be read alongside the better-known journals of Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, David Thompson and Paul Kane.

In a strategy deliberately counter to many earlier texts which focus on social aspects of death and dying this book will not examine death through the social prism of US or British culture alone. Drawing only on material from a single society gives readers the misleading impression of a universal experience. As a text in the sociology of death and dying this volume examines culture-specific images and experiences of death in three major western societies - Australia, Britain and the USA.

A dazzling, heartbreaking page-turner destined for breakout status: a novel that gives voice to millions of Americans as it tells the story of the love between a Panamanian boy and a Mexican girl: teenagers living in an apartment block of immigrant families like their own. After their daughter Maribel suffers a near-fatal accident, the Riveras leave Mexico and come to America. But upon settling at Redwood Apartments, a two-storey cinderblock complex just off a highway in Delaware, they discover that Maribel's recovery--the piece of the American Dream on which they've pinned all their hopes--will not be easy. Every task seems to confront them with language, racial and cultural obstacles. At Redwood also lives Mayor Toro, a high school sophomore whose family arrived from Panama fifteen years ago. Mayor sees in Maribel something others do not: that beyond her lovely face, and beneath the damage she's sustained, is a gentle, funny and wise spirit. But as the two grow closer, violence casts a shadow over all their futures in America. Peopled with deeply sympathetic characters, the novel unfolds during a single transformative year, telling a riveting and poignant story of unflinching honesty and humanity and an unforgettable, wholly unsentimental tale of young love; and offering a new, resonant definition of what it means to be an American. An instant classic is born.

This is a study of love, specifically of men’s and women’s emotional roles vis-à-vis one another in Northeast Brazil; of how people form conjugal relationships in this region; and of the impact of rapid socioeconomic change on courtship, marriage, cohabitation, and infidelity. Rapid urbanization and expansion of the cash economy have transformed the region in a few decades. Among the transformations are shifts in how people conduct courtship, form marriages, view the proprieties of sexual behavior, and assess the proper social and economic roles of men and women. These changes have altered the relative importance of physical, economic, and emotional intimacy in conjugal relationships, transforming the nature of marriage—once defined as a largely economic relationship—into a largely emotional relationship, as ideas of romance once associated with infidelity, concubinage, and courtship are increasingly attached to marriage. The book is largely based on interviews with men and women who talked about their often complicated love lives with wit and passion, and the book is rich in personal stories and quotations. Women were asked to discuss the nature of men and women, and men were asked to talk about women. Both sexes were questioned about their views on prostitution, concubinage, and promiscuity, as well as their definitions of love. Parents were asked for their views about marriage and child rearing (especially differences in raising boys and girls), their relations with their own parents, lovers, spouses, and friends, and their views on virginity and sexual propriety. The bluntness and articulateness of the informants about their motivations and experiences not only demonstrated that men and women viewed conjugal relationships very differently but enabled the author to specify and explore these differences in unusually interesting ways.