At some point during the holidays, all the travelling will be done, all the gifts will be unwrapped, and cranky Uncle Chester (what did Aunt Abigail ever see in this guy?) will finally stop grousing about “kids today,” and go back home.
Once the dust has cleared and the plates are in the dishwasher, you might want to curl up on your coziest chair with a Scotch or some cocoa and dive into a good book. May we suggest a few McGill-related possibilities?
We started working on this piece before the best-of-year lists began dropping and we’ll indulge in a bit of back-patting for some of our prescient picks. Big Girls Don’t Cry and The Mind Mappers both made it onto The Globe and Mail’s Globe 100 list. Zbig was named one of the best books of the year by The Economist, The Washington Post and Foreign Affairs, while The Explorer’s Gene was one of Smithsonian Magazine’s picks for the best science books of the year.
Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America’s Great Power Prophet
by Edward Luce
Edward Luce’s recent biography of McGill graduate Zbigniew Brzezinski – the author had rare access to Brzezinski’s personal diaries – is a top-shelf historical account that edifies and entertains.
A hugely influential figure in 20th century geopolitics, Brzezinski, BA’49, MA’50, served as national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter, as an advisor to other U.S. presidents, and was a key figure in the downfall of the Soviet Union (an important ally in that effort was Pope John Paul II, with whom Brzezinski established a close rapport).
As the son of a diplomat and a member of a Polish émigré family residing in Montreal, Brzezinski was laser focused on politics, particularly on the Soviet Union and how its tight hold on its neighbours might be weakened (he explored that topic in his McGill master’s thesis).
If the Soviets and their allies dominated Brzezinski’s thoughts, it sometimes went the other way too. “[Brzezinski] continued to live rent free in Gomulka’s head,” Luce writes about Polish communist leader Władysław Gomułka.
Some of the backroom dealings chronicled here will likely surprise many readers. Luce is a reliable narrator when it comes to the competing claims of various politicians and lays out the complex nuances of Brzezinski’s world in a relatively easy-to-understand way. In these deeply polarizing times, it is refreshing to read about an era where fierce intellectual rivals would still send each other their published essays to debate, while also maintaining a minimum of respect and courtesy.
Like the best historical narratives, the biography deals in timely and timeless issues such as the power and fragility of democracy, and how to contend with threatening nations. While Luce doesn’t paint a picture of a perfect man, Brzezinski emerges as an inspiring figure with guts, integrity and a relentless drive.
Vanessa Bonneau
Palm Meridian
by Grace Flahive, BA’14
The debut novel from Grace Flahive hardly sounds like cozy holiday reading. It’s set in a ‘partially underwater’ future Florida, specifically in Palm Meridian, a retirement home for queer women, where a cancer diagnosis has driven protagonist Hannah to end her own life through assisted suicide. But with its breezy tone and a roster of memorable characters, Palm Meridian is a more playful romp than its premise suggests.
We jump back and forth between Hannah’s final hours, as she prepares for her end-of-life party at the Palm Meridian resort, and her early years growing up in Montreal. In the future, Hannah is unsure if Sophie, the long-estranged love of her life, will make it to her party. Meanwhile, her childhood friend and former business partner, Luke, has arrived with a secret he’s kept for decades.
It’s clear that Flahive, who now resides in London, still has much affection for Montreal, so evocative are her descriptions of the city. In one passage, Mount Royal looms “on the horizon like a benevolent giant, thick with trees”, next to Hannah and Luke’s unnamed but somewhat familiar university, where the library is “a brutalist bulk with windows like warm, yellow portholes” and the Arts building bears a “stately dome lumped with snow.”
Just as well crafted is the novel’s vision of the future, in which Palm Meridian serves as an inclusive utopia where the radical politics, eclectic tastes and sexual appetites of its residents have not been tempered by age nor the ongoing climate catastrophe. It’s a pleasure to share the company of Flahive’s characters, who charm and entertain from the book’s opening pages to its delightfully melodramatic denouement.
Death, heartbreak and the apocalypse have never been this much fun.
