December/January 2007 Bibliographies

“Come On Down!”
Jeremy Shinewald
(pp. 19-20)

Any training regimen for a “Price is Right” contestant hopeful includes TiVoing all the episodes, learning the names and current schedules of Barker’s Beauties, and obsessively playing The Price is Right DVD edition board game. With a DVD player and a wipe-off bid board, you can live out a virtual episode, from the opening bid to the Showcase Showdown. Get out the glitter paint to complete the scene in your rumpus room.

Question: which country is home to the game shows Bumper Stumpers, Front Page Challenge, and Smart Ask? Answer: the Great White North, of course! Test your knowledge of our homegrown shows by taking this quiz.

Prime yourself on the history of the game show with Olaf Hoerschelmann’s Rules of the Game: Quiz Shows and American Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006). Get into the gritty bits with Prime Time and Misdemeanors: Investigating the 1950s TV Quiz Scandal: a D.A.’s Account by Joseph Stone and Tim Yohn (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers 1992). Stone, the District Attorney who investigated the fixing of The $64,000 Question, gives his take on the incident as well as other 1950s game show scandals. Robert Redford’s 1994 film, Quiz Show, deals with the rigging of Twenty-One.

“Let There Be Light”
Naomi Buck
(pp. 22-25)

Create your own Rattenberg-style lighting installations! Perhaps erecting giant mirrors to bounce sunlight across a river is a little elaborate, but what about shining some light on your backyard water feature? The second edition of Janet Lennox Moyer’s The Landscape Lighting Book (Hoboken: J. Wiley & Sons, 2005) is the essential resource for lighting design projects. With photos, drawings, and diagrams aplenty, it’s full of illuminating ideas for your garden or lawn.

The Lichtlabor project won’t be Tyrol’s only contemporary architectural landmark. Austria West: Tyrol Voralberg, New Architecture (Boston: Birkhauser, 2003) explores the challenges of alpine building in Austria’s two westernmost states. In this book, written to accompany a traveling exhibition on the subject, author Liesbeth Waechter-Bohm considers the impression that the previous decade’s building has made on the Inn valley and the unique character of that region’s design.

The city of Springfield, home to the Simpson family, also had to contend with the loss of the sun. When nuclear plant owner Montgomery Burns schemes to build a giant moveable disc that would immerse the town in perpetual darkness (thus increasing the citizens’ electricity use and making Burns even richer) the townsfolk are moved to action. The classic two-part “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” episode of The Simpsons is available on DVD. However, episode one concludes The Simpsons: The Complete Sixth Season (Fox Video, 2005). To get your hands on the dramatic conclusion, you’ll also need The Simpsons: The Complete Seventh Season.

“Everybody Comes to Kim’s”
Graeme Wood
(pp. 25-26)

Hard facts and first-hand reporting are hard to come by in a country as notoriously secretive and repressive as North Korea, but Bradley K. Martin’s Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2004) provides plenty of both. Drawing on twenty-five years of reporting, including multiple visits to the DPRK, Martin’s fat volume is probably the most detailed book on the terrifying and sometimes surreal inner workings of North Korea.

Jasper Becker relies on extensive interviews with North Korean exiles for his Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea. In it, Becker paints the picture of an evil slave state run by a “Marxist Sun King” and warns that there will be political and humanitarian consequences if we ignore the North Korean threat.

In The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in a North Korean Gulag (Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, New York: Basic Books, 2001) Kang Chol-hwan tells the story of his decade-long imprisonment in a North Korean prison.

For readers more interested in North Korean food than the country’s particular flavour of political repression, The Axis of Evil Cookbook (published in the online political magazine the nth position) has recipes for a few North Korean dishes, as well a mean Iraqi Aubergine Fritter.

“Sea-Crossed Lovers”
Yigal Schleifer
(pp. 26-28)

Fans of Yabanci Damat can find wallpaper and screensavers, photos of cast members, and a lively message board at the television show’s official fan site, available in Turkish or English. If you think you might want to join the fan ranks, sample the show online through Jumptv.

Yabanci Damat isn’t the only discussion of Turkish-Greek relations onscreen. Yesim Ustaoglu’s Bulutlari Beklerken (Waiting for the Clouds, Turkey, 2004) tells the story of a Greek woman left behind during the 1916 expulsion of Pontus Greeks and raised by a Turkish family. In the documentary Paralel Yolculuklar (Parallel Trips, 2004), Greek director Panicos Chrysanthou and Turkish director Dervis Zaim wade into the morass of Cypriot politics. Chysanthou and Zain take a close and sympathetic look at those affected by the conflict in 1974, from widows to veterans.

