This excellent, though bizarre play is an account of a young man's life. The young man's name is Lumiere and he is a caterer. He is a very fastidious caterer, who outline's his background. He is born to two morticians and had a brother who was severly paralised in his first trip in the brand new family vehicle. The story follows the antics of him and his brother before the accident, his mother's pushing and prodding at a political conference for ex-Canadian prime-minister Brian Mulroney in order to get a cheap college education and his career as a Schwann Meat Salesman. The combination of naration and humour leads to a liking of the main character, despite some very odd topics of conversation. The play is very enjoyable and the shocking conclusion leaves one thinking.

An outstanding addition to the historiography of the Normandy and Dutch campaigns. Often overlooked, the Canadian contribution to the fighting in these theatres was an essential component of the ultimate Allied victory. In Normandy, Canadian troops fought between the British and American forces and overcame significant obstacles in the advance towards Falaise. Copp effectively demonstrates how Canadian troops succeeded in achieving their objectives despite previous claims by other military historians that Canadian forces, operating under General Crerar and Lt- General Simonds, were overly cautious and ponderous in their advance. By examining Fifth Canadian Infantry Brigade he explains how some of the toughest German armoured divisions, blesssed with range advantages amidst clear open fields, were defeated under extremely difficult circumstances. Despite the argument that the ground was ideal tank country, it becomes clear how the terrain favoured the Germans. Battles such as Verrieres Ridge and Tilly-la-Campagne are largely unknown in the United States but Copp provides accounts of both of these two extremely difficult engagements in addition to various others which took the lives of many Canadian servicemen. More harrowing depictions are subsequently followed by an account of the Brigade's actions in the sodden fields of Holland. The nightmarish hell of this campaign is vividly described as clearly as the difficult operations in France.

Jacques Renaud's "Le casse", translated here as "Broke City", is, if nothing else, an important work in Quebecois literary history, as it was one of the first and certainly the most scandalous novel to have been written in "joual", the street slang of urban Montreal - now nearly extinct. It's not just a novel about a bunch of low-lifes scamming for a living, it was a conscious smack in the face of the Canadian establishment. Joual is, or was, a very strange dialect of French, littered with weird spellings and pronounciations and semi-English words, and Renaud wrote the book in it because it was, he claimed, how he and his friends spoke. This was something of an affront to literary manners at the time, particularly as Renaud was not like Roddy Doyle, whose early books - although written in authentic Dublin English - are essentially benign and comic. Broke City is part rant, part deadpan account of serious alienation. (The narrator kills an enemy by sticking a screwdriver down the guy's throat.)

Renaud was a friend of members of the FLQ, the terrorist group that kidnapped and murdered a Canadian government minister in 1968, and he broadly sympathised with their desire to kick out the jams and raise people's consciousness about the deprived situation of many French-speaking Canadians. Broke City certainly played a part in the process, causing no end of shocked editorials when it was first published. Since then, the French-speakers in Quebec (at any rate) have gained relative economic, social and cultural security, and joual - according to my quebecois friends - is now more of a literary device than a living dialect. (Sounds familiar to an Irish reader tired of fake Paddyisms on the page and the stage.) Still, this is a rocking translation of a wild and violent book, and even if the original effect is rather lost when you read it in English, using urban American slang does lend it a kind of grubby universality. Every big city deserves a book like this, because there's no denying that big cities have lower depths in which people have to live.

An important book. If you like Celine and Hubert Selby, Renaud is more than worth reading.

As a postgraduate student preparing a doctorate dissertation on Margaret Atwood, I found this collection of essays highly stmiulating and inspiring. Ms. Bouson is a well-read scholar who makes an effort to provide controversial ideas on the novelist's fiction. The book is written in a smooth professional style. Every essay provides a new challenge to the reader.

This is our text book of the economic course in college. I had study economic in China, but some thing is new to me in here, I found this book is very useful to accept new concept. All the text and chart is clear. Yes, I think is a good textbook to students and study. But some information is too old, I hope here will be some new edition.

The success of the Dummies series is to supply information to the beginner, but at a pace and level that does not dumb down the material. This book, Buying a Home for Dummies, successfully takes the new home-seeker through the process of buying a house. It is written by 3 Canadians, and is obviously not just a rehash of the U.S. version.

