Graeme Gibson

This unprecedented and enchanting treasure trove of paintings, drawings, poems, essays, and scientific observations beautifully captures the interest and emotions birds evoke.

An Avian Miscellany

The Bedside Book of Birds

John A. Livingston

Canada’s pioneering radical naturalist now back in print! John A. Livingston is Canada’s Rachel Carson. His cogent, brilliant writing on the effects of man on nature has defined an entire generation of environmentalists and is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the underpinnings of today’s issues. Radical when first published in the early 1970s and 1980s, Livingston’s arguments that we must find new approaches to our perception of nature and our place within it or face the irreversibility of our destruction of nature now reads prophetically. The Reader brings two of Livingston’s poetic and provocative books back into print for a new generation of readers and features an appreciation by Graeme Gibson.

The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation and One Cosmic Instant: a Natural History of Human Arrogance

The John A. Livingston Reader

A lavishly illustrated companion to The Bedside Book of Birds explores the relationships between predators and prey, drawing on mythology, nature writings, and other sources to provide coverage of both real and fictional creatures.

A Wildlife Miscellany

The Bedside Book of Beasts

The Janus Complex - a Political Thriller set in 1960s Britain. It is the era of the beautiful people, flower power, free love and the Beatles...but not everything is beautiful. America is embroiled in a disastrous war in Vietnam and in race riots at home while in Britain, Northern Ireland is on the brink of civil war. When 21 year old Glaswegian, Jamie Raeburn, helps an American Naval Officer being brutally attacked in a dark City street, his actions change his life forever. Seriously injured, the Good Samaritan is rushed to Glasgow's Royal Infirmary where he meets and falls under the spell of Kate Maxwell, a beautiful, but married, English nurse. The couple embark on a torrid love affair which leads to heartache and despair because Kate holds a secret which will eventually tear them apart. Unable to share her secret she returns home to England alone. Disillusioned, Jamie follows, intent on finding her and winning her back but his quest ends prematurely when he meets Lucienne (Lucie) Kent and falls in love. But for Jamie, history repeats itself. Lucie Kent, like Kate Maxwell, has a dark and terrible secret which she tries, in vain, to keep from Jamie. When Lucie finally divulges the horror of it, Jamie is set on a deadly collision course with Max Kelman, a powerful Midlands gangster. In the explosive finale Jamie endeavours to release Lucie from Kelman's clutches but this is something he can't do alone. Enlisting the help of the American Officer and, through him, a Belfast cell of the Provisional IRA, he prepares to confront Kelman. The consequences are fatal for both. Jamie Raeburn has grown into a man but his journey has been painful. He has changed...but what, exactly, has he become

The Janus Complex

Set in southern Ontario in the late nineteenth century, at a time when the machine age was coming into its own, "Perpetual Motion" chronicles the fortunes of settler Robert Fraser, a man obsessed with power and control. Driven by the idea of inventing a perpetual motion machine which will utilize natural energy, he neglects and destroys not only the nature around him but his own family too, as his overbearing rationality becomes a kind of tragic lunacy. First published in 1982, "Perpetual Motion" is Graeme Gibson's superb evocation of a time when faith in material progress is still challenged by superstition and a lingering belief in magic. It is an ironic yet compassionate examination of the painful consequences of human folly. "From the Hardcover edition."

Perpetual Motion

This stunning companion to the internationally bestselling Bedside Book of Birds explores the relationship between predators and their prey. The intricate, complex connection between the hunter and the hunted has defined animal life on Earth throughout time. In The Bedside Book of Beasts, Graeme Gibson gathers from all eras and cultures works of art and literature that capture the power, grace, and inventiveness of both predators and their natural prey. Here are myths, fables, poetry, generous excerpts from nature and travel writing, journals, sacred texts, and works of fiction. There are vivid descriptions of noteworthy predators — including the big cats, bears, wolves — but also the small but voracious praying mantis. Gibson also brings to life the experiences, strategies, and emotions of vulnerable prey, and paints intriguing portraits of such legendary evil beasts as the Minotaur, Grendel, and the Biblical Leviathan. All of this is enhanced by a breathtaking array of art, both traditional and contemporary, as well as scientific, religious, and mythological drawings, paintings, and woodcuts. In The Bedside Book of Beasts Gibson evokes a profound sense of the eternal, often unsettling, connection between the human animal and the free, untamed beasts of the wilderness.

