According to a bold new book by the acclaimed Canadian historian and novelist, the U.S. is one of the most antiquated countries in the West and perilously at odds with the contemporary world.

This Land Is Their Land

Storytelling is risky business, both in life and in The Enchantress of Florence, but the author doesn’t flinch from truth or fiction.

Profile: Misha Glenny

Jeff Wall was an obvious choice for this year’s Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts.

Fresh from last month’s Grammy win with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Bramwell Tovey is heading back to Tinseltown. On March 17 the VSO announced that Tovey will join the prestigious Los Angeles Philharmonic in July as principal guest conductor, heading up a summer program of six concerts and one opera. Tovey’s July 8 premiere at the Hollywood Bowl, featuring Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana as well as one of his own compositions, will be followed five days later by a p

By Jacob Weisberg. Random House, 271 pp, $30, hardcover

Nice work, NHL disciplinarian Colin Campbell. Oh, and you too, commissioner Gary Bettman: well done. Yesterday you did a brilliant job of reminding everyone what it was like to be back in high school.

Three leading figures in the arts community give their views on a city at a cultural crossroads.

By Dave Bidini. McClelland & Stewart, 311 pp, $32.99, hardcover

Umberto Eco's mostly brief essay take on everything from movies to global immigration, media monopolies to terrorism

Kapuscinksi, who died last January at age 74, was as much poet and philosopher as he was world-travelling reporter, and as he works and reworks this theme into his book's mix of autobiography, travelogue, and essay, he sheds light on the crucial powers and frailties of memory.

Cold-Cocked burns with hockey's passions

This weekend the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra will pull off what many other arts organizations have been unable to do during the last several weeks: it will play the Orpheum Theatre, one of the civic-run venues that has remained dark throughout the civic workers strike that began two months ago.

Naomi Klein exposes the economic ambulance chasers who take advantage of natural and economic disasters worldwide.

The Vancouver Playhouse announced Thursday (August 23) that its general manager, Jon Stettner, is stepping down immediately and that the company is planning to merge the general-manager and artistic-director positions into a single role.

For centuries they were called mercenaries, but that's such an ugly word, loaded with the dead greed of killers for hire. The PR optics are terrible. Much better to be "security consultants" or "civilian contractors", terms favoured by the slew of private companies whose heavily armed employees now patrol and often shoot to kill in ruined places such as Iraq, where they are present in numbers as great as those of the U.S. military itself.

By David Walsh. Ballantine Books, 334 pp, $32, hardcover 

It’s the season of the beach-loving Bard, starry-night theatre, butoh heroes, fringe frolickers, and much, much music.

It’s the season of the beach-loving Bard, starry-night theatre, butoh heroes, fringe frolickers, and much, much music.

According to Vancouver author Bruce Grierson, all of us dream from time to time of overhauling our lives. Of shedding the old self, with its tired habits, complacency, and disillusionment, and taking on some utterly different, more focused and fulfilled identity. Grierson's highly readable new book, U-Turn: What If You Woke Up One Morning and Realized You Were Living the Wrong Life?

Though full of really bad plans made worse by hard liquor and strong weed, the Trailer Park Boys have become Canadian media moguls. Their hugely popular TV series kicks off its seventh season this Sunday (April 8) on Showcase. On top of that, Trailer Park Boys: The Movie, released last fall, was a box-office hit, winning three Genie nominations.

The Good, the Bad & the Queen (Virgin)

Three of the cultural community's key players opine on funding, venues, and the Olympics.

Roderick Quin transforms surfaces into 3-D marvels.

Gala auction at the Museum of Anthropology; Queen Elizabeth Theatre gets a face-lift; PuSh International Performing Arts Festival develops steadily

Despite years of hard work by network executives and producers, the differences between reality TV and reality itself remain painfully obvious. Just ask the members of Rock Star Supernova. The self-designated “megagroup”, formed by occasional Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, ex–Guns N’ Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, and former Metallica bassist Jason New­sted, generated a hit TV series last summer with its 11-episode, American Idol–style search for a lead singer.

Before deserting the U.S. army in 2003 and fleeing to Canada with his wife and four children, Joshua Key spent over half a year in the rubble and chaos of Iraq. As he describes in his harrowing new book, The Deserter’s Tale (House of Anansi Press, $29.95), written in collaboration with Canadian author Lawrence Hill, Key helped raid roughly 200 households in Ramadi and Fallujah. He searched the contents and occupants of countless cars while patrolling urban checkpoints and the Syrian border.

Fred Herzog’s history-making photographs have documented the changing city in 80,000 frames

Much more is gained than lost in the translations that take place during Eddie Ladd’s multidisciplinary, multilingual dance piece Scarface, slated for the Scotiabank Dance Centre on January 19 and 20 as part of this year’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.

CANCELLING SOON AT A THEATRE NEAR YOU? A recent decision by Toronto’s Canadian Stage Company to cancel plans to produce a controversial play about the Middle East hasn’t dissuaded a local theatre company from seeking to mount its own production.

BOCA’S WANDERINGS COME TO AN END Local theatre troupe Boca del Lupo is gearing up to overhaul the format of the free and enormously popular summer shows it has performed in Stanley Park since 2002. The company has established a reputation for original productions with a “processional” presentation that wanders in the park’s woods, drawing audiences along from site to site and scene to scene.

By Will Self. Bloomsbury USA, 496 pp, $29.95, hardcover.

The once-small-scale Winter Solstice Lantern Festival now illuminates six separate neighbourhoods on the darkest night

GALLERY EXODUS FROM YALETOWN CONTINUES Onepointsix gallery will close its doors for good on January 13, 2007, at the end of its current exhibition of paintings by Erin Evans. The building that houses the gallery, at 878 Homer Street, is slated for demolition to make way for—yes, you guessed it—a condo tower, to be constructed in the new year.

CULTURAL OLYMPIAD SLOW OUT OF THE GATE? Plans for the Cultural Olympiad remain vague, despite the 2006–2010 time frame outlined in the bid book by the Vancouver-Whistler 2010 Bid Committee back in 2003.

PuSh PULLS NO PUNCHES The PuSh International Performing Arts Festival has unveiled a roster of 18 main pieces on the cutting edge of theatre, dance, music, and visual art for its 2007 program, all of which seize every opportunity to erase boundaries between disciplines. According to Norman Armour, executive director of PuSh, this is one of the distinguishing features of the arts in Vancouver.

By Michael McKinley. McClelland and Stewart, 346 pp, $60, hardcover.

The value of a good name The executive director of the Greater Vancouver Alliance for Arts and Culture is concerned about a draft policy that would govern how civic-owned cultural facilities accept corporate contributions in exchange for placing the sponsor’s name or logo on their buildings.

ARTS COMPLEX STILL VIEWS TO JOIN PRECINCT, ANOTHER GLASS ACT, AWARD PITCHED TO MUSIC

"Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised."

The Georgia Straight's Life Blog has won its own history-making victory against official mendacity.

The Georgia Straight's Life Blog has won its own history-making victory against official mendacity.

"Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised."

By Robert Greenfield. Harcourt, 689 pp, $37.95, hardcover.

’77: The Year of Punk & New Wave

The Canada Council for the Arts has made a new commitment to initiatives in which professional artists work on projects alongside community groups.

The finalists for the 2006 Governor General's Literary Awards were announced on October 16, and B.C.'s writers have made an especially strong showing in the category of English-language poetry.