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History and Current Events February 2019
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| Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages by Gaston DorrenWhat it is: a brisk and upbeat survey of the world's 20 most widely spoken languages that explores how languages evolve and endure.
What's inside: Concise chapters discuss the selected languages in ascending order by number of speakers and feature charts detailing the tongues' notable hallmarks and idiosyncrasies.
Did you know? The modern Turkish language is incomprehensible from the Turkish of a hundred years ago; Japanese has separate dialects for men and women. |
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Blamed and Broken : The Mounties and the Death of Robert Dziekanski
by Curt Petrovich
Images of Robert Dziekanski convulsing after being shocked by a Mountie's Taser went viral in 2007. International outrage and domestic shame followed the release of that painful video. It had taken just twenty-six seconds for four Mounties to surround and stun the Polish would-be immigrant at Vancouver International Airport. A decade later, after millions of dollars spent on an inquiry, and bungled prosecutions laden with bias and interference, the tragic impact of those fleeting seconds on the people involved -- Dziekanski's mother and the four Mounties -- is at last revealed.
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Burned : a story of murder and the crime that wasn't
by Edward Humes
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of No Matter How Loud I Shout reveals key flaws in forensic science that have sent thousands of innocent people to jail, tracing the 1989 story of a wrongly convicted mother of three.
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Claws of the Panda
by John Manthorpe
Claws of the Panda tells the story of Canada's failure to construct a workable policy towards the People's Republic of China. In particular the book tells of Ottawa's failure to recognize and confront the efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate and influence Canadian politics, academia, and media, and to exert control over Canadians of Chinese heritage.
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Empty planet : the shock of global population decline
by Darrell Jay Bricker
Explores both the benefits and disruptions that could occur with a decline in the global population, including higher wages and a lower risk of famine, but also worker shortages that can weaken economies and cripple healthcare and social security.
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The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington
by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch
What it's about: the Hickey Plot, a 1776 scheme orchestrated by prominent New York politicians to kidnap and murder George Washington.
Read it for: the thrilling immediacy of the fast-paced prose; the evocative account of a Revolutionary-era New York City in turmoil.
Why it matters: Washington's counterintelligence unit, led by future Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, inspired the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) nearly two centuries later.
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The new rules of war : victory in the age of durable disorder
by Sean McFate
The Georgetown University professor of national defense and author of Shadow War draws on his expertise as an elite military veteran to outline a provocative exploration of modern warfare that makes controversial recommendations for establishing peace.
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The stories were not told : Canada's First World War internment camps
by Sandra Semchuk
From 1914 to 1920, thousands of men who had immigrated to Canada from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire were unjustly imprisoned as "enemy aliens," some with their families. Most were Ukrainians; almost all were civilians. The Stories Were Not Told presents this largely unrecognized event through photography, cultural theory, and personal testimony, including stories told at last by internees and their descendants. Semchuk describes how lives and society have been shaped by acts of legislated discrimination and how to move toward greater reconciliation, remembrance, and healing. This is necessary reading for anyone seeking to understand the cross-cultural and intergenerational consequences of Canada's first national internment operations.
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This May Hurt a Bit : Reinventing Canada's Health Care System
by Stephen Skyvington
How might we fix Canada's health-care system?'; 'Why would we want to?'; and 'What's stopping us from doing so?' These three questions lie at the heart of this in-depth exploration of one of the biggest political and personal issues facing Canadians.
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