The Berkeley Rebellion And Beyond (Wolin & Schaar)

I wish I had a more attractive picture of this book to offer you, but library bindings pulled from the stacks of  university libraries are never that elegant. The Berkeley Rebellion And Beyond is a collection of essays published in 1970. The authors focus, at the start of the book, on the student strikes and protests at Berkeley University during the mid to late 1960s. They analyse the student movement from a time and place very much still within the movement. Yet, their analysis contains much clarity. The later essays in the book move more towards student rebellion, the probability (or lack of probability) of revolution and the purpose of the educational system as a whole. 

The authors notice that much of the tension on campuses has its roots in--not only the current political events of the time--but a crisis of purpose. The university, as an institution, was no longer primarily a place to receive knowledge, but rather a place to create knowledge for the rest of society. I came across this line, which I really like because it speaks to the tension between what businesses, corporations and governments want from universities and what students and scholars have understood, traditionally, university to be for: "The bureaucratic search for understanding does not begin in wonder, but in the reduction of the world to the ordinary and the manageable."

Students did not want institutions to behave as manageable bureaucratic structures to produce the right studies and technology for the right businesses and government departments. Instead, they wanted institutions that served students. The Berkeley rebellion was about student power, as much as it was about Vietnam or the vacant lot of land community members had turned into a park. 

Interestingly, the key issues in this collection of essays have not died. Sure, in North America students are no longer being clubbed, gassed and shot by police for protesting, but the question of what the university is for still remains. Do universities exist to aid governmental and corporation research? Are universities factories for future professionals? Are students there to learn about themselves and begin to construct the kind of society and space they see themselves living in someday? Do they exist  for the sole purpose of building human capital? 

Students have, at least from my point of view, as little influence on their own campuses now as they did back in 1966 or 1968. 

Campuses are not designed for intellectual growth, they are designed for knowledge production. Corporations and governments lay down their money and wait for the results and technologies that will benefit them to materialize. Young people enter institutions and become tools of production. Business women and men, engineers, and accountants are mass produced. Students have as little power today to prevent their universities from forming alliances with arms companies or Israeli institutions as they did in the 1960s to prevent military propaganda and police brutality on their campuses. 

I wish I could tell interested readers to go out an purchase a copy of this book, but the best I can suggest is to scour the second-hand online book shops. As far as I can tell, The Berkeley Rebellion and Beyond has not been reprinted since its original production in 1970, which is a shame. This book should really be reprinted. 

Common Ground (Justin Trudeau)

Reading a political memoir is like a holiday for the mind. I can easily step away from denser texts and the complexities of everyday life, to a single story. Memoirs and biographies give me the kind of relaxation that other readers might receive from a crime thriller or a YA novel. 

I loved this book. I respect Justin Trudeau even more than I did before I read it. Please don't jump to conclusions however. I won't be voting Liberal in 2015 election--or any election for that matter. I respect Justin Trudeau's politics, but I don't necessarily agree with or support some of his policies. 

I sympathize with the difficulties Trudeau faced growing up. I hadn't realized that Margaret Trudeau suffered from mental illness. I can only imagine how hard it must have been growing up in the spotlight and then going through his parents' divorce. 

Trudeau starts the book with his childhood, not because he wants to write biographically, but because his political development begins, necessarily, with his father and the people, ideas and events he experienced growing up in a political family. 

Common Ground is not a book about Trudeau's life for its own sake, it is a book about Trudeau's politics. As such, it is a piece of propaganda--if you will--to promote the figure of Trudeau. It's no coincidence that this book was released approximately one year before the prospective date of the next Federal election. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying this is a negative thing. In fact, as a political tool, the book is fantastic. It's a legitimate avenue for Trudeau to inform and perhaps gather new supporters. The final portion focuses on Trudeau's election as leader of the Liberal party and outlines his philosophy behind gaining support as well as his ideas for the direction of the party. 