Louis Roberts
The Mind Mappers
By Eric Andrew-Gee, BA’14
In the 1920s, when Wilder Penfield began his trailblazing career as a neurosurgeon, the nascent field was in its dark ages. “Brain surgery is a terrible profession,” Penfield wrote to his mother. In the words of medical historian Richard Leblanc, “neither the way in nor the way out was known,” to the neurosurgeons of that era. No one did more to change that than Penfield – but he didn’t do it alone.
Eric Andrew-Gee’s The Mind Mappers explores what must have been one of the 20th century’s most impactful medical partnerships – the 35-year relationship between Penfield and fellow neurosurgeon William Cone. Together, the two friends transformed and modernized neurosurgery, made startling discoveries about what parts of the brain were responsible for different functions, and played the leading roles in creating the Montreal Neurological Institute, in Andrew-Gee’s words, “the world’s greatest centre of brain research.”
The charismatic Penfield was the one who captured most of the spotlight – and that largely suited the shyer Cone, who dodged attention when he could. “Penfield may have been the more ambitious and searching scientist, but Cone was the more natural doctor,” Andrew-Gee writes.
Cone’s patients marvelled at his dedication and tenderness. Cone brought an inventive mind to his work, creating innovative new instruments that were widely adopted by others. Fueled by “an inner blast furnace of energy,” Cone worked long hours and took on the bulk of the surgical responsibilities, freeing up Penfield for the more scientifically interesting cases.
The book chronicles the triumphs of the Penfield/Cone team, along with the factors that derailed their once close relationship and contributed to a tragedy that haunted The Neuro for decades.
Penfield has long been established as one of the heroic figures in McGill’s rich history. Now, thanks to The Mind Mappers, we know that Cone belongs in that pantheon too.
Daniel McCabe, BA’89
The Explorer’s Gene
by Alex Hutchinson, BSc’97
Human beings are wired to explore, whether it’s trying a new coffee shop or surveying a blank spot on a map. After all, why else would mankind cross uncharted oceans and continents?
Alex Hutchinson set out to find the definitive answer to this very large question. In examining why we explore, he consults with a wide range of experts – anthropologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, economists and data scientists.
They provide Hutchinson with various scientific formulas on how to balance exploration’s risks and rewards, such as when to keep pursuing your options and when to make a choice and focus. (Remember Malcolm Gladwell’s theory that spending 10,000 hours on something is the key to success? Hutchinson posits those hours are only productive if you’ve found the right thing to focus on.)
He also recounts the exciting adventures of those who simply took the plunge and lived to tell the tale: Alexander Mackenzie canoeing to the Arctic Ocean in 1789, Nellie Bly circumnavigating the globe in 1889, and Pius ‘Mau’ Piailug sailing from Hawai’i to Tahiti in 1976 using only ancient Indigenous navigation techniques.
The author also shares his personal explorations, which gravitate to the extreme: he favours remote hikes, long-distance runs, and orienteering races that leave him bloodied and bruised. But his research has led him to embrace a much broader idea of discovery: just plain having fun.
“The trajectory of adulthood is toward ever greater efficiency, narrower focus, and well-worn routines that make each day more and more similar to the last. Exploration is the antihabit, the antidote to a diminished palette of life choices.”
Stephanie Wereley
Windfall: Viola MacMillan and Her Notorious Mining Scandal
by Tim Falconer, BA’81
As biography subjects go, Tim Falconer picked a compelling character in Viola MacMillan, a mining prospector, promoter and industry association leader in the mid-20th century.
MacMillan was also the central figure in “one of the country’s most famous stock scandals” and spent 66 days in jail. She later obtained a pardon, the Order of Canada, and induction into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame – the first woman to receive that honour.
In other words, there is lots to, ahem, mine here and Falconer delivers an engrossing account of her remarkable career and the controversy that left a stain on her legacy.
In his balanced portrayal of MacMillan, Falconer evocatively brings to life the male mining milieu that she inhabited, a world fuelled by dreams of a big strike, rife with rumours and shrouded in secrecy.