Gordon Peterson

Amy Sequenzia

Elizabeth J. Grace

Michael B. Bakan

Mara Chasar

Zena Hamelson

Dotan Nitzberg

Maureen Pytlik

Donald Rindale

Since the advent of autism as a diagnosed condition in the 1940s, the importance of music in the lives of autistic people has been widely observed and studied. Articles on musical savants, extraordinary feats of musical memory, unusually high rates of absolute or perfect pitch, and the effectiveness of music-based therapies abound in the autism literature. Meanwhile, music scholars and historians have posited autism-centered explanatory models to account for the unique musical artistry of everyone from Béla Bartók and Glenn Gould to Blind Tom Wiggins. Given the great deal of attention paid to music and autism, it is surprising to discover that autistic people have rarely been asked to account for how they themselves make and experience music or why it matters to them that they do. In Speaking for Ourselves, renowned ethnomusicologist Michael Bakan does just that, engaging in deep conversations--some spanning the course of years--with ten fascinating and very different individuals who share two basic things in common: an autism spectrum diagnosis and a life in which music plays a central part. These conversations offer profound insights into the intricacies and intersections of music, autism, neurodiversity, and life in general, not from an autistic point of view, but rather from many different autistic points of view. They invite readers to partake of a rich tapestry of words, ideas, images, and musical sounds that speak to both the diversity of autistic experience and the common humanity we all share.

Conversations on Life, Music, and Autism

Speaking for Ourselves

In this stunning assemblage of words and images, novelist and avid birdwatcher Graeme Gibson has crafted an extraordinary tribute to the venerable relationship between humanity and birds. Birds have ever been the symbols of humanity's highest aspirations. As divine messengers, symbols of our yearning for the heavens, or avatars of glorious song and colour, birds have stirred our imaginations from the moment we first looked up into the sky. Whether as the Christian dove, or the Aztec Quetzalcoatl, or in Plato's representation of the human soul growing wings and feathers, religion and philosophy have looked to birds as representatives of our best selves--that part of us not bound to the earth. With the devotion of a birder and hoarder of words, Gibson has spent twenty years collecting the literary and artistic forms our affinity for birds has taken over the centuries. Birds appear again and again in mythology and folk tales and in literature by writers as diverse as Aesop, Shakespeare, Poe, Coleridge, Borges, and Eliot. They've been omens, allegories, disguises and guides; they've been worshipped, eaten, feared, and loved. Nor does Gibson forget the fascination birds hold for science, as the Galapagos finches did for Darwin. Birds appear charmingly and tellingly in the work of such naturalists as W.H. Hudson, Peter Matthiessen, Farley Mowat, and Barry Lopez. So intensely and universally are we drawn to birds, it's small wonder that birdwatching is one of the most popular activities in the English-speaking world. Gorgeously illustrated and woven from centuries of human response to the delights of the feathered tribes, The Bedside Book of Birds is for everyone who is passionate about birds and all they mean to humanity.

Together in a single volume, two beloved works by the inimitable Graeme Gibson. Gentleman Death Novelist Robert Fraser comes face-to-face with creativity, his mortality, and the deaths of his father and brother. Set mainly in Toronto, the novel also takes us to London, Scotland, Germany, and New York as we follow the escapades of two of Fraser's fictional characters. There is Simpson, called into service as an anonymous sperm donor, and Dunbar, an enigmatic tourist in Berlin just before the Chernobyl disaster, where he meets the captivating Lena, with whom he begins to sense an almost forgotten freedom and elation. But at the centre of Gentleman Death is Robert Fraser's own compelling story. Gibson juxtaposes reality and fiction in this compassionate, sometimes outrageous, often very funny exploration of the absurdities and alarms of aging, the nature of fiction itself, and the maturity that grows from reconciliation. Perpetual Motion First published in 1982, Perpetual Motion is Graeme Gibson's superb evocation of a time when faith in material progress is still challenged by superstition and a lingering belief in magic. It is an ironic yet compassionate examination of the painful consequences of human folly. Set in southern Ontario in the late nineteenth century when the machine age was coming into its own, Perpetual Motion chronicles the fortunes of settler Robert Fraser, a man obsessed with power and control. Driven by the idea of inventing a perpetual motion machine which will utilize natural energy, he neglects and destroys not only the nature around him but his own family too, as his overbearing rationality becomes a kind of tragic lunacy.