Whether you're a Liberal supporter or not, Common Ground is worth the read, if only for the sake of understanding more about one of the more prominent figures on the federal political scene  

Sex and the Single Prime Minister: or how pierre elliott trudeau seduced canada with the lights on (Michael Cowley)

I ordered Sex and Single Prime Minister, a book of photographs of Trudeau accompanied by funny captions, from an online used book dealer out of Quebec. It arrived in the mail today. Other than being a little worn around the edges, my copy of this 1968 book is in really good shape. I thought I'd take the opportunity to share a few images from this amusing little piece of Canadiana.  

In my Mailbox Today: "Common Ground" by Justin Trudeau

I pre-ordered Justin Trudeau's memoir two or three weeks ago. I love Canadian political memoirs and biographies. I have a small section on one of my bookshelves dedicated to Justin's father, Pierre Trudeau, and there certainly is a wealth of books on Pierre. I've read books by and about Person, Pierre, Diefenbaker, Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, Olivia Chow, Michael Ignatieff and probably more. To anyone who says that Canadian politics aren't interesting, I hand you the trove of literature by and about our politicians. I'll take a Canadian political memoir over an American one any day. 

I hope to read Common Ground over the weekend. I'll post a full review when I'm finished. 

Among the Gently Mad: Strategies and Perspectives For the Book Hunter in the Twenty-First Century (Nicholas A. Basbanes)

Once again, I've read a book about books; Over the past two months I've come to enjoy the genre. Among the Gently Mad is a light, but entertaining and informative read by book collector and author of two other titles on book collecting, Nicholas A. Basbanes. I started reading yesterday afternoon and read during every free moment I had--in the staff room at work, while eating breakfast and so on--although I had very few free moments. (Now that I think about it, there are a couple of major poli-sci papers calling my name as I sit here writing this post :/    . . . )

Among the Gently Mad is not a technical text, nor is it a guide to book buying. Instead, Basbanes provides a very basic "philosophy" of book collecting along with some of his personal experiences and stories from other collectors he's encountered. I will definitely be picking up Basbanes' other works when I have the chance. This book was worth every spare moment I spent with it. 

The Answer Is Still No: Voices of Pipeline Resistance (Edited by Paul Bowles & Henry Veltmeyer)

After  interviewing opponents and anti-pipeline activists along route of the proposed Northern Gateway, academics Paul Bowles and Henry Veltmeyer put together this 143 page volume which includes, word-for-word, the voices of twelve people fighting for greater consultation with First Nations and for cancellation of the pipeline project. 

In the book's introduction, the editors say they are certain of one thing: "the Enbridge pipeline will never be built." After reading the interviews, I'm inclined to agree with the editors, but at the same time I also sort of believe the pipeline will be built. Stopping the massive projects of governments and corporations is not an easy task; some would say it's an impossible task. 

The Answer is Still No is the first book I've read on pipeline politics, but it won't be the last. Pipelines aren't just about environmental policy. So much more is at stake. If governments and corporations can walk all over First Nations communities and ignore the desires of Canadians, then we have a democratic deficit--a problem. Also worrying is the rhetoric used to brand anyone who opposes pipelines and big oil. The labels of "radical" and "eco-terrorist" are used to discredit even the most mild-mannered and law-abiding protesters. 

If you haven't read about pipelines before, The Answer is Still No would be a good place to start.

The Elements of Style (William Strunk Jr. & E.B.White)

William Strunk's portion of The Elements of Style is nearly 100 years old. In 1919, when E.B.White attended college, Strunk assigned his self-published "little book" for an English class. It wasn't until 1957, after the death of Strunk, that E.B.White revised and added on to The Elements of Style that the book was published in the mass market and become the classic it is today. 

The book came to me as recommended reading for an Arts Writing course I'm taking this fall. It spans a mere 85 pages + glossary and index, but I've found space for it in my desk because I see it will quickly become my little red book and my bible for grammar, style and word usage. The layout and language are straightforward and although I don't agree with all the do and don'ts of word usage, I'd recommend it for any student or professional. 

