November 2006 Bibliographies

Banking on Catastrophe
By Jake Bogoch
(pp.18-22)

The Nordic Gene Bank’s seed collection is small potatoes compared to that of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. This international organization, funded in part by the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, claims to “hol[d] in public trust one of the world’s largest seed collections available to all.” Its aim to alleviate poverty and create food sustainability reflects a pre-apocalyptic optimism that further distinguishes it from the NGB.

Rob Kesseler and Wolfgang Stuppy would say that whatever one’s eschatological orientation, we should take time to smell the roses…and peer between their petals. Their hybrid science/art book Seeds: Time Capsules of Life (Richmond Hill, ON: Firefly Books, 2006) contains detailed microphotographs and literary explanations of dispersal strategies. In this homage to plant reproduction, the authors sow seeds of hope that these resilient little life pods ensure our future.


Keeping Everest Honest
Bernadette McDonald
(pp.22-24)

Bernadette McDonald gives her subject the full biographical treatment in I’ll Call You In Kathmandu: The Elizabeth Hawley Story (Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 2005). McDonald spent time with Hawley in Nepal and also collected insights and anecdotes about her from an array of famous mountaineering names. The portrait that emerges is one of a unique and admirable woman who is more than able to hold her own among the egos and outsized characters that populate the world of Himalayan climbing.

Few characters are as monumental as Reinhold Messner. The Italian-born climber was the first man to climb Everest without the use of oxygen, the first to scale the mountain solo, and the first to climb all fourteen of the world’s 8,000 m peaks. His account of the one-man expedition can be found in The Crystal Horizon: Everest—The First Solo Ascent (Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 1989), while he surveys his achievements on the world’s highest peaks in All Fourteen 8,000ers (Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 1999).

For those intrigued by the prospect of wading through Hawley’s extensive archives, there is an option that doesn’t require a trip to Kathmandu. The Himalayan Database: The Expedition Archives of Elizabeth Hawley (Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 2004, updated for 2005) is a computer database available for PC or Mac. The interface is basic, but the amount of information available and the flexibility of the search options make this a useful tool for planning your own expedition or for researching the history of Himalayan climbing.


Scarce Heard Amid the Guns
Murray Thompson


The Frozen Zoo
Megan Ogilvie


A Resonant Boom
Charles Foran
(pp.35-38)

The evolution of Shanghai’s urban form is thoroughly traced in Edward Denison and Guang Yu Ren’s Building Shanghai: The Story of China’s Gateway (Chichester: Wiley-Academy, 2006). The volume is lavishly illustrated and offers extensive information on the centerpieces of Shanghai architecture and design.

In Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City (New York: William Morrow, 2000), Stella Dong offers a history of the city that recounts as many seamy stories as one could ever hope to hear about the metropolis once dubbed the “Whore of Asia.” The extravagances, crimes, and characters that gave Old Shanghai its reputation are here in living, lurid detail, but Dong’s book is based on careful research and annotated to facilitate further exploration.

The rich atmosphere of pre-war Shanghai is conjured artfully in Man Booker Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel When We Were Orphans (New York: A. A. Knopf, 2000). A detective story of sorts, it recounts the efforts of a private investigator to unravel the mystery of his parents’ disappearance. Ishiguro is adept with his use of detail in bringing to life the city and its citizens as they were in the 1930s.

Finally, the Edward Burtynsky photos that haunted Charles Foran’s most recent trip to Shanghai are collected and reprinted in China (London, UK: Steidl, 2005).


Alberta’s Gamble with Gambling
by Andrew Nikiforuk
(pp. 40-46)

Don’t risk it all by being uninformed! These reliable blogs boast the latest in gaming news: Alberta Gambling News has summaries of newspaper articles (Albertan and Canadian) related to gambling, while Gaming Research Weblog posts news items of interest to academics.

Compare Nikiforuk’s take on legalized gambling with some American perspectives. Patrick A. Pierce and Donald E. Miller examine the process of legalization throughout the fifty states in Gambling Politics: State Government and the Business of Betting (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004). In Gambling in America: Costs and Benefits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), economist Earl L. Grinols does the math on the devastating social costs of gambling.

See what it’s like to believe in the odds: ReadyBetGo! offers the “secrets” to video poker—for a fee, of course. From gambling strategies to titillating VLT fiction, books by the site’s featured authors, Basil Nestor and Bob Dancer, offer the perfect read for the casino shuttle ride.

If you’re in over your head, or know someone who is, the Responsible Gambling Council has compiled a list of help numbers (provincial, Canadian, and international) as well as a list of downloadable resources.


The Teenage Brain
Nora Underwood
(pp. 49-56)

Referencing some of the same neurological research cited in Nora Underwood’s article, New York Times medical science and health editor, Barbara Strauch, explores the differences between the teenage and adult brain in The Primal Teen: What The New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids (New York: Doubleday, 2003).

For a broader picture of neurodevelopment, try the five-part PBS series, The Secret Life of the Brain. First broadcast in 2002, the series follows the brain’s development from birth to death, with episode three devoted to getting inside the adolescent head.

