Globe and Mail columnist Sandra Martin offers an extraordinary collection of obituaries of Canada’s most legendary and infamous political figures, activists, celebrities, theorists, and cultural icons, as well as an intimate portrait of the life of the obit writer.

Globe and Mail columnist Sandra Martin honours the lives of Canada’s famous, infamous, and unsung heroes in this unique collection of obituaries of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Here are Canadian icons such as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, social activist June Callwood, and urban theorist Jane Jacobs. Here are builders such as feminist and editor Doris Anderson, and businessman and famed art collector Ken Thomson. Here are our rogues, rascals, and romantics; our service men and women; and here are those private citizens whose lives have had an undeniable public impact. Finally, Martin interweaves these elegant and eloquent biographies with the autobiography of the obit writer, offering an exclusive and intimate view of life on the dead beat.

Beautifully written, compelling, and vivid, Working the Dead Beat is a tribute to those individuals who, each on their own and as a collective, tell the story of our country, and to the life of the obit writer who chronicles their extraordinary lives.

Sandra Martin is a journalist at the Globe and Mail . She has won writing prizes from the Society of Professional Obituary Writers, gold and silver National Magazine Awards, the Atkinson and William Southam Journalism Fellowships, and the Harvey Southam Lecturership at the University of Victoria. The co-author of three books, including Rupert Brooke in Canada and Card Tricks: Bankers, Boomers, and the Explosion of Plastic Credit, which was shortlisted for the Canadian Business Book Award, she is the editor of the bestselling and critically acclaimed collection, The First Man in My Life: Daughters Write about Their Fathers. She lives in Toronto with her husband, historian Roger Hall, and is the mother of two children.

"The first comprehensive history of the relationship in the modern era between the great powers and the various Balkans people." — San Francisco Chronicle

From the bestselling author of McMafia and DarkMarket comes this unique and lively history of Balkan geopolitics since the early nineteenth century which gives readers the essential historical background to more than one hundred years of events in this war-torn area. No other book covers the entire region, or offers such profound insights into the roots of Balkan violence, or explains so vividly the origins of modern Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania. Now updated to include the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, the capture of all indicted war criminals from the Yugoslav wars and each state’s quest for legitimacy in the European Union, The Balkans explores the often catastrophic relationship between the Balkans and the Great Powers, raising some disturbing questions about Western intervention.

MISHA GLENNY is a British journalist and specialist on Eastern and Southeastern Europe and international organized crime. His coverage of the fall of Communism led to his first book, The Rebirth of History: Eastern Europe in the Age of Democracy. His other highly acclaimed books are The Fall of Yugoslavia and The Balkans. Glenny has also written for the New York Times, the New York Book Review, Foreign Affairs, Harper's, the London Review of Books, and other publications. He is currently a political consultant on South Eastern Europe and divides his time between London, Brighton, and the region.

The most anticipated nonfiction book of the season, this year’s Massey Lectures is a visionary look at the way the human mind can shape the future by world-renowned physicist Neil Turok.

Every technology we rely on today was created by the human mind, seeking to understand the universe around us. Scientific knowledge is our most precious possession, and our future will be shaped by the breakthroughs to come.

In this personal, visionary, and fascinating work, Neil Turok, Director of Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, explores transformative discoveries ? from the nature of light, to the evolution of the cosmos, to the bizarre world of the quantum, and the emerging ideas which may yield tomorrow’s technologies. He explains how we can accelerate the pace of discovery by creatively re-inventing the way advanced knowledge is developed and shared, and by opening access to the vast untapped pools of intellectual talent in the developing world.

Drawing from his personal experience, from confronting injustice in apartheid South Africa to becoming a renowned international scientist and educator, Turok explains why scientific research, training, and outreach are vital to our future economy as well as powerful forces for peaceful global progress.

Neil Turok is one of the world’s top physicists and founder of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), a centre for education and research based in Cape Town, South Africa. Currently the Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, he was formerly the Chair of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University and Professor of Physics at Princeton. With Stephen Hawking he developed the Hawking-Turok instanton solutions, which describe the birth of inflationary universes. He is the co-author, with Paul J. Steinhardt, of the critically acclaimed book Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang ? Rewriting Cosmic History. He was awarded the 1992 James Clerk Maxwell medal of the U.K. Institute of Physics, and was recently honoured with a prestigious TED Prize and a "Most Innovative People" award at the 2008 World Summit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (WSIE). Born in South Africa, Turok now lives in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

MASSEY LECTURES TOUR

St. John’s (October 10), Montreal (October 12), Vancouver (October 16), Calgary (October 18), Toronto (October 24)

In the sweep of human history, the European Union stands out as one of humankind's most ambitious endeavours. It encompasses half a billion people, twenty-seven member states, twenty-three languages, and an economy valued at over $15 trillion. Modern Europe's stunning achievements aside, its sovereign debt crisis has shaken the world's largest political and economic union to its core. Can the federal institutions and shared values of Europeans meet the challenges of debt crisis that are as much political as economic? Or, are Europe's current woes indicative of a series of deep structural faults that foreshadow the breakup and failure of the European Union?