The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Sean Mills)

I love to read political histories of the 1960s. Unfortunately, Canadian based books on this subject are not plentiful. At least not as plentiful as those on, say, the United States or France. What caught my attention about this book was not only the time period, but also the reference to post-colonialism in the sub heading. I consider myself to have a  very basic working knowledge of Quebecois history, but I had never before viewed that history through a colonial context. 

What the author, Sean Mills, does in The Empire Within, is highlight the social and nationalist movements of Montreal as part of  the larger, postcolonial and revolutionary environment of the period. 1960s Montreal was not a closed subsystem, but rather an open one, taking in and adapting the ideas and language that came out of the Black Power Movement in the United States, the revolution and rise of Communism in Cuba, the student and labour movements in France and the post-colonial uprisings in Latin American and Africa. 

Of course, Mills does acknowledge how skewed the vision of many activists in Montreal were during this time period. Many people chose to view French-Canada as a colonized and oppressed group (a very valid and true argument) but those same people did not consider the role they themselves had played in the colonization of the indigenous peoples of Canada.  It wasn't until the late 60's and early 70's, that Quebecois activists began to take note of the oppression of women, indigenous peoples and other ethnic minorities. 

I can't describe how much I enjoyed this book. I have a feeling similar to the one I got when I read Betty Freidan's The Feminine Mystique for the first time. My perception of events has once again been altered by what I have read. I will be thinking about what I have read here for a long time afterwards. 

3 Books I Can't Wait to Read . . . But Haven't Yet

Like many people, I own a lot of books I haven't read yet. To use the popular phrase, I have a very large TBR and yet I keep buying and buying because there's always just one more book that will look good on my shelves and feel perfect in my hands. In general . . .  I own a lot of books. 

With every month that goes by, I acquire more books. Usually, I read what I've bought most recently. This means that, unfortunately, there are books that I've said-- time and time again--I really want to read that are still sitting on my shelves unread. 

Exhibit A: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. 

I bought this book two Christmases  ago at Barnes and Nobles south of the border. I've picked it up so many times. I've even put it in my bag and carried it places, but I've yet to get past the cover. I've heard so many great things about it, but still, it sits on the shelf unread. 

Exhibit B: Utopia by Thomas More

I bought this on Amazon last spring and intended to read it right away, but somehow it became buried on the back of my secretary desk under all three volumes of Marx's Capital and the Origin of Species, three books I have also not read yet. 

Exhibit C: The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

This copy is beautiful. It even smells good--like the old book shop I bought it in over the summer. I don't know whether to be embarrassed for having  not read this book or not. I got about 40 pages in when I was in high school and gave up. I made it through The Three Musketeers, Jane Eyre and A Tale of Two Cities, but somehow, this one was a little too much for me at the time. I know when I do try to read it again, it will be a breeze to get through.

 

If there's anybody reading this blog, what are some books you've been meaning to read and want to read, but haven't? Leave a comment, if you like. 

In My Mailbox Today: "Freddy and the Dragon"

Two weeks ago I ordered Freddy and the Dragon, the 26th and final book in Walter R. Brooks' Freddy the Pig series, which was published between 1927 and 1958. As I'm sure you can see from the picture above, I purchased a used hardcover copy. Unfortunately, a piece of the dust-jacket was damaged when I removed the library binding that covered the book (I expected there to be some damage). Thankfully, I'm not the sort of collector who insists on only owning flawless books. 

Although I haven't read Freddy and the Dragon yet (it only arrived in my mailbox about an hour ago), I thought I'd take the opportunity to share it here. Most likely, I won't write a follow up review after I read it. My consensus on the Freddy series is already in; I love these books. They're fun stories and they remind me of my childhood, browsing the shelves at my small community public library. I plan to collect all 26 books. I would encourage parents to get these classics into the hands of their children. 

If you haven't seen my posts from September yet, check out my Freddy Goes to the North Pole Review  and  A Childhood Favourite: "Freddy Goes to Florida" & The Freddy Books