Truth Spots

We may not realize it, but truth and place are inextricably linked. For ancient Greeks, temples and statues clustered on the side of Mount Parnassus affirmed their belief that predictions from the oracle at Delphi were accurate. The trust we have in Thoreau’s wisdom depends in part on how skillfully he made Walden Pond into a perfect place for discerning timeless truths about the universe. Courthouses and laboratories are designed and built to exacting specifications so that their architectural conditions legitimate the rendering of justice and discovery of natural fact. The on-site commemoration of the struggle for civil rights—Seneca, Selma, and Stonewall—reminds people of slow but significant political progress and of unfinished business. What do all these places have in common? Thomas F. Gieryn calls these locations “truth-spots,” places that lend credibility to beliefs and claims about natural and social reality, about the past and future, and about identity and the transcendent. In Truth-Spots, Gieryn gives readers an elegant, rigorous rendering of the provenance of ideas, uncovering the geographic location where they are found or made, a spot built up with material stuff and endowed with cultural meaning and value. These kinds of places—including botanical gardens, naturalists’ field-sites, Henry Ford’s open-air historical museum, and churches and chapels along the pilgrimage way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain—would seem at first to have little in common. But each is a truth-spot, a place that makes people believe. Truth may well be the daughter of time, Gieryn argues, but it is also the son of place.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER A critically acclaimed, intimate and no-holds-barred memoir by Canada’s top defence lawyer, Nothing But the Truth weaves Marie Henein’s personal story with her strongly held views on society’s most pressing issues. Marie Henein, arguably the most prominent lawyer in the country, has written a memoir that is at once raw, beautiful, and altogether unforgettable. Her story, as an immigrant from a tight-knit Egyptian-Lebanese family, demonstrates the value of strong role models—from her mother and grandmother, to her brilliant uncle Sami who died of AIDS. She learned the value of hard work, being true to herself and others, and unapologetically owning it all. Marie Henein shares here her unvarnished view on the ethical and practical implications of being a criminal lawyer, and how the job is misunderstood and even demonized. Ironically, her most successful cases made her a “lightning rod” in some circles, confirming her belief that much of the public’s understanding of democracy and the justice system is based on popular culture and social media, and decidedly not the rule of law. As she turns fifty and struggles with the corrosive effect becoming invisible has on women, Marie doubles down on being even more highly visible and opinionated as she deconstructs, among other things, the otherness of the immigrant experience (Where are you really from?), the pros and cons of being a household name in this country, opening her own boutique law firm, and the commoditization of women’s previously unpaid labour popularized by the likes of Martha Stewart. Nothing But the Truth is refreshingly unconstrained and surprising—an account by a woman at the top of her game in a male-dominated world.

A refreshingly innovative approach to charting geographical knowledge. A wide range of authors trace the social construction and contestation of geographical ideas through the sites of their production and their relational geographies of engagement. This creative and comprehensive book offers an extremely valuable tool to professionals and students alike. - Victoria Lawson, University of Washington "A Handbook that recasts geograph′s history in original, thought-provoking ways. Eschewing the usual chronological march through leading figures and big ideas, it looks at geography against the backdrop of the places and institutional contexts where it has been produced, and the social-cum-intellectual currents underlying some of its most important concepts." - Alexander B. Murphy, University of Oregon The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge is a critical inquiry into how geography as a field of knowledge has been produced, re-produced, and re-imagined. It comprises three sections on geographical orientations, geography′s venues, and critical geographical concepts and controversies. The first provides an overview of the genealogy of "geography". The second highlights the types of spatial settings and locations in which geographical knowledge has been produced. The third focuses on venues of primary importance in the historical geography of geographical thought. Orientations includes chapters on: Geography - the Genealogy of a Term; Geography′s Narratives and Intellectual History Geography′s Venues includes chapters on: Field; Laboratory; Observatory; Archive; Centre of Calculation; Mission Station; Battlefield; Museum; Public Sphere; Subaltern Space; Financial Space; Art Studio; Botanical/Zoological Gardens; Learned Societies Critical concepts and controversies - includes chapters on: Environmental Determinism; Region; Place; Nature and Culture; Development; Conservation; Geopolitics; Landscape; Time; Cycle of Erosion; Time; Gender; Race/Ethnicity; Social Class; Spatial Analysis; Glaciation; Ice Ages; Map; Climate Change; Urban/Rural. Comprehensive without claiming to be encyclopedic, textured and nuanced, this Handbook will be a key resource for all researchers with an interest in the pasts, presents and futures of geography.