Thursday July 24, 2008
Latest Columns 
Holy, hint, Batman!
Published: Saturday, July 19, 2008 12:00 AM Page D12
If The Dark Knight, the newest (brand new, in fact) entry in the Batman franchise, is too potentially nightmare-inducing for your children, you might want to consider a somewhat gentler new entry into Gotham City at night, and it's a book you might even enjoy yourself.
IN BRIEF
Published: Saturday, July 12, 2008 12:00 AM Page D12
BIGFOOTI Not DeadBy Graham Roumieu, Plume, unpaginated, $16.50Bigfoot, as imagined by the ever-inventive, and very funny, illustrator/writer Graham Roumieu, first appeared in the cult hit Me Write Book. Now he's back in Bigfoot: I Not Dead. Here, the loveable monster runs from police and irate villagers, cries when his birthday party is unattended and when imagining King Kong tumbling from the Empire State Building (in a New York reverie), contemplates forms of self-improvement, deals with fan mail and frets over his sex life, as which monster among us has not. Quite mad - and quite marvellous.
More on memory
Published: Saturday, May 31, 2008 12:00 AM Page D3
Readers intrigued by hyperthymestic syndrome, the condition that afflicts poor Jill Price with an ineradicable memory, may be interested to learn that hers is not the first such account. In 1968, the great Russian psychologist A. R. Luria published a book that has since entered the limited library of neurological classics. The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book About a Vast Memory (available from Harvard University Press, 160 pages, $26.50) is a gem of both clinical writing and literary narrative, comparable to the likes of Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
PAPERBACKS
Published: Saturday, May 31, 2008 12:00 AM Page D14
ENGLISH LESSONS By Shauna Singh Baldwin, Goose Lane 216 pages, $18.99A Reader's Guide edition of Singh Baldwin's acclaimed collection of tales about Indian women contains analysis, interviews and other matter.
More on Israelis and Palestinians
Published: Saturday, May 10, 2008 12:00 AM Page D9
THE HEBREW REPUBLICHow Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace at LastBy Bernard Avishai, Harcourt, 290 pages, $28.95Montreal native and respected political and business commentator Avishai offers a three-pronged solution to the world's most intractable problem. First, and most controversially, he proposes a ''Hebrew republic,'' a Jewish state that would not favour Jews or Judaism. He also proposes a peace accord with the Palestinians along the lines of the Geneva proposals, to be followed (and cemented) by an economic union of Israel, Palestine and Jordan. It's that middle step, though, that's the steepest.
Power breakfast
Published: Saturday, April 19, 2008 12:00 AM Page D11
Harassed by the media, resigned from the Barack Obama campaign over her ''Hillary Clinton is a monster'' remark, jetting around the continent promoting her new book on Sergio Vieira de Mello, it's no wonder Samantha Power looks tired.
Take me out to the bookstore
Published: Saturday, April 12, 2008 12:00 AM Page D17
As I was walking down New York's Fifth Avenue last week, I noticed (couldn't help but) the Mitchell Report walking toward me. You know the Mitchell Report, the scandal-refracting U.S. congressional listing of major league ballplayers who ingested illegal drugs. Okay, it wasn't the actual report, but its human personification and impetus - one Jose Canseco, the oversized former slugger who has admitted to taking steroids, to seeing teammates take them, even to hooking them up with willing trainers. It was Topic One in all hot-stove leagues this winter.
