17662. (Arthur Conan Doyle) The Mus­grave Rit­u­al [sto­ry]
17663. (Alan Dean Fos­ter) Starman
17664. (John Lor­inc) The New City: How the Cri­sis in Canada’s Urban Cen­tres is Reshaping 
. . . . . the Nation
17665. (Rus­sell Shorto) Going Dutch [arti­cle]
17666. (Katha Pol­litt) Bet­ter Liv­ing Through Tor­ture [arti­cle]
17667. (Steven McKen­zie) The Lit­tle Ice Age and Scot­land [arti­cle]
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This is a well-writ­ten mys­tery nov­el, with a very lean prose style and direct, sequen­tial plot­ting. Mur­der and may­hem in a Vien­nese mil­i­tary acad­e­my, 1903. Detec­tives improb­a­bly using psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic tech­niques to solve the mys­tery, but, hey, that’s the con­ceit of the tale. Music every­where, pas­tries, waltzes, and absyn­the bub­bling on the spoon. Tallis’ inser­tion of piquant his­tor­i­cal details is care­ful­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to please the read­er — nev­er too much at a time, nev­er too didac­tic. The decay­ing poly­glot Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire is the per­fect back­ground for the thriller and mur­der mys­tery writer, espe­cial­ly with our ret­ro­spec­tive fas­ci­na­tion with its sex­u­al and psy­chopath­e­l­og­i­cal obses­sions. Even old Kraft-Ebbing turns up in a toast.

17371. (Alexan­der Macken­zie) Voy­ages from Mon­tre­al on the Riv­er St. Lau­rence through the 
. . . . . Con­ti­nent of North Amer­i­ca to the Frozen and Pacif­ic Oceans In the Years 1789 
. . . . . and 1793 with a Pre­lim­i­nary Account of the Rise, Progress, and Present State 
. . . . . of The Fur Trade of That Country
17372. (Arthur Conan Doyle) The Final Prob­lem [sto­ry]
(Christo­pher S. Beek­man & William W. Baden –ed.) Non­lin­ear Mod­els for Archae­ol­o­gy and 
. Anthro­pol­o­gy ― Con­tin­u­ing the Revolution:
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The Province of Alber­ta has two superb muse­ums asso­ci­at­ed with out­door sites. One, of course, is the famed Tyrell Muse­um of Pale­on­tol­ogy. The oth­er is Head-Smashed-In Buf­fa­lo Jump, declared a World Her­itage Site by UNESCO in 1981, with its Inter­pre­tive Cen­tre. For a peri­od of five thou­sand years, native peo­ples of the region drove herds of buf­fa­lo over this cliff. The beasts were dri­ven and herd­ed to their deaths with aid of a com­plex sys­tem of cairns, fences, and cor­rals, and orga­nized team-work. The bod­ies were butchered and processed into pem­mi­can (a spoilage-resis­tant con­cen­trat­ed food) and hun­dreds of oth­er prod­ucts, which were trad­ed across the region. It was vir­tu­al­ly an indus­tri­al-scale enter­prise. Head-Smashed-In was only one of many such sites in the region, but it is the one most thor­ough­ly inves­ti­gat­ed. Read more »

17244. (Arthur Conan Doyle) The Adven­ture of the Speck­led Band [sto­ry]
17245. (Hen­ry C. Clark) Com­pass of Soci­ety: Com­merce and Abso­lutism in Old-Regime France
17246. (Gra­ham Wat­son) The Reifi­ca­tion of Eth­nic­i­ty and Its Polit­i­cal Con­se­quences in the North 
. . . . . [arti­cle]
17247. [2] (Verne Dusen­ber­ry) Wait­ing for a Day that Nev­er Comes: The Dis­pos­sessed Métis of 
. . . . . Mon­tana [arti­cle]
17248. (Peter Armitage & John C. Kennedy) Red­bait­ing and Racism on Our Fron­tier: Military 
. . . . . Expan­sion in Labrador and Que­bec [arti­cle] Read more »

This auto­bi­og­ra­phy writ­ten (with some assis­tance) by an upper-class Iran­ian woman is both a pro­found­ly mov­ing per­son­al doc­u­ment and a per­fect intro­duc­tion to the his­to­ry of Iran in the 20th cen­tu­ry. Born in the harem of a mem­ber of the Qajar nobil­i­ty, Sattareh Far­man Farmi­an lived through the dis­so­lu­tion of the old King­dom, the reigns of the two Pahle­vi Shahs (the first, a sol­dier ran­dom­ly cho­sen and installed by the British, the sec­ond, installed by the CIA), and final­ly through the first stages of the Rev­o­lu­tion of the Aya­tol­lahs. Read more »

If you are under the impres­sion, as many are, that eco­nom­ic thought begins with Adam Smith, then this book will act as a cor­rec­tive. Hen­ry C. Clark out­lines the chang­ing themes in the dis­cus­sion of trade that took place in France dur­ing the 17th and 18th cen­turies, as well as the Eng­lish and Dutch works that they react­ed to. What strikes me is that most of the issues being dis­cussed are much the same as the ones being debat­ed today, and most of the same ideas are sim­i­lar. Adam Smith, in 1776, was not begin­ning a new dis­ci­pline, but pro­duc­ing a selec­tive syn­the­sis of a long-exist­ing and com­plex one. Along the way to The Wealth of Nations, there was a long list of impor­tant and inter­est­ing peo­ple com­ment­ing on the nature of trade, mon­ey, and the prop­er roles of the state and the indi­vid­ual in com­merce. Among them was the rec­og­niz­able, but con­sis­tent­ly under-esti­mat­ed Mon­tesquieu. But there were many oth­er, for­got­ten thinkers worth pay­ing atten­tion to.

17156. (David Leav­itt) The Lost Lan­guage of Cranes
17157. (Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da: Dept. of Finance) Notice of Ways and Means Motion to Implement 
. . . . . Cer­tain Pro­vi­sions of the Bud­get Tabled in Par­lia­ment on Jan­u­ary 27, 2009 and 
. . . . . Relat­ed Fis­cal Mea­sures / Avis de motion de voies et moyens por­tant exécution 
. . . . . de cer­taines dis­po­si­tions du bud­get déposé au Par­lement le 27 jan­vi­er 2009
. . . . . et met­tant en oeu­vre des mesures fis­cales con­nex­es [report]
17158. (Jack­ie Grom) Tur­tles Island-Hopped Their Way Across a Warm Arc­tic [arti­cle]
17159. (Sara Coel­ho) A Rich His­to­ry of Choco­late in North Amer­i­ca [arti­cle]
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This a very good study of the use of elec­tive pro­ce­dures in the Church from Late Antiq­ui­ty to the end of the Mid­dle Ages. The book min­i­mizes inter­pre­ta­tion and analy­sis in favour of pro­vid­ing hun­dreds of texts with ref­er­ences to elec­tion, and let­ting them speak for them­selves. The author chimes in when it is nec­es­sary to explain how a par­tic­u­lar word or con­cept might have a dif­fer­ent mean­ing in a medieval con­text, or a reli­gious con­text. Over­all inter­pre­ta­tion, and that very cau­tious, is saved for the end of the book. Two basic groups of doc­u­ments are cov­ered: those relat­ing to elec­tion with­in the Cler­gy, and those relat­ing to elec­tion with­in the monas­tic sys­tem. The monas­tic doc­u­ments are of greater inter­est to a his­to­ri­an of democ­ra­cy. Read more »