Into the Garden

Into The Garden

Ah, spring! Time to get your hands dirty messing about in the garden. Or, just to read about gardens – no one’s judging!  Either way, we’ve got you covered. This month’s book display features books to inspire and advise in the actual hands-on garden (how about Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, or Practical Botany for Gardeners); books about gardening (perhaps Envisioning the Garden: Line, Scale, Distance, Form, Color, and Meaning); city farms (Farm City: The Education of a City Farmer, or how about The Vertical Farm); and urban sustainability (Agriculture in Urban Planning, or The Art of Building a Garden City).

Or maybe you want to let your mind wander the garden without getting your hands dirty. We’ve got all kinds of options for you! Gardens literary (The Quest for Shakespeare’s Garden, maybe, or Garden Plots: Canadian Women Writers and Their Literary Gardens); historical (Working the Garden: American Writers and the Industrialization of Agriculture, or On Other Grounds: Landscape Gardening and Nationalism in Eighteenth Century England and France); and biographical (The Gardener of Versailles: My Life in the World’s Greatest Garden or Vita Sackville-West’s Garden Book).

And there’s fiction and poetry, too! – we could go on and on! So drop by to borrow a book and then head out into the garden to read it.

Asian Heritage Month Book Display

May has been the Heritage Month in recent years in North America. It celebrates the culture, traditions, and history of Asian Americans in the United States and Canada.

May is a time to reflect on the contributions that Canadians of Asian origin continue to make, to the growth and prosperity of Canada. Canadians are invited to take part in the events that honour the legacy of Canadians of Asian origin who, throughout Canadian history, have done so much to make Canada the culturally diverse, compassionate and prosperous nation we know today.

Asian Heritage Month has been celebrated across Canada since the 1990s. In December 2001, the Senate of Canada adopted a motion proposed by Senator Vivienne Poy to officially designate May as Asian Heritage Month in Canada. In May 2002, the Government of Canada signed an official declaration to designate May as Asian Heritage Month. (The above information is from the Government of Canada’s website.)

There is a Asian Heritage Month book display in the Redpath Library during the whole month of May this year. The display features books on Asia or by Asian authors. You’ll find books on various topics such as Asian cinema, sports, entertainments, history, literature, religion, as well as encyclopedia on Asian American history and culture. You can find books by well known Asian Canadians including Joy Kogawa, Canadian poet and novelist; Jen Sookfong Lee, a Chinese Canadian broadcaster and novelist; Vivienne Poy, historian, fashion designer, community volunteer, and senator (1998-2012).

 

Please take a look at these books, and check out one or two of them for your reading.

Fake News! Propaganda, Scammers, and Malarkey

Fake news was named the word of the year by the Collins English Dictionary in 2017. Collins’ lexicographers said use of the term increased by 365% since 2016. In light of this, and in celebration of April Fools’ Day, McGill Library presents a collection of books that delve into the history of wartime propaganda, the psychology of lying, and the stories of fraudsters.

The term fake news is now synonymous with Donald Trump. To that end, we have included several recent publications about the current United States President. Donald Trump: The Making of a World View reveals how Trump’s worldview was formed and how it affects policy. Communication in the Age of Trump is a collection of essays that examine how Trump uses Twitter to speak directly to the public. Quand la clique nous manipule: Du Printemps érable à Donald Trump hits a little closer to home by examining the marketing behind the 2012 Québec student protests and how polarizing social movements that have come afterwards, such as the Make America Great Again rallies, have drawn on similar communications strategies.

The book display also highlights biographies, such as Stalin’s Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess, about a British diplomat and Soviet agent, and A Life in Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE, a British intelligence officer who worked in France during the Second World War. Women Swindlers in America, 1860-1920 delves into the lives of women who were scam artists in the field of spiritualism, who told sob stories to get money, who ran matrimonial cons to increase their bank balances, and who swindled financial institutions by passing bad cheques.

Cinema and photography were heavily relied upon during the Second World War as forms of propaganda. Marketing the Third Reich: Persuasion, packaging and propaganda re-conceptualizes Third Reich propaganda through the lens of consumer marketing. Memoria e immaginario : la Seconda Guerra mondiale nel cinema italiano examines thematic traditions in Italian resistance cinema. Grand illusion: the Third Reich, the Paris exposition, and the cultural seduction of France touches on French reactions to Nazi culture in the 1930s and the Nazi party’s construction of German identity in Paris.

If you’re in the mood for a good novel set in a dystopian future that heavily features state propaganda, then rest assured that the display features some classics, such as The Handmaid’s Tale and Fahrenheit 451. We also have contemporary graphic novels that address fake news, such as the recently published and highly acclaimed Sabrina. No matter your taste, McGill Library has something to satiate your fake news fix!