Viola and her husband George controlled Windfall Oils and Mines, which began drilling on July 1, 1964, adjacent another company’s big discovery of copper, zinc and silver deposits near Timmins, Ontario.
Windfall’s stock surged. “No one seemed to have any interest in waiting for assay results to know if Windfall’s core samples contained anything worth investing in,” Falconer writes.
Two pieces of core sent for testing showed nothing of value. The couple sat on that information and planned more drill holes. The Toronto Stock Exchange pressed the MacMillans to release more information, and Windfall issued a press release at the end of July. Subsequent assays had shown negligible mineral values.
The stock plummeted, a royal commission launched, and Viola MacMillan was convicted of wash trading, a stock manipulation practice. The scandal wasn’t an elaborate scam, Falconer asserts. The MacMillans “took advantage of their enviable record as mine developers, of human greed and of the power of rumours to keep quiet and let investors believe what they wanted to believe.”
Brenda Branswell
Big Girls Don’t Cry
by Susan Swan, BA’67
What does it mean to take up space – physically, socially, and emotionally? Susan Swan, BA’67, a prominent Canadian author, tackles this question in her memoir Big Girls Don’t Cry, beginning with her own experience of standing out: by age 12, she was 6’2”, a height that brought her shame and a desire to disappear. But Swan demonstrates how making oneself ‘smaller’ has far greater implications than simply taking up less physical space.
In the book, Swan reflects on negotiating societal expectations to forge her personal identity. She frames these as “boxes” that we inhabit – social, cultural, and psychological constructs that, if left unquestioned, risk confining our growth and limiting our self-expression.
Divorce marked a rupture in Swan’s boxed-in life, removing her from the “tradition” box and leaving her in uncharted territory to navigate life as a single mother and aspiring fiction writer. She finds herself in a world without boxes, pursuing creative expression in Toronto’s performance art scene of the 1970s.
Through this work of self-reflection, Swan articulates the lengths to which we all struggle to find our place in the world. It’s not for nothing that when she finally realizes her dream of publishing a novel, her first work is a tale about Anna Swan, a giantess who toured with circus master P.T. Barnum. Size, space, and showing up remain consistent themes, but the author’s relationship to them evolves, giving way to a greater self-awareness and confidence.
Swan’s account of self-discovery is an encouraging invitation for readers to examine the boxes that dictate where we fit and don’t fit, and to embrace curiosity as an escape from conformity. Everybody has boxes, she says, but becoming an adult is about finding out who we want to be in the real dimensions of time and space.
Katie Mullen
Habs Nation
by Brendan Kelly, BA’85
In the world of sports, Montreal Canadiens fans stand out. Passionate, fiercely loyal and highly opinionated, they take immense pride in their team’s accomplishments (24 Stanley Cups!) and grumble about its shortcomings (the last of those Cup victories was way back in 1993).
The intensity and unique character of the relationship between the team and its fans is the subject of Brendan Kelly’s entertaining Habs Nation.
Kelly reminds us that when the Canadiens began playing in 1909, there were already two professional hockey clubs in the city – one that catered to Montreal’s English community, the other to the city’s Irish residents. Habs founder Ambrose O’Brien, an Ontario businessman, believed that francophones in Montreal might be interested in a team of their own. Smart move.
Habs Nation focuses on the symbolic importance of the Canadiens to Quebec’s francophones, particularly in the years leading up to the Quiet Revolution when English business leaders held a disproportionate amount of power in the province. Rocket Richard and the Habs’ other francophones often dominated their English-speaking NHL rivals, providing a vital source of inspiration to Quebecers longing to be maîtres chez nous.
Kelly believes the team should recruit more Quebec-born players to foster that powerful connection between the Habs and their city, noting that the organization made more of an effort in that regard when it had to contend with its fierce provincial rivals, the Quebec Nordiques, for the hearts of Quebecers.
Kelly spoke to several former Habs for the book, including Hall of Fame legends Bob Gainey and Serge Savard. He also interviewed a range of prominent Habs fans. Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, BCL’01, LLB’01, and actor Viggo Mortensen are among those who share their thoughts.
Daniel McCabe, BA’89
