WHAT IS AMERICA? A Short History of the New World Order, by Ronald Wright
Thursday, September 4, 2008 @ 7:30pm
Innis Town Hall
2 Sussex Ave.
Tickets $5 available via phone (416) 640-5836 and in-store at the Refund’s Desk.
A lecture, Q & A and signing.
From the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of A Short History of Progress, comes another surprising, thought-provoking and essential book.
The USA is now the world’s lone superpower, whose deeds could make or break this century. For better and worse, America has Americanized the planet. How did a marginal frontier society, in a mere two centuries, become the de facto ruler of the world? Why do America’s great achievements in democracy, prosperity and civil rights now seem threatened by forces within itself?
Ronald Wright, author of the bestselling A Short History of Progress, asks these and other critical questions about a superpower whose fate now seems to lie in the balance. Brimming with insight into history and human behaviour, and written in Wright’s captivating style, What Is America? is a fresh, passionate look at the world’s most influential nation. It will reframe the debate about the USA, and about ourselves.
Photo courtesy of Neil Graham.
Ronald Wright is an award-winning novelist, historian and essayist. His first novel, A Scientific Romance, was a Globe & Mail, Sunday Times and New York Times Book of the Year. His non-fiction includes the #1 bestsellers Stolen Continents and the 2004 Massey Lecture, A Short History of Progress, which won the CBA Libris Award for Non-Fiction Book of the Year and has been published worldwide.
Fixing Failed States, by Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart
Friday, May 16, 2008 @ 7:30pm
Hart House, Library
(7 Hart House Circle)
Today between forty and sixty nations, home to close to two billion people, have either collapsed or are teetering on the brink of failure. The world’s worst problems–terrorism, drugs and human trafficking, absolute poverty, ethnic conflict, disease, genocide–originate in such states, and the international community has devoted billions of dollars to solving the problem. Yet by and large the effort has not succeeded. Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart have taken an active part in the effort to save failed states for many years, serving as World Bank officials, as advisers to the UN, and as high-level participants in the new government of Afghanistan.
Now, in Fixing Failed States, they describe the issue–vividly and convincingly–offering an on-the-ground picture of why past efforts have not worked and advancing a groundbreaking new solution to this most pressing of global crises. Military force, while certainly necessary on occasion, cannot solve the fundamental problems, and humanitarian interventions cost billions yet do not leave capable states in their wake. Ghani and Lockhart argue that only an integrated state-building approach can heal these failing countries. As they explain, many of these countries already have the resources they need, if only we knew how to connect them to global knowledge and put them to work in the right way. Their state-building strategy, which assigns responsibility equally among the international community, national leaders, and citizens, maps out a clear path to political and economic stability. The authors provide a clear, practical framework for achieving these ends, supporting their case with first-hand examples of struggling territories such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo and Nepal as well as the world’’s success stories–Singapore, Ireland, and even the American South. The battle against terror, poverty, climate change, and much more cannot be won unless we can save these nations.
In Fixing Fixed States, two of the world’s foremost authorities offer a way out of the current crisis–a framework for re-imagining the international system. It is a book that is unique in its essential optimism–an optimism that the authors have earned through their own substantial real-world efforts in failed states.
Ashraf Ghani holds the post of Chancellor of Kabul University and is former Minister of Finance, Afghanistan. A native of Afghanistan, he has taught at Kabul University, Aarhus University, UC Berkeley, and Johns Hopkins University where he still holds an adjunct professorship. The main focus of his academic research is social theory, development and the political economy of state formation.
Prior to assuming his current post, Mr. Ghani spent several years as lead anthropologist at the World Bank. In October 2001 he became Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi. When the Taliban fell from power in Afghanistan and the Afghan Interim Administration took control, Dr. Ghani acted as the Chief Advisor to the Chairman Karzai. In April of 2002 Dr. Ghani was named the Executive Director of the Afghan Assistance Coordination Authority. From June 2002 to December 2004 he served as the Finance Minister of the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan. He implemented a wide-ranging series of monetary and fiscal reforms, earning the Asia’s Best Finance Minister of the Year Award in 2003. He carried out a comprehensive seven year public investment program of the country called Securing Afghanistan’s Future, in response to which the donors pledged $8.2 billion for three years and agreed to consider an additional commitment of $19.3 billion in three years time.
In recognition of his services, he was awarded the Sayed Jamal-ud-Din Afghani medal, the highest civilian award in the country. Dr. Ghani has written for various publications, including the New York Times and Herald Tribune, and broadcast widely through the Persian and Pashtun services of the BBC and Voice of America.
Clare Lockhart is Director for the Institute for State Effectiveness. She has worked for the World Bank, the United Nations and advised the Government of Afghanistan in Kabul on its strategy and programs from 2002 to 2005.
