Other books that might interest you

• 

  Chop Suey Nation

  Ann Hui

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In 2016, Globe and Mail reporter Ann Hui drove across Canada, from Victoria to Fogo Island, to write about small-town Chinese restaurants and the families who run them. It was only after the story was published that she discovered her own family could have been included?her parents had run their own Chinese restaurant, The Legion Cafe, before she was born. This discovery, and the realization that there was so much of her own history she didn’t yet know, set her on a time-sensitive mission: to understand how, after generations living in a poverty-stricken area of Guangdong, China, her family had somehow wound up in Canada.Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants weaves together Hui’s own family history?from her grandfather’s decision to leave behind a wife and newborn son for a new life, to her father’s path from cooking in rural China to running some of the largest “Western” kitchens in Vancouver, to the unravelling of a closely guarded family secret?with the stories of dozens of Chinese restaurant owners from coast to coast. Along her trip, she meets a Chinese-restaurant owner/small-town mayor, the owner of a Chinese restaurant in a Thunder Bay curling rink, and the woman who runs a restaurant alone, 365 days a year, on the very remote Fogo Island. Hui also explores the fascinating history behind “chop suey” cuisine, detailing the invention of classics like “ginger beef” and “Newfoundland chow mein,” and other uniquely Canadian fare like the “Chinese pierogies” of Alberta.Hui, who grew up in authenticity-obsessed Vancouver, begins her journey with a somewhat disparaging view of small-town “fake Chinese” food. But by the end, she comes to appreciate the essentially Chinese values that drive these restaurants?perseverance, entrepreneurialism and deep love for family. Using her own family’s story as a touchstone, she explores the importance of these restaurants in the country’s history and makes the case for why chop suey cuisine should be recognized as quintessentially Canadian.Longlisted for the Toronto Book AwardsWinner of the 2019 Dr. Edgar Wickberg Book Prize for the Best Book on Chinese Canadian HistoryWinner - Gourmand World Cookbook Awards for Canada - Chinese cooking and food writing

  Show book

• 

  Soldier of Christ - The Life of...

  Robert A. Ventresca

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  “This well-crafted biography” presents “a balanced, but not uncritical, examination of the life of a controversial pope” (Library Journal). Debates over the legacy of Pope Pius XII are so heated they are known as the “Pius wars.” Soldier of Christ focuses instead on Eugenio Pacelli, the flawed yet gifted man himself. While offering insight into the pope’s response to Nazism, Robert A. Ventresca argues that it was the Cold War and Pius XII’s manner of engaging with the modern world that defined his pontificate. Ventresca begins with the story of Pacelli’s Roman upbringing, his intellectual formation in Rome’s seminaries, and his interwar experience as papal diplomat and Vatican secretary of state. Accused of moral equivocation during the Holocaust, Pius XII later fought the spread of Communism, spoke against the persecution of Catholics, and tackled a range of social and political issues. By appointing the first indigenous cardinals from China and India and expanding missions in Africa, he internationalized the church’s membership and moved Catholicism beyond the colonial mentality of previous eras. Drawing from a diversity of international sources, including unexplored documentation from the Vatican, Ventresca reveals a paradoxical figure: a prophetic reformer of limited vision whose leadership both stimulated the emergence of a global Catholicism and sowed doubt and dissension among some of the church’s most faithful servants.

  Show book

• 

  Irrepressible - The Jazz Age...

  Emily Bingham

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Raised like a princess in one of the most powerful families in the American South, Henrietta Bingham was offered the helm of a publishing empire. Instead, she ripped through the Jazz Age like an F. Scott Fitzgerald character. In New York, Louisville, and London, she drove both men and women wild with desire, and her youth blazed with sex. But her love affairs with women made her the subject of derision, and she suffered from years of addiction and breakdowns. Perhaps most painfully, she became a source of embarrassment for her family. But forebears can become fairy-tale figures, especially when they defy tradition and are spoken of only in whispers. For biographer Emily Bingham, the secret of who her great-aunt was, and just why her story was concealed for so long, led to Irrepressible.Henrietta rode the cultural cusp as a muse to the Bloomsbury Group, the daughter of the ambassador to the United Kingdom during the rise of Nazism, and a pre-Stonewall figure who never buckled to convention. Henrietta's audacious physicality made her unforgettable in her own time, and her ecstatic and harrowing life serves as an astonishing reminder of the stories lying buried in our own families.

  Show book

• 

  Imagine No Religion - The...

  Blase Bonpane

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  From Cleveland to all over the world, the life story of a former priest who spoke out against U.S. involvement in Guatemala and fought for peace.  In the wake of the Second Vatican Council 1962-1965 many religious people, especially those serving in Latin America, began to understand a spirituality that transcended sectarianism. Having come from an upwardly mobile Italian American family marked by southern Italian anti-clericalism, Blase was accustomed to hearing his parents express real differences with their institutional church. He went into the seminary despite the avid protests of his parents. Blase’s odyssey takes us from his high school and college years, through his service in Guatemala during a violent revolution, to his expulsion from that country for “subversion.” After receiving a gag order from the Church—which he could not in good conscience accept—Blase met with the editorial board of the Washington Post and released all the material he had regarding the U.S. military presence in Guatemala. This action led to his separation from the Maryknoll Fathers. Blase went on to teach at UCLA where he met the former Maryknoll Sister Theresa Killeen, who had served in Southern Chile. They married in 1970. Together they worked directly with Cesar Chavez at his headquarters in La Paz, California, built solidarity with the Central American Revolution, formed the Office of the Americas in Los Angeles, worked on the forefront of the international movement for justice and peace, and raised two children. But his work did not end there . . .“Read Blase Bonpane’s autobiography. If you can aspire to a fraction of what he has achieved, you will look back on a life well lived.” —Noam Chomsky

  Show book

• 

  Elvis Presley #02

  Wink Martindale

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  We continue our exploration of the career of Elvis Presley with the second installment of this three part series. Presley would face both happy times and challenging moments as his popularity continued to grow. He went Hollywood and added “movie star” to his resume, but he also got drafted in 1958 and that same year, faced the death of his beloved mother.   Presley and his associates -- including longtime drummer DJ Fontana and Nancy Sinatra -- share their memories of the era with host Wink Martindale. It was a time which found Elvis’ manager, Colonel Parker, processing up to 30 thousand fan letters a month and supervising activities of a reported 5,000 fan clubs around the world. It all adds up to a very busy decade of work for Elvis, who scored four number one albums, a hefty handful of chart topping singles -- and appeared in nearly 30 movies.

  Show book

• 

  Joseph Haydn

  Jeremy Siepmann

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  No great composer’s story is more predominantly happy than Haydn’s, though even his has its share of clouds. A classic rags-to-riches tale, it sees him move from humble beginnings through decades as a liveried servant to his emergence as the most popular and successful composer of his time. One of the healthiest and least neurotic artists in musical history, he did more than any other single figure to pioneer the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet – and he was the first truly great practitioner of each. Brilliant, strikingly original and blessed not only with genius but an infectious sense of humour, he was also profound and modest, and his music, copiously illustrated here, has brought happiness and illumination to millions.

  Show book