Showing results by narrator "J.D. Nicholsen" in All Categories

For three decades, the renowned author of The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization and The Ingenuity Gap: Can We Solve the Problems of the Future? has examined the threats to our future security - predicting a deteriorating global environment, extreme economic stresses, mass migrations, social instability, and wide political violence if humankind continued on its current course. He was called the Doom Meister, but we now see how prescient he was. 

There have been thousands of books on the Great War, but most have focused on commanders, battles, strategy, and tactics. Less attention has been paid to the daily lives of the combatants, how they endured the unimaginable conditions of industrial warfare: the rain of shells, bullets, and chemical agents. In The Secret History of Soldiers, Tim Cook, Canada's foremost military historian, examines how those who survived trench warfare on the Western Front found entertainment, solace, relief, and distraction from the relentless slaughter.  

The Fight for History examines how Canadians framed and reframed the war experience over time. Just as the importance of the battle of Vimy Ridge to Canadians rose, fell, and rose again over a 100-year period, the meaning of Canada's Second World War followed a similar pattern. But the Second World War's relevance to Canada led to conflict between veterans and others in society - more so than in the previous war - as well as a more rapid diminishment of its significance. 

Four chronically homeless people - Amelia One Sky, Timber, Double Dick and Digger - seek refuge in a warm movie theater when a severe Arctic front descends on the city. During what is supposed to be a one-time event, this temporary refuge transfixes them. They fall in love with this new world and, once the weather clears, continue their trips to the cinema. On one of these outings they meet Granite, a jaded and lonely journalist who has turned his back on writing “the same story over and over again” in favor of the escapist qualities of film, and an unlikely friendship is struck.