Finally, for nervous parents who’ve abandoned Dr. Spock and are desperate for a good child-rearing manual, Dr. Ron Clavier’s Teen Brain, Teen Mind: What Parents Need to Know to Survive the Adolescent Years (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2005) is probably a safe bet. The self-help book uses some of the recent science on adolescent neurology to reach somewhat predictable conclusions about dealing with teenagers.


The Conspiracy Against Africa
Gerald Caplan
(pp. 58-69)

Those looking to delve deeper into the history of African development might start with Walter Rodney’s influential How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1981). Rodney, a Guyanese scholar, avoids a monolithic depiction of Africa by examining the varying effects of European involvement on different regions of the continent.

African art is more than Ife sculpture. Modern artists such as Chéri Samba, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Africa’s Anthony Wathaba Mutheki are featured at The Mark Galleries, Dak’Art , and Galerie Peter Herrmann.

Africania endeavors to make positive news about Africa available to the Western public. As the website suggests, countries like Ethiopia are fast becoming as much characterized by skyscrapers and Internet cafes as they are by savannahs and starvation.

Samuel Oluoch Imbo’s An Introduction to African Philosophy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998) and D.A. Masolo’s African Philosophy in Search of Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994) are good beginner’s references on African thought. In a similar vein, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) by Kwame Anthony Appiah is a consideration of Africa’s place in world philosophy. Appiah examines the construction of African identity in the late twentieth century, arguing against simplistic notions of what it means to be African and for the integration of African thought into a broader understanding of global intellectual trends.

Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka and Nelson Mandela have both written autobiographies: Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994) has become a classic, while Aké: The Years of Childhood (New York: Vintage Books, 1983, c1981) is Soyinka’s bright, compelling account of his childhood in Nigeria.


Safe and Sexy
Sarah Hughes


Stop Making Sense
Don Gillmor
(pp. 83-85)

Readers interested in an academic take on the topic of fashion are encouraged to pick up Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis (London: Routledge, 2000), a collection of essays edited by Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson. Subjects range from “The Use and Value of Oral History to the Fashion Historian” to “Gwyneth Paltrow.”

Those inspired by Don Gillmor’s description of Karl Lagerfeld—“his Don Cherry collars, his severe diet, and that Teutonic head sitting atop his schematic body…like a T-ball game waiting to happen”—can emulate the designer by following The Karl Lagerfeld Diet (New York: powerHouse Books, 2005). Co-written with Dr. Jean-Claude Houdret, this is Lagerfeld’s account of how he lost over eighty pounds in one year.

The demanding lifestyle of the male model is explored in the film spoof Zoolander (Paramount, 2001). Ben Stiller portrays Derek Zoolander, a supermodel who becomes a pawn in a fashion industry conspiracy to preserve sweatshop labour by assassinating the Malaysian prime minister. Zoolander and his archrival Hansel (Owen Wilson) stumble along with all the vapidity you would expect of a p air of escapees from the Dolce & Gabbana ranch.


Filming in Poetry
by Steve Vineberg
(pp. 86-89)

Jim Leach joins Steve Vineberg in the Jutra recovery project with Claude Jutra: Filmmaker (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999). Leach’s book is praised for beginning to fill the gaping void of Jutra scholarship. Leach describes the creative crucible of 1960s Montreal and analyzes eight of Jutra’s films individually in eight chapters. This “well researched, richly annotated, [and] critically analytical” book takes fans of Mon oncle Antoine to the next level.

In her gentle documentary Claude Jutra: An Unfinished Story (National Film Board of Canada, 2002), Paule Baillargeon turns the camera back on her filmmaker friend. She charts both Jutra’s shining career and his dark side with movie clips from Kamouraska and À tout prendre. The documentary is easier to find than most of Jutra’s films, and the NFB’s double DVD version includes both Mon oncle Antoine and A Chairy Tale.

What’s so bad about being English Canada’s favourite Québécois filmmaker? Find out what gets squished between the two solitudes in Screening Quebec: Québécois Moving Images, National Identity and the Public Sphere by Scott MacKenzie (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). MacKenzie asks whether film and television function as “an alternative public sphere” in Quebec, chronicling the medium from the silent film era to the post-referendum art of Denys Arcand. He also devotes a full chapter to the role of the National Film Board.


The Bad Future
Christian Parenti
(pp. 91-94)

Bookshelves will no doubt soon be sagging under the weight of volumes reflecting on the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina. One of the first to be published is The Storm: What Went Wrong During Hurricane Katrina—The Inside Story from one Louisiana Scientist (New York: Viking, 2006). Principal author Ivor Van Heerden is the deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Centre and, prior to Katrina, had long been adamant that New Orleans was vulnerable. Here, he and co-author Mike Bryan offer their take on how the city’s flood and disaster prevention systems failed.

Is New Orleans an accurate harbinger of what global warming and climate change could mean for civilization, as Christian Parenti suggests? Prominent “climate skeptic” Patrick J. Michaels, a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, has collected nine essays that take exception to the scientific consensus in Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005).

If the gravity of the subject threatens to exhaust you, a much breezier read is Laura Lee’s Blame It on the Rain: How the Weather has Changed History (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2006). Lee takes a light and entertaining look at how the weather has affected the course of history, from the Persian Wars through twentieth century US presidential politics.