Not so quiet

In the August-September issue of Canada’s Historymagazine, former Ontario premier Bob Rae reviews Unbuttoned: A History of Mackenzie King’s Secret Life, by Christopher Dummitt. Rae notes that prime minister “William Lyon Mackenzie King never intended that his daily log would become a public document,” but it was nonetheless saved by the executors of his will. Regarding Unbuttoned, Rae says, “Dummitt has written a fascinating book on the Mackenzie King diaries, and in doing so he has also provided much insight into King and the history of his reputation.”

In the same issue, history professor Graham Broad reviews Embattled Nation: Canada’s Wartome Election of 1917, by Patrice Dutil and David MacKenzie. Broad writes that the authors “take pains to situate the political failings of Prime Minister Robert Borden and aging Opposition leader Wilfrid Laurier in the context of the era’s complex questions of language, national identity, and war.”

Meanwhile, award-winning author Ryan O’Connor tells about Freethinker: The Life and Works of Éva Circé-Côté, by Andrée Lévesque. O’Connor says the book originally published in French in 2010 is important in part because, besides being a librarian, poet, and journalist, Circé-Côté was one of the overshadowed intellectual predecessors to Quebec’s Quiet Revolution. “She was deeply concerned about the survival of her people’s language and culture, but this did not make her a separatist,” because, O’Connor writes, “she feared an even greater concentration of power in the hands of the clergy should Quebec leave Canada.”

Among our shorter More Books items, we consider two books on the history of Indigenous rights in Canada —Price Paid: The Fight for First Nations Survival, by Bev Sellars, and Aboriginal Rights Claims and the Making and Remaking of History, by Arthur J. Ray — as well as Darryl Raymaker’s Trudeau’s Tango: Alberta Meets Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968–1972and Madelyn Holmes’ Working for the Common Good: Canadian Women Politicians.

You can read our reviews both in the Canada’s Historymagazine and on our CanadasHistory.ca website.

Down time

Also in the August-September issue, we speak with military historian Tim Cook, author of The Secret History of Soldiers: How Canadians Survived the Great War. Cook says his new book looks at how soldiers spent their free time while coping with the difficulties of the First World War. “The use of culture as a shield, the creation of a unique soldier society to cope and endure, is not part of the official record,” Cook said. You can read a longer version of the interview on our CanadasHistory.ca website.

Believe it or not

Recipients of the Reading Den are automatically entered to win one of three copies of Douglas Hunter’s new book, Beardmore: The Viking Hoax That Rewrote History, courtesy of McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Northwest passages

Books reviewed in the June-July issue of Canada’s Historymagazine include Ken McGoogan’s Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage. Reviewer Dave Obee calls the book “superb” and says it “reflects the increasing awareness and acknowledgement of Indigenous involvement in the exploration of the North, as well as rescue missions.”

Charlotte Gray reviews two books: Sarah Glasford’s Mobilizing Mercy: A History of the Canadian Red Cross and Linda J. Quiney’s This Small Army of Women: Canadian Volunteer Nurses and the First World War. And in the same issue Lyle Dick writes about Adam Shoalts’s A History of Canada in Ten Maps: Epic Stories of Charting a Mysterious Land and Barbara Mitchell’s Mapmaker: Philip Turnor in Rupert’s Land in the Age of Enlightenment.

Other books highlighted in this issue include Rivals for Power: Ottawa and the Provinces, by Ed Whitcomb; The Raftsmen, by Ryan Barnett, with illustrations by Dmitry Bondarenko; and The Endless Battle: The Fall of Hong Kong and Canadian POWs in Imperial Japan, by Andy Flanagan.

Our book reviews can be found both in Canada’s History magazine and on our CanadasHistory.cawebsite.

Travelling solo

Along with the many Canadian history titles released each year by dedicated publishers, we receive a handful of self-published books. On our website we’ve highlighted a selection of these books that includes stories of policing, immigration, mining, environmental catastrophes, and archaeological finds, as well as one historical fiction title. See the list here.

Highways to history

Recipients of the Reading Den are automatically entered to win a bundle of three Canadian-history books courtesy of Penguin Random House Canada. One winner will receive Ingenious: How Canadian Innovators Made the World Smarter, Smaller, Kinder, Safer, Healthier, Wealthier, and Happier, by David Johnston and Tom Jenkins, A History of Canada in Ten Maps: Epic Stories of Charting a Mysterious Land, by Adam Shoalts, and Original Highways: Travelling the Great Rivers of Canada, by Roy MacGregor.