Included are suggestions and hints on finding a real estate agent and lawyer, differences between house-hunting and condo-hunting, things to look for in a house (location, size, age, etc.), and budgeting give an idea of what you can afford. There are a number of helpful regional tips included as well - obviously someone looking for a house in Thunder Bay or Edmonton will care more about heating bills than someone in Victoria or Windsor. There is also a section on selling a first house, so you can keep this book on the shelf until the time comes when you're selling.

The most helpful aspects of the book deal with the mechanics of home purchase. There are a lot of new words to be learned, and they are helpfully gathered in a glossary in the back, as well as being fully explained in context in the text. A discussion on mortgages has the danger of becoming very dull very quickly, something this book manages to avoid by including examples and an efficient writing style.

The only thing I didn't like is the emphasis on big cities - since the authors are from Vancouver and Toronto, they know big cities best, but the underlying theme of the book is based on big cities in active markets. While it's true that Halifax, Calgary, etc. are in a real estate booms right now, many readers of this book (including myself) are going to be from smaller markets, so many of the tricks and advice don't apply. Other than that, it's an excellent introduction to house (and condo) hunting, and we have found it very useful in our first experience in the real estate market.

This one is an official history and as such makes for fairly dry reading. It is indispensible for academics but the reader seeking aviation adventure should look elsewhere. It rates a 10 as a reference source (how could it miss?) However on any other level, it rates a 5. So split the difference and give it a 7. See the "WWII Aviation Booklist" for more reviews: http://www.ampsc.com/~prophet/booklist.html

A decent Book with indepth details for the rules and regulations. Handy for the Insurers.

Professor John English's work is a well-written, balanced, detailed and authoritative study of the largely mediocre role played by the First Canadian Army during the Normandy campaign of June-July 1944.

Professor English argues that the First Canadian Army's ineffective effort during the 1944 Normandy campaign can be traced back to the lackadaisical attitude held by many Canadian Army officers towards both the study of the art of war and the proper training of subordinate staff during the inter-war years. At the outbreak of World War Two in September 1939, the senior Canadian Army commanders were not only unable to understand the complexities of modern warfare, they were also unable to properly train their subordinate staffs, officers and enlisted ranks for the modern battlefield. For those few exemplary Canadian Army officers who cared passionately about the profession of arms - most notably Lieutenant General Guy Simonds - there was one senior British Army officer who acted as their teacher: Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery. Whatever critics may say about his arrogant attitude, prickly ego and blunt language, he was, and remains, in my estimation, the finest and most consummate professional military officer of World War Two. Other senior Canadian Army officers often parroted Montgomery's words, but none, with the exception of Guy Simonds, ever equaled his battlefield successes.

I found Montgomery's opinions of the senior Canadian Army commanders especially telling. They were either glowing (Guy Simonds was "the best commander in the Canadian Army") or blunt (Major General Chris Vokes was nothing more than "a good, plain cook"). General Harry Crerar (commanding officer of the First Canadian Army) was also the subject of disdainful comments by Montgomery. For example, in a letter to General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the British Imperial General Staff, Montgomery stated that he felt Crerar was not suited to command an army in the field. After reading English's work, General Crerar comes across as a military officer of very dubious qualities: Indolent, insecure, and intellectually superficial. He was seemingly obsessed with inane bureaucratic paperwork and army regulations and held a deep-seated jealousy of his finest subordinate field commander, Lieutenant General Guy Simonds. In the end, those Canadian Army junior officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted ranks who fought their way through the Normandy campaign were ill-served by most of their senior Canadian Army commanders. They, not most of their senior generals, are the heroes of the Canadian Army in Normandy.

This book did more to enrich and entertain my young children than any other book we had in our possession at the time. My first husband was a teacher - with long summer holidays - and we had a camper trailer which we took from coast to coast across Canada on two occasions. This book provided good maps, practical directions, guidelines and high points in each province along the way. It pointed out (with illustrations and detail) unusual flora and fauna that we would encounter, recommended good places to stop and hike for beautiful and/or historical views, and in general provided a running commentary on what we and our children were seeing during the trip. Both of our girls grew up loving nature, history and having a deep and intimate knowledge of Canada. Each day it gave us something unusual to do or look forward to that we would have otherwise missed. Highly recommended (although by now probably somewhat out of date... many of the subjects it covered, however, were timeless - nature and history don't really change that much, do they!)