If one poet can be said to be the Canadian poet, that poet is Al Purdy (1918–2000). Numerous eminent scholars and writers have attested to this pre-eminent status. George Bowering described him as “the world’s most Canadian poet” (1970), while Sam Solecki titled his book-length study of Purdy The Last Canadian Poet (1999). In The Ivory Thought: Essays on Al Purdy, a group of seventeen scholars, critics, writers, and educators appraise and reappraise Purdy’s contribution to English literature. They explore Purdy’s continuing significance to contemporary writers; the life he dedicated to literature and the persona he crafted; the influences acting on his development as a poet; the ongoing scholarly projects of editing and publishing his writing; particular poems and individual books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction; and the larger themes in his work, such as the Canadian North and the predominant importance of place. In addition, two contemporary poets pay tribute with original poems.

Across America, universities have become big businesses—and our cities their company towns. But there is a cost to those who live in their shadow. Urban universities play an outsized role in America’s cities. They bring diverse ideas and people together and they generate new innovations. But they also gentrify neighborhoods and exacerbate housing inequality in an effort to enrich their campuses and attract students. They maintain private police forces that target the Black and Latinx neighborhoods nearby. They become the primary employers, dictating labor practices and suppressing wages. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower takes readers from Hartford to Chicago and from Phoenix to Manhattan, revealing the increasingly parasitic relationship between universities and our cities. Through eye-opening conversations with city leaders, low-wage workers tending to students’ needs, and local activists fighting encroachment, scholar Davarian L. Baldwin makes clear who benefits from unchecked university power—and who is made vulnerable. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower is a wake-up call to the reality that higher education is no longer the ubiquitous public good it was once thought to be. But as Baldwin shows, there is an alternative vision for urban life, one that necessitates a more equitable relationship between our cities and our universities.

Waiting for Bluebeard tries to understand how a girl could grow up to be the woman living in Bluebeard's house. The story begins with a part-remembered, part-imagined childhood, where seances are held, and a father drowns in oil beneath the skeleton of his car. When her childhood home coughs up birds in the parlour, the girl enters Bluebeard's house paying the tariff of a single layer of skin. This is only the first stage of her disappearing, as she searches for a phantom child in a house where Bluebeard haunts the corridors like a sobbing wolf. Waiting for Bluebeard is Helen Ivory's fourth book of poems.

Writing at the time of his retirement from an academia that after four decades has become unfamiliar, Shaw (English, U. of Toronto), says in a society where book learning is an anomaly, scholars must breach the citadel of computer wizards and technicians by combining their knowledge of books with the rebel's power to criticize authority, the prophet's power to renew tradition, and the poet's power to create a world that is no less true for being a vision. He insists that scientists, scholars, and professional practitioners must learn from each other. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

DIVWhen a broken engagement leads to murder, Miss Silver hunts for the killer /divDIVBill Waring went to America with a bright future ahead of him. In London he had a promising career and the love of a young beauty, Lila Dryden, and there were plans for marriage when he returned from overseas. But then a freak train accident puts their happiness on hold. Bill spends a month in the hospital, and when he finally makes it back to London, there is a still bigger shock awaiting him. Under pressure from a domineering aunt, Lila has become engaged to another./divDIV /divDIVShe and her new fiancé—middle-aged, charmless, and rich—are in the country for the weekend. Bill follows, determined to win back Lila’s heart. But when her new betrothed is stabbed to death, blame falls squarely on Bill, and only the brilliant, demure detective Maud Silver can clear his name./div

The Ivory Tower and the Marble Citadel opens up a new way of pursuing the critical development of political philosophy in today's intercultural intellectual arena. Metzger holds that political philosophies are linguistically unavoidable efforts to infer the principles of morally legitimate government from a maximally enlightened conceptualization of the universal human condition. Because these efforts depend on a vocabulary embodying culturally inherited premises, textual analysis uncovering these premises and debate about how they should be revised are crucial for the improvement of political philosophy.

The story takes place in three continents, but the visions behind my eyes remain most vivid by the images of Africa, where most of it was written. I still see the hazy sea grey as flint, the laterite ground hardened to brick emanating heat, eternal palms rustling, and people with white smiles everywhere. To this land the three main characters of the story intruded innocently and almost did not survive. Their rather narrow existence has been transformed by an extraordinary experience. Or was it transformed?

Unquestionably, this is one of the most important books about understanding the Middle East written during the last half-century.Jerusalem Post

Walter Besant's novel "The Ivory Gate: A New Edition" delves into topics of social refinement, love, and atonement in Victorian London. The novel tells the story of Althea Lorne, a more youthful lady navigating the complexity of society and relationships in the bustling town. Set against the backdrop of Victorian England's bustling and stratified society, "The Ivory Gate" dives into the lives of its protagonists, depicting their difficulties, aspirations, and ethical dilemmas. Althea's journey is marked by means of each struggles and achievements as she deals with cultural expectations, romantic entanglements, and private boom. Walter Besant's novel expertly blends collectively themes of romance, social remark, and ethical contemplation, allowing readers to mirror on the ideals and standards of the time. Besant provides a notable vision of Victorian London and the complexities of human relationships through Althea's stories and encounters with a huge solid of characters. "The Ivory Gate: A New Edition" is an undying portrait of Victorian literature, offering readers with insight into the era's social dynamics and moral quandaries.