Academics from both sides of the Aegean discuss the recent thaw in Greek-Turkish relations in a number of anthologies. Greek-Turkish Relations in an Era of Détente, edited by Ali Carkoglu and Barry Rubin (New York: Routledge, 2005), looks at the cultural and political factors leading up to this rapprochement. Greek-Turkish Relations: In the Era of Globalization, edited by Dimitris Keridis and Dimitrios Triantaphyllou (Dulles: Brassey’s Inc. 2001) takes a broader view, examining how European and international pressures shape the Turkish-Greek relationship.

“Imagining the Future”
Bruce Mau
(pp. 32-35)

In The Future of Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), Harvard naturalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner E.O. Wilson implores us to stop the accelerating destruction of our environment and the species it sustains. This book is the perfect antidote to unwarranted optimism (and extreme fatalism) about the state of the environment and our ability to confront the problems we have created.

With Candide (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999), Voltaire responds to philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s idea that suffering and misery are merely pieces of a larger puzzle we cannot see. The hero, Candide, believes he and his contemporaries live in the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire demonstrates how foolish this is.

However, blind optimism can sometimes be a good thing—especially when you’re Helen Keller. Her 1903 book, Optimism (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2003) demonstrates that Keller’s positive outlook was in fact no “mild and unreasoning satisfaction.” This carefully articulated account of how a thinking person must consider the misery of the world yet still believe in “the beauty of truth and love and goodness” will show you why Keller was much more than an advocate for the blind (and for socialism—see Marxists.org).

“Hear No Evil, Write No Lies”
Andrew Mitrovica
(pp. 37-42)

Maher Arar has his own website, where you can learn more about the specifics and timeline of his ordeal. There are selected news items and writing by Arar himself.

Two books that put Arar’s stories in context are Jennifer K. Harbury’s Truth, Torture, and the American Way: The History and Consequences of U.S. Involvement in Torture (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005) and America’s Disappeared: Secret Imprisonment, Detainees, and the “War on Terror” by Rachel Meeropol, Barbara Olshansky, Steven MacPherson Watt, and Michael Ratner (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005). These critical texts examine the political machinery behind the detention of suspected terrorists.


“Stars Above Africa”
Chris Tenove
(pp. 44-53)

Susan Moeller’s book Compassion Fatigue (New York: Routledge, 1999) examines the role of the media in dulling public sensitivity to crises. Moeller argues that media coverage of famine and war is characterized by sensationalism and oversimplification. Often, the media neglects the legitimate grievances of aggressors, the political causes of “natural” disasters, and the crises that don’t produce spectacular photo opportunities. Compassion fatigue isn’t inevitable, Moeller argues, and can be subverted if we are aware of the subtleties behind humanitarian crises, as well as the gaps in media coverage.

Moving Mountains (London: Doubleday, 2005) is Claire Bertschinger’s vivid account of her long career as a Red Cross nurse. As Bertschinger says, her answer to the problem of suffering has always been to take action, and she has done so in a uniquely admirable and compelling way. The book begins with her time in Ethiopia and goes on to describe her relief work with war victims in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and the Sudan.

At www.makepovertyhistory.org, you can offer up your voice to the movement to reform trade, cancel debts, increase development assistance, and fight AIDS. You can sign the petition, buy the white band, and find out about local activities that are part of the global campaign.

“Noble Ambition”
Tim Murphy
(pp. 54-61)

Two recent books purport to give readers the inside scoop on Parliament and the electoral campaigns that have given it shape in the Chrétien-Martin-Harper era.

Tim Murphy’s predecessor under Jean Chrétien was Eddie Goldenberg, whose recently published memoir, The Way It Works: Inside Ottawa (Toronto: Douglas Gibson Books, 2006), offers an account of his time as one of The Little Guy from Shawinigan’s key advisers and operatives. Did Paul Martin really believe in the Meech Lake Accord? Did he know about the sponsorship fund? Was he surprised to be fired from Cabinet or did he force Chrétien to oust him? Goldenberg’s take differs from Murphy’s on these issues and more.

Paul Wells is one of Canada’s most clear-eyed and darkly funny pundits. In Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper’s New Conservatism (Toronto: Douglas Gibson Books, 2006), Wells examines the Martin faction’s coup against Chrétien, takes issue with Martin’s performance as leader (and the performance of “The Board,” the group of Martin advisers of which Murphy was a member), and offers his perspective on Harper’s ascendancy. The book also includes a hilarious early look at the 2006 Liberal leadership race.

