Alex Abella, author of SOLDIERS OF REASON, discusses his new book, the history of the RAND Corporation, and their role in shaping US foreign policy, including the decision to invade Iraq, in this fascinating new video:

Dan Vyleta, author of critically acclaimed cold-war thriller PAVEL & I, is the most recent Author Snapshot over at January Magazine:

Please tell us about Pavel & I.
It’s a broken sort of love story: a boy is looking for a father, a woman finds a man she thinks she can trust, and the narrator is convinced that he’s identified his soul mate, a man he can talk to, get to the bottom of things… Also, there is a monkey, and a frozen midget, and an English Colonel who likes to wear mink.

Click here for Dan Vyleta’s Author Snapshot

Click here for Dan Vyleta’s Q & A on the Raincoast blog

Thomas Campanella’s critical overview of contemporary Chinese urbanization ‘THE CONCRETE DRAGON: China’s Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World’ has just been reviewed by Re: Place Magazine:

Campanella compares China’s unprecedented growth to America in the 1950s, when suburbia became a desirable place to live and owning a car meant having freedom. What’s fascinating here, though, are the things that are unique to China’s sprawl and development. It seems like everything is built quickly and it’s built to impress. China is preparing for the Olympics and wants the world to take notice in a way that no other country has done in the past.

Although it is interesting to read about the largest shopping mall in the world, or the tallest skyscraper, or the latest incredible amusement park, it is really the human side of this story that is most incredible and is well captured in this book. Campanella talks about the hardship of the average Chinese worker who can’t afford to buy into the new middle or upper class lifestyle and so is often forcibly kicked out of their homes in the name of progress.

Click here for the full review

In 2006, filmmaker, author, independent curator and all-round creative person Faythe Levine travelled 19,000 miles across North America to document the burgeoning contemporary craft movement.

Embracing emerging artists, crafters, and designers working in traditional and nontraditional media, contemporary craft mashes up historical technique, punk culture, and the D.I.Y. attitude. The participants share ideas and support each other through websites, blogs, boutiques, galleries, and craft fairs. Together they have forged a new economy and lifestyle based on creativity, determination, and networking. 

For HANDMADE NATION Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl have selected 24 makers and 5 essayists who work within different media and have different methodologies to provide a microcosm of the crafting community. The book features photographs of the makers and their work, as well as discussions of how they got their start and what motivates them.

A documentary film directed by Levine about contemporary craft (also called HANDMADE NATION) is currently in pre-production and will be released in 2009. Here’s a sneak peak:

You can also read Faythe Levine’s blog about the movie here!

Dan Vyleta’s whip-smart, Berlin-noir spy thriller PAVEL & I received a glowing review from Robert Wiersema (BC author of BEFORE I WAKE) in Sunday’s Edmonton Journal:

“Every so often… a Canadian debut novel appears which restores ones faith in the possibility of new writing in this country, a book so striking, so original, and so very fine as to remind readers of what they have long been missing. Pavel & I, the first novel from Edmonton writer Dan Vyleta is such a book… Pavel & I is a masterful work, a truly impressive debut.”

Dan was also interviewed by Richard Helm, the book review editor at The Edmonton Journal, back in April:

Vyleta’s startling debut is an impeccably constructed spy thriller, one of those old-fashioned page-turners that might be devoured at one sitting. Think The Good German meets The Third Man, or perhaps Oliver Twist conjoined with Ian McEwan’s The Innocent.

All of which begs the question: Where did this guy spring from?

Click here for the Edmonton Journal review of PAVEL & I

Click here for the Edmonton Journal interview with Dan Vyleta

(And click here for my Q & A with Dan on the Raincoast blog)

The first of two excerpts from Chris Wood’s incisive new book DRY SPRING: THE COMING WATER CRISIS OF NORTH AMERICA, entitled ‘They Don’t Want Our Water’, is now available from the Tyee website!

Introducing the excerpts, David Beers, the editor of the Tyee, provides the background to the environmental series Chris has written for their website, Rough Weather Ahead, and how Chris came to write DRY SPRING.

The second excerpt, discussing co-operation between the US and Canada over water, will be available tomorrow, but in the meantime, you can read Chris Wood’s most recent article for the Tyee, posted Tuesday, in which he critiques the British Columbia’s Liberal government’s new water strategy.

(AND you can also read a nice new review of DRY SPRING at A’n’E Vibe!)

Adrian Tomine, author/cartoonist of SHORTCOMINGS and SUMMER BLONDE (amongst others), has provided this wonderfully wry artwork for the new issue of The New Yorker!