The Concubine's Children
by Denise Chong
from Penguin (Non-Classics)
PANZER GUNNER: From My Native Canada to the German Osfront and Back. In Action with 25th Panzer Regiment, 7th Panzer Division 1944-45
by Bruno Friesen
from Helion and Company
There are few memoirs available of German Panzer crews that focus on the climactic last 12 months of the war on the Eastern Front, 1944-45. What makes Bruno Friesen's account virtually unique is his family background: his parents came from a German-speaking Mennonite community in Ukraine, and were to all intents and purposes culturally German. To make matters even more complex, in 1924 his parents left the Ukraine for Canada, where Bruno was born. In March 1939 he and his brother Oscar found themselves on a ship bound for Bremerhaven in Germany. He barely spoke German, and had never been to Germany, nevertheless his father envisaged that a better life awaited them in the Third Reich.
Needless to say, Bruno became caught up in the Second World War, and in 1942 was drafted into the Wehrmacht. The author provides a full account of his family background, and how, through these unusual circumstances, he found himself a Canadian-born German soldier.
The bulk of the book is a detailed account of the author's training, and his subsequent service with 25th Panzer Regiment, part of 7th Panzer Division. As the title suggests, Bruno Friesen served as a gunner aboard, initially, Panzer IVs, before crewing the lesser-known Jagdpanzer IV tank hunter. The author provides a fantastic amount of information about these two vehicles, and how the crews actually fought in battle with them. This kind of 'hands-on' detail has almost never been available before, particularly such extensive information concerning the characteristics and combat performance of the Jagdpanzer IV.
Apart from providing a large fund of information about specific German tanks and their combat performance, the author writes in great detail about the combat the experienced on the Eastern Front, including tank battles in Rumania, spring 1944, Lithuania in the summer of 1944, and West Prussia during early 1945. If one wants to know how German tank crews fought the Soviets in the last year of the war, then this book provides an outstanding account, containing material simply not found elsewhere.
The author closes his account by reflecting on his post-war efforts to return to Canada, which eventually succeeded in 1950, and his subsequent life there.
This book is not just a critique of armored fighting vehicles and tank warfare, it is above all a very human story, told in a lively, conversational and fluid manner, and is a remarkable contribution to the literature of the Second World War.
Behind Rebel Lines: The Incredible Story of Emma Edmonds, Civil War Spy
by Seymour Reit
from Gulliver Books Paperbacks
Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now
by Jan Wong
from Anchor
Jan Wong, a Canadian of Chinese descent, went to China as a starry-eyed Maoist in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution. A true believer--and one of only two Westerners permitted to enroll at Beijing University--her education included wielding a pneumatic drill at the Number One Machine Tool Factory. In the name of the Revolution, she renounced rock & roll, hauled pig manure in the paddy fields, and turned in a fellow student who sought her help in getting to the United States. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War to seek asylum in China.
Red China Blues is Wong's startling--and ironic--memoir of her rocky six-year romance with Maoism (which crumbled as she became aware of the harsh realities of Chinese communism); her dramatic firsthand account of the devastating Tiananmen Square uprising; and her engaging portrait of the individuals and events she covered as a correspondent in China during the tumultuous era of capitalist reform under Deng Xiaoping. In a frank, captivating, deeply personal narrative she relates the horrors that led to her disillusionment with the "worker's paradise." And through the stories of the people--an unhappy young woman who was sold into marriage, China's most famous dissident, a doctor who lengthens penises--Wong reveals long-hidden dimensions of the world's most populous nation.
In setting out to show readers in the Western world what life is like in China, and why we should care, she reacquaints herself with the old friends--and enemies of her radical past, and comes to terms with the legacy of her ancestral homeland.
Thomas D'Arcy McGee: Passion, Reason, and Politics, 1825-1857
by David Wilson
from Mqup
Grass Beyond the Mountains: Discovering the Last Great Cattle Frontier on the North American Continent
by Richmond P. Hobson
from McClelland & Stewart
Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
by Wallace Stegner
from Penguin Classics
Wallace Stegner weaves together fiction and nonfiction, history and impressions, childhood remembrance and adult reflections in this unusual portrait of his boyhood. Set in Cypress Hills in southern Saskatchewan, where Stegner's family homesteaded from 1914 to 1920, Wolf Willow brings to life both the pioneer community and the magnificent landscape that surrounds it. This Twentieth-Century Classics edition includes a new introductory essay by Page Stegner.
Memoirs of Montparnasse (New York Review Books Classics)
by John Glassco
from NYRB Classics
Memoirs of Montparnasse is a delicious book about being young, restless, reckless, and without cares. It is also the best and liveliest of the many chronicles of 1920s Paris and the exploits of the lost generation. In 1928, nineteen-year-old John Glassco escaped Montreal and his overbearing father for the wilder shores of Montparnasse. He remained there until his money ran out and his health collapsed, and he enjoyed every minute of his stay. Remarkable for their candor and humor, Glassco’s memoirs have the daft logic of a wild but utterly absorbing adventure, a tale of desire set free that is only faintly shadowed by sadness at the inevitable passage of time.