If you have a taste for political nostalgia, why not revisit the heady days of 2003, when Paul Martin was the future of Canadian politics? Globe and Mail journalist John Gray penned Paul Martin: The Power of Ambition (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2003) as an examination of Martin’s life and leadership style in advance of what was sure to be his long and successful reign as prime minister. It seems so long ago…

“5. 6. Pickup Sticks”
Daniel Sanger
(pp. 62-67)

Get the skinny on shinny with the NFB documentary Shinny: The Hockey in All of Us (2001), an affectionate portrait of hockey aficionados, available for purchase from the National Film Board. Journalist Ralph Benmergui interviews the producer of Shinny, Gerry Flahive, as well as sports historian Paul Kitchen in a clip originally broadcast on CBC on January 2, 2002.

The beauty of hockey has inspired more than one writer, including renowned poet John B. Lee, an ardent hockey fan and the author of The Hockey Player Sonnets (Penumbra Press, 1991). Lee adds to Daniel Sanger’s cast of pickup characters the rickety Tall Bruce, who “falls unhinging from his feet / and takes two skaters with him / like a tree / falling among trees” (“Tall Bruce Falling in a Hockey Game”).

“Our Weekly Bread”
Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio
(pp. 74-81)

The photographs and text by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio from this issue of The Walrus are part of a larger project to document global consumption. In Hungry Planet: What the World Eats (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2005) you can find portraits of thirty families in twenty-four countries, each with one week’s supply of food.

The Hungry Planet project isn’t the first time Peter Menzel has documented consumption using photos and text. In Material World: A Global Family Portrait (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994), Menzel photographed statistically average families from thirty countries outside their homes with all of their possessions.

The study mentioned in the article that claims there are more people overfed than underfed is Underfed and Overfed: The Global Epidemic of Malnutrition (Gary Gardner and Brian Halweil). It was published by the Worldwatch Institute in 2000 and can be purchased online.

“A Society of Seers”
Daniel Baird
(pp. 83-87)

Thomas Homer-Dixon maintains a website at www.homerdixon.com, where many of his general and academic articles, interviews, and speech transcripts are archived. It’s one-stop shopping for the Homer-Dixon completist or a means for newcomers to dip their toe in the current of his thought.

For further narratives of systemic stress and collapse, turn to Jared Diamond’s appropriately titled Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking, 2004). Diamond contemplates how a combination of stresses brought collapse to a series of societies, including the Mayans, the Norse settlement on Greenland, and contemporary Rwanda.

Before interviewing Homer-Dixon, Daniel Baird sought antithetical arguments in The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (New York: Knopf, 2005) by Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman. An adviser to the Federal Reserve Board, Friedman argues that economic growth is imperative for the sustenance of liberal society.

“Solidarity of the Shaken”
Michel Arseneault
(pp. 88-91)

Scorched: Incendies (Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2003) is Linda Gaboriau’s translation of the second play in Mouawad’s current tetralogy, which follows young Montreal twins as they attempt to solve the mystery of their origins. See if Gaboriau succeeds at rendering Mouawad’s ornate, poetic French into a credible approximation of modern-day English vernacular.

In Theater Sans Frontières: Essays on the Dramatic Universe of Robert Lepage (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001), edited by Joseph Donohoe and Jane M. Koustas, academics and critics discuss the work of Robert Lepage, “the dominant force in Quebec theatre since the 1980s.” Lepage was the first Canadian to direct Shakespeare at London’s Royal National Theatre, and between 1989 and 1993 he served as the artistic director of the National Arts Centre French Theatre, a position now held by Wajdi Mouawad.

Robert Fisk’s Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (New York: Atheneum, 1990) tells the story of Lebanon’s civil war from the perspective of this passionate foreign correspondent. Fisk has lived in Beirut for over twenty-five years, and his controversial take on the Middle East has attracted criticism from some unexpected sources—see his article “Why Does John Malkovich Want to Kill Me?”

“The Virtue in Vice”
Christine Sismondo
(pp. 93-95)

The bookshelves are heavy with vice-filled memoirs these days, from porn queen Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale (New York: Regan Books, 2004), to Lisa Carver’s Drugs are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir (Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2005), to James Frey’s vice-padded “memoir” A Million Little Pieces (New York: Anchor Books, 2004).

Vice gets deconstructed, intellectualized and, more often than not, embraced in the Oxford University Press series The Seven Deadly Sins (completed in August 2006). A different writer tackles each sin, but the general consensus seems clear–these sins aren’t so deadly, and traditional vices are often found to be virtues. In his rehabilitation of lust, for example, philosopher Simon Blackburn urges us to “take our lust neat, without the fantasies and crystallizations of love.” Playwright Wendy Wasserman’s ode to sloth is dressed as a self-help book, with chapters that include “Success with Sloth” and “Uberslothdom.” Conversations with each author on the sin of their choice can be found on National Public Radio here.

For a more traditional attitude toward vice and virtue, the text of the fifteenth-century morality play Everyman—in which Everyman journeys to the Celestial City through the Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair–is available online.