In this edition of the Munk Debates -- Canada's premier international debate series -- former EU Commissioner Lord Peter Mandelson and EU parliament co-president of the Greens/European Free Alliance Group Daniel Cohn-Bendit, German publisher-editor and author Josef Joffe, and renowned economic historian Niall Ferguson debate the future of the EU -- one of the most pressing global issues of our day.

For the first time ever, this electrifying debate, which played to a sold-out audience, is now available in print, along with candid interviews with Niall Ferguson and Lord Peter Mandelson. As youth unemployment rates flare, currencies collapse, and political alliances erode, the Munk Debate on Europe tries to answer: Has the great European experiment failed?

Rudyard Griffiths is the co-organizer and moderator of the Munk Debates. He is also the co-founder of the Dominion Institute, co-director of the Grano Speakers Series, and author of Who We Are: A Citizen's Manifesto. He lives in Toronto.

From the author of the Toronto Star’s wildly popular column “Fed” comes the essential guide to throwing the perfect dinner party in any situation.

We’ve all been there: twenty minutes before guests arrive, and you’re unsure if you’ve got enough wine, or enough chairs, or whether your friend is a vegetarian or a vegan. Hosting a dinner party is hard, but Corey Mintz can help. For his popular Toronto Star column, "Fed," he has presided over 115 dinner parties, every week opening his home to strangers and friends alike in an effort to perfect the craft of hosting. And in How to Host a Dinner Party, he shares everything he’s learned in a hilarious handbook that will appeal to everyone ? from those throwing their first dinner party to seasoned entertainers looking to enhance their skills.

This book guides readers through everything they need to know about hosting, starting with the golden rule ? that the goal of a dinner party is to have fun with our friends, not to show off our cooking skills. It will explain why we like to gather for dinner, when we should host, who we should invite, what we should cook, and how we should cook it. Featuring recipes, anecdotes, expert analysis, and an endless bounty of how-to tips, it is the essential guide to perfecting the art of welcoming people into your home.

Corey Mintz writes the popular Toronto Star column “Fed,” in which he documents the weekly dinner parties he hosts for friends and featured guests.

"Reid’s writing is . . . engaging and humorous." — Winnipeg Free Press

In The Truth about Luck, Iain Reid, author of the highly popular coming-of-age memoir One Bird’s Choice, accompanies his grandmother on a five-day vacation ? which turns out to be a "staycation" at his basement apartment in Kingston. While the twenty-eight-year-old writer is at the beginning of his adult life, his ninety-two-year-old grandmother is nearing the end of hers. Between escorting his grandma to local attractions and restaurants, the two exchange memories and she begins to reveal details of her inspiring life story.

Told with subtlety, humour, and heart, this delightful comic memoir reflects on family connections; how we experience adversity, the passage of time, and aging; and most importantly what it truly means to feel lucky.

A timely, insightful, and essential guide to conquering stress from the bestselling author of The Little Book of Stress Relief.

From the bestselling author of The Little Book of Stress Relief comes the definitive guide to treating ? and eliminating ? excessive stress in the workplace. Dr. David Posen, a popular speaker and a leading expert on stress mastery, identifies the three biggest problems that contribute to burnout and low productivity: Volume, Velocity, and Abuse. He shares revealing anecdotes and offers clear descriptions of the biology of stress to illustrate how downsizing, economic uncertainty, and technology have made the workplace more toxic than ever. Most importantly, he offers practical advice and easy techniques for managing the harmful symptoms and side effects of stress.

Witty, engaging, and accessible, Is Work Killing You? touches on everything from meetings to tweeting, from fake work to face time, from deadlines to dead tired, and more. With this book, Dr. Posen gives us the tools to stop harming our most valuable resource ? ourselves.

