Series: Field Notes

Shortlisted for the 2024 Speaker's Book Award. Nominated for the 2024 Heritage Toronto Book Award. A Hamilton Review of Books Best Book of 2023. Deborah Dundas is a journalist who grew up poor and almost didn't make it to university. In On Class, she talks to writers, activists, those who work with the poor, and those who are poor about...

Nominated for the 2023 Heritage Toronto Book Award A defence of the dying art of losing an afternoon—and gaining new appreciation—amidst the bins and shelves of bricks-and-mortar shops. Written during the pandemic, when the world was marooned at home and consigned to scrolling screens, On Browsing chronicles what we've lost through online shopping, streaming, and the relentless digitisation of culture....

In this compelling whodunnit, Elaine Dewar reads the science, follows the money, and connects the geopolitical interests to the spin. When the first TV newscast described a SARS-like flu affecting a distant Chinese metropolis, investigative journalist Elaine Dewar started asking questions: Was SARS-CoV-2 something that came from nature, as leading scientists insisted, or did it come from a lab, and...

An exploration of America's declining heartland, the Hinterland. Over the last forty years, the landscape of the USA has been fundamentally transformed. It is partially visible in the ascendance of glittering coastal hubs for finance, infotech and the so-called 'creative class'. But this is only the tip of an economic iceberg, the bulk of which lies in the darkness of...

We need community to live. But what does it look like? Why does it often feel like it's slipping away? We are all hinged to some definition of a community, be it as simple as where we live, as complex as the beliefs we share, or as intentional as those we call family. In an episodic personal essay, Casey Plett...

Globalisation as we know it is over. Governments continue to embrace regressive industrial policies, geopolitical tensions are rising higher and higher, and resurgent far-right movements are threatening the foundations of contemporary democracies. In this book, Jamie Merchant traces the roots of this decline beyond the oft-blamed failures of the post-Cold War era. Instead, Merchant argues that the great political and...

Writing is, and always will be, an act defined by failure. The best plan is to just get used to it. Failure is a topic discussed in every creative writing department in the world, but this is the book every beginning writer should have on their shelf to prepare them. Less a guide to writing and more a guide to...

A trenchant exposé of the effects of automation on workers' lives In recent decades, digital devices have reshaped daily life, while tech companies' stock prices have thrust them to the forefront of the business world. In this rapid, global development, the promise of a new machine age has been accompanied by worries about accelerated joblessness thanks to new forms of...