Tag: Books
Obama’s and Trump’s champions at the United Nations
With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace By Nikki Haley 272 pages St. Martin’s Press, 2019 Hardcover: $15 Paperback: $18 Kindle: $14.10 Growing up, Nikki Haley and Samantha Power were each the odd girl out. As a child, Haley, the daughter of Indian Sikh immigrants to the United States, was constantly told […]
Ebola: “A true monster”
Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come By Richard Preston Random House, New York 369 pages Hardcover: $36, eBook $17, audio download $34, Kindle $15 In December 2013, on a tiny patch of land along the border of three African nations — […]
Chernobyl’s untold story
Midnight at Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster By Adam Higginbotham 561 pages Simon & Schuster, 2019 eBook $14.99 Hardcover: $29.95 Paperback: $18.00 Audio download $23.99 On the night of April 26, 1986, a young engineer, Leonid Toptunov, working in the control room of Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear […]
‘Love letter’ to Canada prefers passion over policy
Bruce and Vicki Heyman’s The Art of Diplomacy (Simon and Schuster, 2019, 266 pages, $32) is a syrupy fan letter to Canada — a collection of clichés about our weather, our pronunciation, Tim Hortons and Sourtoe cocktails. About the only thing missing is an ode to the BeaverTail. Still, Canada these days needs to welcome […]
The real business of Beijing
In 2017, Australia’s top defence official declared publicly that China was engaged in widespread espionage in his country. Soon after, Australia’s national security agency warned Parliament that the Chinese Communist Party’s actions directly threatened the nation’s sovereignty. The agency’s head said foreign interference had “the potential to cause serious harm to the nation’s sovereignty, the […]
When women rule the world
A warning: The first chapter of 100 Questions About Women in Politics by Manon Tremblay features a few linguistic eye-glazers — such as “hegemonic scope,” “antagonistic binomials” and “intersectionality.” They made me fear that I wouldn’t be able to plod through many pages without drowning in jargon. Perhaps Tremblay thought about that, too, because both […]
In defence of the liberal world order
Three books explore aspects of the liberal world order that today is being challenged — two in the context of Canadian diplomacy and defence, a third from the perspective of one of the U.S.’s most experienced and respected politicians. When he won election in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared to the world that Canada […]
North Korea: An insider’s view as hope for peace emerges
North Korea dominated headlines in July 2017 after Kim Jong-un’s regime fired a long-range ballistic missile that ultimately landed in Japanese waters. The country launched another missile over Japan on Sept. 15, and released images of a massive intercontinental ballistic missile it claimed could target the United States as early as November. The nuclear threat […]
The ravaged refugees who flee
In August 2014, ISIS militants ordered Yazidi villagers from Kocho — a rural farming community in northern Iraq — to march in the sweltering heat to its only school. Women waited on the upper level of the school while men were assembled outside. Those who refused to convert to Islam were shot. From inside the […]
Vietnam ‘snow job,’ Lawrence of Arabia and Pol Pot
At about the midway point between Pearl Harbor and the collapse of the Twin Towers, the United States was the victim of another giant surprise attack. The pummelling assault on Hué, the old imperial capital of Vietnam, close to the sea, south of the Demilitarized Zone, was the work of communist Viet Cong guerrillas and […]
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