Polar bears are truly majestic animals: the largest land-dwelling carnivore on earth, they can measure up to 3 metres in length, and weigh up to 700 kilograms. They are also iconic in other ways – a symbol of the climate change debate, with their survival now threatened by the loss of Arctic ice. Their images decorate fountains and the cornices of buildings across Europe. They sell cold drinks. They feature in children’s books, on merry-go-rounds, and under the arms of weary toddlers headi...

“The ways in which we can redress the past are many and varied,” writes Jean Barman, “and it is up to each of us to act as best we can.” The seventeen essays collected here, originally published between 1996 and 2013, make a valuable contribution toward this laudable goal. With a wide range of source material, from archival and documentary sources to oral histories, Barman pieces together stories of individuals and groups disadvantaged in white settler society because of their gender, race...

The complexities of the English language can be daunting for even the most fluent speakers, and for Canadians this is doubly so with the mixture of British and American traditions. Almost anyone engaged in formal writing will sometimes need to consult a usage guide for advice, but Canadians have always been forced to choose between a British or an American source. With the Guide to Canadian English Usage, writers will have an authoritative reference based on Canadian sources that provides pit...

Memories. Some memories are elusive, fleeting, like a butterfly that touches down and is free until it is caught. Others are haunting. You'd rather forget them, but they won't be forgotten. And some are always there. No matter where you are, they are there, too.In this moving story of legacy and reclamation, two young sisters are taken from their home and family. Powerless in a broken system, April and Cheryl are separated and placed in different foster homes. Despite the ...

What does it mean to be out walking in the world, whether in a landscape or a metropolis, on a pilgrimage or a protest march? In this first general history of walking, Rebecca Solnit draws together many histories to create a range of possibilities for this most basic act. Arguing that walking as history means walking for pleasure and for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit homes in on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from the peripatetic phi...

One of the English language’s most skilled and beloved writers guides us all toward precise, mistake-free grammar.As usual Bill Bryson says it best: “English is a dazzlingly idiosyncratic tongue, full of quirks and irregularities that often seem willfully at odds with logic and common sense. This is a language where ‘cleave’ can mean to cut in half or to hold two halves together; where the simple word ‘set’ has 126 different meanings as a verb, 58 as a noun, and 10...

'My first English lesson was grammar with the terrifying Mrs Petrie. She spent the entire time marching up and down the classroom, thwacking various items of school furniture with a ruler while she banged on about the ING part of the verb. I sat there, vibrating with fear, desperately trying to figure out what on earth she could mean. Irregular Negative Gerund? Intransitive Nominative Genitive? It was only years later, when I was teaching English to foreign students, that I realised that E...

Do you cringe when a talking head pronounces “niche” as NITCH? Do you get bent out of shape when your teenager begins a sentence with “and”? Do you think British spellings are more “civilised” than the American versions? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re myth-informed.In Origins of the Specious, word mavens Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman reveal why some of grammar’s best-known “rules” aren’t—and never were—rules at all. This playfull...

For Who the Bell Tolls is a book that explains the grammar that people really need to know, such as the fact that an apostrophe is the difference between a company that knows its s*** and a company that knows it's s***, or the importance of capital letters to avoid ambiguity in such sentences as 'I helped my Uncle Jack off his horse.'David Marsh's lifelong mission has been to create order out of chaos. For four decades, he has worked for newspapers, from the Sun t...

The author of Reading the OED presents an eye-opening look at language “mistakes” and how they came to be accepted as correct—or not.English is a glorious mess of a language, cobbled together from a wide variety of sources and syntaxes, and changing over time with popular usage. Many of the words and usages we embrace as standard and correct today were at first considered slang, impolite, or just plain wrong.Whether you consider yourself a stickler...

The Oxford Companion to the English Language provides an authoritative single-volume source of information about the English language. It is intended both for reference and for browsing. The first edition of this landmark Companion, published in 1998, adopted a strong international perspective, covering topics from Cockney to Creole, Aboriginal English to Caribbean English and a historical range from Chaucer to Chomsky, Latin to the World Wide Web. It succinctly described and disc...

This practical guide to spelling will help you to feel more confident by teaching you simple strategies to boost your ability. You'll learn which words are commonly misspelt and how to avoid falling into these traps. With simple rules and guidelines to follow, you'll discover when it's acceptable to misspell and when it's not, and you will finally learn how to enjoy - rather than fear - the written word. With plenty of exercises, crosswords and games to practice and perfect your skills, yo...