"Pasha Malla is an impressive young voice that gives hope for a future generation of new Canadian writing talent." — Globe and Mail

It’s the Silver Jubilee of People Park, an urban experiment conceived by a radical mayor and zealously policed by the testosterone-powered New Fraternal League of Men. To celebrate, the insular island city has engaged the illustrationist Raven, who promises to deliver the most astonishing spectacle its residents have ever seen. As the entire island comes together for the event, we meet an unforgettable cross-section of its inhabitants, from activists to nihilists, art stars to athletes, families to inveterate loners. Soon, however, what has promised to be a triumph of civic harmony begins to reveal its shadow side. And when Raven’s illustration exceeds even the most extreme of expectations, the island is plunged into a series of unnatural disasters that force people to confront what they are really made of.

People Park is a tour de force of eerily prescient, grotesque, and hilarious observation and a narrative of gripping, unrelenting suspense. Malla writes as if the twin demons of Stephen King and Flannery O’Connor were resting on his shoulders. You’ve never read anything quite like People Park.

Pasha Malla’s first collection of short stories, The Withdrawal Method, a Globe and Mail and National Post book of the year, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Trillum Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize (Best First Book, Canada & Caribbean) and longlisted for the Giller Prize. A frequent contributor to The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, and CBC radio, he is also the winner of an Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction, two National Magazine Awards for humour writing, and has twice had stories included in the Journey Prize anthology. He was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, grew up in London, Ontario, and now lives in Toronto, Ontario.

AUTHOR TOUR

Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Kingston, Ottawa, Toronto

Winner of the Quebec Writers' Federation Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize

In the Carnival city there are two types of taxi drivers -- the spiders and the flies. The spiders patiently sit in their cars and wait for the calls to come. But the flies are wanderers - they roam the streets, looking for the raised hands of passengers among life's perpetual flux.

Fly is a wanderer and a knower. Raised in the circus, the son of a golden-haired trapeze artist and a flying carpet pilot from the East, he is destined to drift and observe. From his taxi we see the world in all its carnivalesque beauty and ugliness. We meet criminals, prostitutes, madmen, magicians, and clowns of many kinds. We meet ordinary people going to extraordinary places, and revolutionaries trying to live ordinary lives. Hunger and injustice claw at the city, and books provide the only true shelter. And when the Carnival starts, all limits dissolve, and a gunshot goes off…

With all of the beauty, truth, rage, and peripatetic storytelling that have made Cockroach and De Niro's Game international publishing sensations, Carnival gives us Rawi Hage at his searing best. Alternately laughing at absurdity and crying out at oppression, by turns outrageous, hilarious, sorrowful, and stirring, Carnival is a tour de force that will make all of life's passengers squirm in their comfortable, complacent backseats.

Rawi Hage is a writer, a visual artist, and curator. His debut novel, De Niro’s Game, won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was translated into several languages. Cockroach, his second novel, was a finalist for many prestigious awards, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He lives in Montreal.

Helen, alias "Joe," would rather be a boy and have all kinds of adventures like Lady Oscar, her favourite cartoon heroine. She daydreams about living in another time and achieving great things, but she must be content delivering newspapers and working at the bingo hall. After all, she is only eight years old, even though she claims to be ten.

When Roger, an old man who drinks like a fish, swears like a sailor, and dreams about dying, moves into the working-class neighbourhood where Helen lives with her family, the two make uneasy acquaintances. But, after a series of scary and disturbing events, an unlikely friendship develops — one that changes them both forever.

This stunning debut novel in the spirit of Miriam Toews' The Flying Troutmans and Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English won Quebec's Prix Archambault and won Radio-Canada's Battle of the Books (Canada Reads) competition in its original French. Mister Roger and Me perfectly captures the irony, innocence, heartbreak, and humour of childhood.

MARIE-RENÉE LAVOIE was born in 1974 in Limoilou, near Quebec City. She is the author of four novels, including Mister Roger and Me, which won ICI Radio-Canada’s “Battle of the Books” — the Quebec equivalent of “Canada Reads” — and the Archambault Prize; Autopsy of a Boring Wife, which was a finalist for the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award, a Hoopla Book Club selection, and a CBC Best Books of the Year, and is currently being developed for television; and A Boring Wife Settles the Score. She lives in Limoilou.

WAYNE GRADY is an award-winning author, translator, and editor. He has won the John Glassco Translation Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award two additional times. His debut novel, Emancipation Day, won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. He lives near Kingston, Ontario, with his wife, novelist Merilyn Simonds.