Date
Fri February 18, 2011
Freedom to Read Week: February 20-26, 2011
View more items filed under “Festivals, Reading Series & Literary Events” in our Open Book Archives.
Featured Non-Fiction: The City of Words by Alberto Manguel
Submitted by clelia on October 8, 2007 - 10:57am
A book launch of the 2007 CBC Massey Lectures, The City of Words by Alberto Manguel, will be held at Massey College in the Common Room on Wednesday, October 10 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. The City of Words The end of ethnic nationalism appears to be a good idea. Building societies that promote civic nationalism, with sets of values all citizens can agree on, also appears to be a sound idea. But something is going wrong: race riots in France, political murder in the Netherlands, bombings in Britain -- all appear to be symptoms of a multicultural experiment gone awry. Politicians and sociologists are puzzled; why is it so difficult for us to live together when the alternatives are so demonstrably horrifying? Can it be that blood is still more important than peaceful coexistence? In the 2007 Massey Lectures, Alberto Manguel confronts some of the problems we face in creating new societies and suggests a fresh approach: We should look at what novelists have to say. Maybe our books and stories hold secret keys to the human heart, keys that social planners can't find. With his trademark wit and erudition, Manguel suggests that perhaps we should look on the library shelf marked "fiction" for the book entitled How to Build a Better Society. Related item from our archives |