The Truth About Canada, by Mel Hurtig
Thursday, May 15, 2008 @ 7:30pm
Hart House, Library
(7 Hart House Circle)
Renowned as a passionate Canadian, bestselling author Mel Hurtig has combed through world statistics to see how Canada really measures up — and the results are astonishing, and often shocking.
This book is about how Canada has changed, very much for the worse, in the last twenty years. As a result of these profound (often hidden) changes, we are no longer the people we think we are. To take one example, the Canadian media usually leaves us with the impression that Canadians are really heavily taxed. Yes, compared to the U.S.A., the usual point of comparison. No, compared to other countries with our standard of living, other OECD countries, for example; there we come in 23rd on the high-tax scale.
The shocks in this book build up, chapter by chapter. How do we rank in the world in voter turnout? Try 109th. Number of physicians per 100,000 population? Try 54th. Our rank in reducing pollution? 126th out of 146 countries.
Some of the statistics are internal, comparing Canada then and now. They back up two of the book’s most powerful themes: the failure of Canadian big business to turn record profits into ongoing investment in our country, and (no coincidence) the sellout of our assets at a rate that no other country would allow.
This statistics-based book ranges across all areas of our lives — including health, wages, productivity, culture, the media (“the most concentrated in the world”), and much else. Mel Hurtig’s message is that we can’t do anything to fix the direction we’re drifting in unless we recognize it — and recognize The Truth About Canada.
Mel Hurtig has been a bookseller; a political activist (founder of the Council of Canadians and leader of the National Party of Canada); a publisher, and a writer. He is the author of The Betrayal of Canada, A New and Better Canada, and an autobiography, At Twilight in the Country.
Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 @ 7:30pm
Hart House, East Common Room
(7 Hart House Circle)
A bold and eye-opening new book of magnificent photos, unforgettable stories and exotic home-cooking from the most ethnically diverse, geographically varied and intriguing regions of China.
In the West, when we think about food in China, what usually comes to mind are the signature dishes of Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. But beyond the urbanized eastern third of China lie the high open spaces and sacred places of Tibet, the Silk Road oases of Xinjiang, the steppes of Inner Mongolia, and the steeply terraced hills of Yunnan and Guizhou. The peoples who live in these regions are culturally distinct, with their own history and their own unique culinary traditions. In Beyond the Great Wall, the inimitable duo of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid–who first met as young travellers in Tibet–bring home the enticing flavours of this other China.
For over twenty-five years, both separately and together, Duguid and Alford have journeyed all over the outlying regions of China, sampling local home-cooking and street food, making friends and taking lustrous photographs. Beyond the Great Wall is a rich mosaic of recipes, photos and stories–a must-have for every food lover, and an inspiration for cooks and armchair travellers alike.
Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s four previous books have all been major award-winners. Flatbreads & Flavors and Hot Sour Salty Sweet both won the James Beard Cookbook of the Year Award (in 1996 and 2001 respectively). Seductions of Rice and HomeBaking, their most recent book, each won a Cuisine Canada Cookbook Award (in 1999 and 2004). Naomi and Jeffrey have written for all the major food magazines in Canada and the U.S., including Gourmet and Food & Wine, and also for the National Post.
A Brief History of Anxiety (Yours and Mine), by Patricia Pearson
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 @ 7:30pm
Hart House Library
(7 Hart House Circle)
award-winning author Patricia Pearson
and on-again, off-again producer of CBC’s The Current, Jeff Warren.
The millions of North Americans who silently cope with anxiety at last have a witty, articulate champion in Patricia Pearson, who shows that the anxious are hardly “nervous nellies” with “weak characters” who just need medicine and a pat on the head. Instead, Pearson questions what it is about today’s culture that is making people anxious, and offers some surprising answers–as well as some inspiring solutions based on her own fierce battle to drive the beast away.
Drawing on personal episodes of incapacitating dread as a vivid, often hilarious guide to her quest to understand this most ancient of human emotions, Pearson delves into the history and geography of anxiety. Why are North Americans so much more likely to suffer than Latin Americans? Why did Darwin treat hypochondria with sprays from a hose? Why have we forgotten the insights of some of our greatest philosophers, theologians and psychologists in favor of prescribing addictive drugs? In this blend of fascinating reportage and poignant memoir, Pearson ends with her struggle to withdraw from antidepressants and to find more self-aware and philosophically-grounded ways to strengthen the soul.
Patricia Pearson is a wife, a mother and an award-winning writer. She has won two National Magazine Awards, a National Author’s Award and the Arthur Ellis Award for Best True Crime Book for When She Was Bad. She has written two novels: Playing House, which was nominated for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and Believe Me. She is also the author of the acclaimed essay collection Area Woman Blows Gasket. She lives in Toronto with her husband and two children.