Gentleman Death / Perpetual Motion

This is a story of local politics and community activism. It's a true story, as objective as I can make it from my personal point of view, and I do have a point of view on the state of local democracy and the role of citizens in the decisions that affect them. More than just the local council, it's about a community and conflict fostered within a ruling mentality of divide and conquer. The story is one of disillusionment, disregard for fairness and civility, and the struggle for change. The story is specific to a location but it is universal. It is of a certain time-frame but it is timeless. Without doubt the events described - the absurd, the comic and the tragic - take place to a greater or lesser extent within the 560 Councils around the country. Self-interest, deal making and Machiavellian scheming are the high dramas of small town everyday life. A positive case for change in the way we do local democracy is presented, with community and council working together in partnership. A practical foundation for that change is outlined. No place like home sets the context and location of the story, before observations on local government in Unlovely and unloved. Although, ironically, the level of government closest to the people, few people understand the role of local government or the impact it has on their daily lives. Few would be able to name their elected Councillors, let alone make a judgement about their ability to manage a job far more complex and demanding than is commonly understood. The following chapter, The local storm in a teacup, unpacks complex relationships in a small town with a lot at stake. As a new group struggles for legitimacy and influence, in an age where people are less likely to participate in society, existing power brokers exert pressure. Punishment, vilification and deception are the defining characteristics of the ensuing rancorous conflict. A deliberate will to ignorance - the avoidance of inconvenient truths - is at play, well supported by a local government approach to community relations based on divide and conquer. Building and then Peaking are the following chapters outlining the successes of the community response to council's development plans. That planning takes place within a political environment is made clear. The sale of public land through confidential processes where scrutiny is avoided, then ignored, is highlighted. Tokenistic, cynical approaches to community consultation are made explicit. This is followed by Falling, an outline of the decline of the community effort, as the fait-accompli response sets in and council is rewarded for persistence. In the meantime a new politically motivated group forms with the aim of changing the council. And we mean to go on and on and on and on relates Councillors crude and careless manipulation of information and people, disregard for professional opinion and egotistical self-confidence. This characterised the dominant group of elected Councillors as they swatted away at annoyances and impediments. But it all starts to unravel, It all ends in tears, as time and again master plans come unstuck and appalling behaviour is regularly highlighted in the media. The enormity of building a public case for change in a community long dominated by powerful interests is laid out. Making it up as you go along, based on chaos theory or the Nike approach - just do it - aptly describes the approach. And so to the campaign looks at the lies and the fears, the despair and the hope in an intensely fought local battle. The dominant group of Councillors suffer mishap after mishap as the contract of trust with the community is broken. Love and respect re-positions this story of local politics within a broader view of our system of representative democracy, suffering through widespread ignorance and apathy. These responses - effectively the mass turning of a blind eye - support personal and political ambitions at the expense of

Local Politics at Work

Beyond Fear and Loathing

November 1966, a dark winter's night in Glasgow, and someone is in trouble. Jamie Raeburn, hearing a call for help, goes to investigate and what follows changes Jamie's life forever. He discovers a man, an American Naval Officer, being viciously assaulted by four other men ... but Jamie is alone and the odds are stacked against him and the American. Jamie, never one to dwell on odds, intervenes and in the ensuing fight ends up being stabbed and left for dead. Rushed to hospital Jamie undergoes emergency surgery and spends three days in Intensive Care and it's there he meets Kate Maxwell, a beautiful English nurse, and falls in love. But Kate Maxwell is married and their affair ends some months later when Kate, threatened by loan sharks for money her husband has borrowed - and missing the baby daughter whose existence she has kept from Jamie - returns to England and her family in the village of Calverton, near Nottingham, in England's Midlands leaving both men in her life behind. This leads to a unexpected meeting between them Jamie visits Kate's home in an effort to find her. It also leads a violent confrontation with the loan sharks. Jamie finally accepts that he has lost Kate but realises his reluctance to walk away from trouble in what is a violent city played a part in her decision. Intent on changing for the better he leaves his native Glasgow and heads south to Nottingham and a new job and, he hopes, a better future. His new life in Nottingham starts well enough but trouble seems to follow him no matter where he goes. And then fate takes a hand. Returning early to his lodgings one night after a girl he has arranged to meet doesn't turn up he meets Lucie Kent and his life takes on meaning again. The couple fall in love and it isn't long before they are living together in Nottingham but Lucie, like Kate Maxwell before her, has dark secrets she finds it impossible to share with Jamie, afraid that if she does she will lose him. These secrets involve Max Kelman, gangster son of a notorious Derby gangster. Jamie, conscious that something is playing on Lucie's mind presses her to tell him and, reluctantly, she does. But Lucie's revelations are much worse than Jamie expected and he realises he can't escape his past. He and Lucie are living a nightmare and confrontation with Max Kelman is inevitable. But winning the battle against Kelman will be difficult, if not impossible, and dangerous. It isn't only Kelman Jamie will have to defeat but the members of the Kelman gang. His first attempt ends in failure and he is lucky to escape with his life back to Glasgow but he is determined to return, Lucie's safety now uppermost in his mind. And so, a few weeks after his failed first attempt, with the help of the American he saved months before (Conor Whelan) and spiritual guidance from an old Glasgow Priest, Jamie returns to free Lucie from Kelman's clutches. In a violent conclusion Jamie confronts Max Kelman in the dark Derbyshire countryside with devastating consequences ... for both men.

And, not coincidentally, to New York City, where, at a glitzy fundrai sing event, Fraser has an unexpected, intensely personal encounter. Gibson juxtaposes reality and fiction to reveal not only the legacies one generation bequeaths to the next, but also the responsibilities that we, the living, have to our own dead.

A Novel

Gentleman Death

Set in southern Ontario in the late nineteenth century, at a time when the machine age was coming into its own, Perpetual Motion chronicles the fortunes of settler Robert Fraser, a man obsessed with power and control. Driven by the idea of inventing a perpetual motion machine which will utilize natural energy, he neglects and destroys not only the nature around him but his own family too, as his overbearing rationality becomes a kind of tragic lunacy. First published in 1982, Perpetual Motion is Graeme Gibson's superb evocation of a time when faith in material progress is still challenged by superstition and a lingering belief in magic. It is an ironic yet compassionate examination of the painful consequences of human folly. From the Hardcover edition.

Graeme Gibson

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