McGill Authors

With visual treats and moveable surprises at the turn of every page, AMAZE will inspire interactive moments of wonder with McGill's extraordinary collections.

From Anatomy to Zoology, this experience will AMAZE, intrigue, and perhaps even move the reader. This beautiful book showcases a few curated selections in a way that brings them to life, and in some cases allows them to move off the page. In the pages that pop up, or have tabs and widgets, viewers will be able to discover some of the hidden treasures that remain hard to see in two-dimensional space.

Publication date: March, 2021

37 pages

McGILL AUTHOR

Curators. Activists. Hockey Players. Students. Medical Illustrators. Secretaries. Portrait Artists. Sculptors.

Many Women, Many Voices celebrates the voices of women in all of those roles and many more. Shining a light on the untold stories of the women who have shaped McGill and Montreal, it offers illustrated vignettes from the ROAAr collections – Rare Books and Special Collections, the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, the Visual Arts Collection, and the McGill University Archives.

McGILL AUTHOR

Tommy Schnurmacher has written a book that could change your life. It changed his.

As a writer, Montreal media icon Schnurmacher is an intense force of nature, a seismic swell of visceral empathy, laser-sharp wit and courageous self-analysis.

Now meet Olga. Auschwitz prisoner A-25057, aka Mom, A fearless, dramatic and unpredictable maverick. An original.

Exposing the souls of a family for all to see, Make-up Tips from Auschwitz is an addictive page-turner. Schnurmacher's voice resonates with a lyrical cadence all his own and an unsettling candor reminiscent of humorist David Sedaris and essayist Augusten Burroughs.

Like the Oscar-winning film, Life is Beautiful, Schnurmacher revisits the Holocaust with rays of light in the darkness.

Sparkling with chutzpah and charm, this is a story of a family's cultural collision and delightful dysfunction. With the growing pains of Shtisel, the earthiness of The Simpsons and the fierce family loyalty of The Sopranos, these newcomers from Hungary defy authority. They figured out early on that conventional values were not enough. It was their moxie that allowed them to succeed.

Schmooze with the passing parade that includes John Lennon, Elizabeth Taylor and Crystal Nacht. You will laugh out loud as you meet a cast of supporting characters who redefine eccentric: the 50-minute therapist, the psychic rabbi and a superstitious hypochondriac named Paris.

Once you get to know these mutineers from the mainstream, you will want to organize an intervention. Or at least a Passover Seder.

Publication date: August 15th, 2019

278 pages

The canon of postwar American fiction has changed over the past few decades to include far more writers of color. It would appear that we are making progress--recovering marginalized voices and including those who were for far too long ignored. However, is this celebratory narrative borne out in the data?

Richard Jean So draws on big data, literary history, and close readings to offer an unprecedented analysis of racial inequality in American publishing that reveals the persistence of an extreme bias toward white authors. In fact, a defining feature of the publishing industry is its vast whiteness, which has denied nonwhite authors, especially black writers, the coveted resources of publishing, reviews, prizes, and sales, with profound effects on the language, form, and content of the postwar novel. Rather than seeing the postwar period as the era of multiculturalism, So argues that we should understand it as the invention of a new form of racial inequality--one that continues to shape the arts and literature today.

Interweaving data analysis of large-scale patterns with a consideration of Toni Morrison's career as an editor at Random House and readings of individual works by Octavia Butler, Henry Dumas, Amy Tan, and others, So develops a form of criticism that brings together qualitative and quantitative approaches to the study of literature. A vital and provocative work for American literary studies, critical race studies, and the digital humanities, Redlining Culture shows the importance of data and computational methods for understanding and challenging racial inequality.

Publication date: December 15, 2020

240 pages

Now more relevant than ever, seven decades of McGill University’s Beatty Lectures, in print together for the first time.

The Beatty Lecture, established in 1952 in honour of former Canadian Pacific Railway president and McGill chancellor Sir Edward Beatty, is McGill University’s most anticipated annual event. Some of the series’ greatest lectures, delivered by Nobel Prize laureates, world leaders, and cultural icons, have been forgotten, carefully stowed away in the McGill Archives.

To help us understand some of the most significant moments and discoveries of our time, With the World to Choose From spotlights fifteen outstanding Beatty Lectures, spanning seven decades. Readers can discover - or rediscover - these important and inspiring lectures, all in print for the first time. One of the twentieth century’s most influential visionaries, the economist Barbara Ward, opens this anthology with her future-looking 1955 lecture. Lectures from acclaimed biologist Robert Sinsheimer, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Nobel Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, philosopher Charles Taylor, and author and social commentator Roxane Gay carry readers through the decades that followed and up to the present, treating subjects from the tensions of Cold War politics and the implications of genetic engineering to the origins of life in the universe and the watershed #MeToo movement. Some of today’s leading academics add contextual and biographical information to each chapter, and an introduction sheds light on the history of the Beatty Lecture and the life of its notable namesake.

Illustrated with a selection of photographs and ephemera, With the World to Choose From provides a historical and behind-the-scenes look at one of Canada’s longest-running lecture series.

Publication date: Sept. 15 2021

336 pages

An endearing story about reading to your favourite animal. For animal lovers ages 6 years and up.

James struggles with reading and misses recess to practice. To cheer himself up, he visits the cat rescue shelter and befriends Ghost, the cat in the box. But Ghost isn’t quite ready to make friends! As his reading improves, James learns that kindness and perseverance can have unexpected rewards and that having a furry friend is the best gift of all.

Publication date: October 15th, 2021

32 pages