A great read on how all of us can improve our public discourse. Author James Hoggan [https://twitter.com/james_hoggan] speaks with notable researchers, academics, and public leaders on how our toxic state of public discourse came to be, and gets their recommendations for how to change this -…
Toronto Star reporter Kevin Donovan shares his behind-the-scenes view of the journalistic investigation which finally brought down CBC's golden boy Jian Ghomeshi. I know two people who Ghomeshi assaulted, both of them telling me of his behaviour in 2008 and 2009. The book gives more perspective on the behinds the…
Sarah Jaffe of The Nation looks at the grassroot movements rocking the American political discourse on both the left and right during the past decade. With on the ground accounts of these movements, from Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, to BlackLivesMatter, Jaffe takes us closer to the movements that…
I only read the first two chapters before having to move onto projects, and returning the book to the Hamilton Public Library. I greatly enjoyed the details and insight of the stories shared in the chapters, a fascinating look at the early Black Ops operations of the Second World War…
I read this book many months ago, and wasn't planning to write a review. As I follow the state of the news industry closely, there wasn't much that surprised me in the book. It was a good read, a good lament for the state of Canadian media which properly puts…
A venture outside of my normal reading topics, this book on the history of the English language was well worth my time. The most fascinating chapters of the book discussed local variations of the English language and the future of our tongue in the Internet age with new words being…
The Dieppe Raid was the bloodiest day of the Second World War for Canada, and the bloodiest day for Hamilton as 197 men of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry died in the August 19, 1942 raid. For 70 years, the debate raged regarding the merits and purpose of the raid.…
Required reading for journalists and bloggers, as it shows the peril of rushing to judgement in the era of clickbait. Tom Flanagan was one of Canada's leading political scientists, until one statement in an academic discussion was taking out of context and spread across the Internet. In response to a…