Here are is the link to the Twitter Moment, collecting together all of our conversations! And let’s keep these conversations going!

#CHAReads2019

Don’t forget to check out the other posts in the series:

• Series Introduction
• Dan Horner defending Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon’s Panser le Canada: Une histoire intellectuelle de la commission Laurendeau-Dunton
• Mary-Ann Shantz defending Jean-François Lozier’s Flesh Reborn: The Saint Lawrence Valley Mission Settlements through the Seventeenth Century
• Heather Green defending Shirley Tillotson’s Give and Take: The Citizen-Taxpayer and the Rise of Canadian Democracy.
• Jessica DeWitt defending Joshua MacFayden’s Flax Americana: A History of the Fibre and Oil that Covered a Continent
• Emma Battell Lowman defending Denys Delâge and Jean-Philippe Warren’s Le Piège de la liberté: Les peuples autochtones dans l’engrenage des régimes coloniaux
• Social Media Discussion

Emma Battell Lowman and Adam Barker defend Denys Delâge and Jean-Philippe Warren’s Le Piège de la liberté: Les peuples autochtones dans l’engrenage des régimes coloniaux

I don’t know about you, but it’s not often I read a book cover to cover these days. Though I’m always reading, that kind of sustained engagement tends to elude me – whether because of the time pressures of academic work or because mental health challenges can make reading at length uncomfortable and difficult. So, I’m grateful to Andrea for organizing of CHA Reads 2019for helping me prioritize such a pleasurable task as reading a good book I might otherwise not have picked up. And make no mistake, it’s absolutely worth picking up Denys Delâge & Jean-Philippe Warren’s 2017 Le Piège de la Liberté: Les peuples autochtones dans l’engrenage des régimes coloniaux.

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Jessica DeWitt defends Joshua MacFayden’s Flax Americana: A History of the Fibre and Oil that Covered a Continent

The nearly iridescent blue of the flax flower jumps off the cover of Joshua Macfadyen’s Flax Americana: A History of the Fibre and Oil That Covered a Continent immediately challenging the reader’s perception of this under-appreciated fibre crop. At the same time as one’s eye is drawn to the beauty of the flax flower, one is also pulled into the scene above that juxtaposes the steady stream of labour that flax required with the technological advances of modernity that would change the crop’s use and demand through time. The unexpected vibrancy of the cover serves as an effective representation of flax’s [somewhat unexpected] connection to early household paint. Flax Americana is a book that seeks not to simplify the history of flax, but rather to unveil the complexity of this singular commodity and to trace its colourful trajectory from rural to industrial crop.

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Heather Green defends Shirley Tillotson’s Give and Take: The Citizen-Taxpayer and the Rise of Canadian Democracy. 

I must (shamefully) admit that when I first cracked open Give and Take: The Citizen-Taxpayer and the Rise of Canadian Democracy, I did not have high expectations for a gripping read. I mentally prepared myself for dry recounts of numbers, a chronology of changing legislation, or a tally of taxation debates among privileged white men. As an environmental and Indigenous historian, I thought I would be out of my element. To my surprise, however, I found myself entrapped in an entertaining and readable narrative that incorporates the history of federal income tax into the wider history of Canada’s struggle to define itself as a nation.

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