For Remembrance Day, here are a trio of previously-published pieces about books related to war.

1. An essay on the Warrior Nation.

2. A note on an early Great War Novel.

3. The definitive two-volume history of Canada's participation in World War One.

Vancouver's current frenzy of real estate speculation is no secret so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, driving along Burrard Street on the weekend, to discover that a hole in the ground has replaced one of the city's well known business establishments, the Art of Loving sex shop.

Normally the Art of Loving would not be considered a literary landmark, but it played a delightful cameo in my own publishing history.

In 2006 I published a book about the history of...

The newest issue of Geist magazine (#98) is reaching the newsstands. My regular column looks at a new book by historian Christopher Moore, Three Weeks in Quebec City (Allen Lane), about the Quebec Conference of 1864.

The conference drew up the 72 resolutions that led to the creation of Canada three years later.

For me, the takeaway from Moore's fine book is that Canada was not born on the battlefields...

A true British Columbia original has died. Frank White, author, logger, trucker, etc., etc. passed away at his home in Madeira Park a few days ago, age 101. Condolences to his widow, Edith Iglauer, and all the rest of his family.

For details of Frank's life, consult the Harbour Publishing website...

"It was not the destruction that excited me but the sense of something utterly new coming into being, some fresh, immense possibility of political life, a new community of hope, and above all the strangely inspired note -- like a new language -- that sounded in the voices of those who were witnessing it. It was a glimpse of 'the dream come true', the golden age, the promised land."

While waiting for the polls to close yesterday I was reading Richard Holmes, the British biographer, and...