As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl
by John Colapinto
from Harper Perennial
Once you begin reading As Nature Made Him, a mesmerizing story of a medical tragedy and its traumatic results, you absolutely won't want to put it down. Following a botched circumcision, a family is convinced to raise their infant son, Bruce, as a girl. They rename the child Brenda and spend the next 14 years trying to transform him into a her. Brenda's childhood reads as one filled with anxiety and loneliness, and her fear and confusion are present on nearly every page concerning her early childhood. Much of her pain is caused by Dr. Money, who is presented as a villainous medical man attempting to coerce an unwilling child to submit to numerous unpleasant treatments.
Reading over interviews and reports of decisions made by this doctor, it's difficult to contain anger at the widespread results of his insistence that natural-born gender can be altered with little more than willpower and hormone treatments. The attempts of his parents, twin brother, and extended family to assist Brenda to be happily female are touching--the sense is overwhelmingly of a family wanting to do "right" while being terribly mislead as to what "right" is for her. As Brenda makes the decision to live life as a male (at age 14), she takes the name David and begins the process of reversing the effects of estrogen treatments. David's ultimately successful life--a solid marriage, honest and close family relationships, and his bravery in making his childhood public--bring an uplifting end to his story. Equally fascinating is the latest segment of the longtime nature/nurture controversy, and the interviews of various psychological researchers and practitioners form a larger framework around David's struggle to live as the gender he was meant to be. --Jill Lightner
In 1967, after a twin baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment that would alter his gender. The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine -- and a total failure. As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's -- and one family's -- amazing survival in the face of terrible odds.
Get a Life! (Star Trek)
by William Shatner
from Atria
For years, William Shatner's attitude toward Star Trek conventions was strictly professional: he'd typically fly in the day of his appearance, go straight from the airport to the stage, and then leave as quickly as possible. But when he went on an extensive tour to promote Generations, he became "Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas morning." Soon he was talking to fellow cast members, convention organizers, and the fans themselves, discovering how love of a science fiction show had helped create a tight-knit community.
In the course of this book, Shatner gives us a short history of Trek fandom, reveals the thinking behind Paramount's decision to kill off James T. Kirk, briefly explains the origins of the infamous Saturday Night Live sketch that gives the book its title, holds a seminar with the three other starship captains, and even takes lessons on the proper way to imitate Kirk from the master, Kevin Pollak, an actor/comedian. (Among the insights gained: those dramatic pauses in Kirk's speeches were the result of Shatner trying to remember his next line.) And there are plenty of jokes at the expense of Leonard Nimoy, as well as a few skewering Shatner. (The "elephant story" is a classic in itself. Once, when Shatner was on a photo safari in Africa, an elephant did number two on his head. He tells the story at cons, and the fans seem to love it, for some reason.) But the most touching segments of Get a Life! are Shatner's interviews with the fans, particularly those to whom the show and the fan community have given a social and emotional lifeline. Once you've read the conversations with the shy veterinary student who made friends by dressing his cats in Star Trek uniforms, or with a young woman whose severe emotional and sexual trauma had led to the development of multiple personalities that included three healing presences in the form of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, you will never be able to make a Trekkie joke quite so readily again. --Ron Hogan
Get A Life! with the possible exception of "Beam me up, Scotty," is clearly the most repeated catchphrase in the history of Star Trek®. Poking fun at Star Trek's gung-ho fans and conventions in a now infamous Saturday Night Live sketch, William Shatner's comic rallying cry has been indelibly emblazoned into the collective psyche of trekkers everywhere. Through the years, the phrase has spurred laughter, anger, controversy, and far more than its fair share of debate. It's now also given birth to an honest, sentimental, insightful book.
Uncomfortable with speaking onstage, William Shatner had spent the better part of the previous quarter century steadfastly avoiding convention appearances. However, to publicize the release of Star Trek Generations, Shatner agreed to a rare series of speaking engagements at Star Trek conventions around the globe. He was jolted by an unavoidable dose of reality.
Shatner was met with wild enthusiasm, love, and good humor at convention after convention. Touched and fascinated, he was overwhelmed with the realization that in almost three decades of starship hopping, he'd never really taken the time to enjoy or understand Star Trek's fans or their conventions. That's when the light bulb clicked on; that's when "Captain Kirk" dove headfirst into action.
For the past several years, William Shatner has been treating each Star Trek convention like an enormous research project. Interviewing fans, dealers, fellow castmembers, convention organizers, and promoters -- even going undercover beneath alien makeup -- Shatner's been scouring convention floors. Having grilled trekkers and trekkies in all corners of the planet, Shatner's had his eyes opened and his mind boggled. He's amassed a small mountain of research material, and cultivated his findings in Get A Life!
This is a first-person journey of discovery told with self-deprecating wit, unflagging honesty, and his trademark enthusiasm and humor. Get a Life! tells William Shatner's own story of how the actor who played the now deceased starship captain, James T. Kirk, can finally come to grips with his past, his fans, their love, and his own intergalactic legacy.
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