Globe & Mail/Ben McNally Books Authors' Brunch

Imagining Canada edited by William Morassutti

Sophisticated and well-curated, this photographic tour through Canada's history documents the nation's evolution over more than a century, as seen through the lens of photographers from The New York Times. The book compiles more than 100 iconic, momentous and inspiring images of Canada and includes ten commentary pieces from a range of important thinkers, historians and writers. Through these pages and images, which represent a portal in time, a portrait of Canada emerges, not as seen by its own citizens, but as viewed through a distinctly American lens.

Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark

The oil sands. Global warming. The National Energy Program. Though these seem like modern Canadian subjects, author Mary Janigan reveals them to be a legacy of longstanding regional rivalry. Something of a "Third Solitude" since entering Confederation, the West has long been overshadowed by Canada's other great national debate: but as the conflict over natural resources and their effect on climate change heats up, 150 years of antipathy are coming to a head. Janigan takes readers back to a pivotal moment in 1918, when Canada's western premiers descended on Ottawa determined to control their own future, and deftly illustrates how the results reverberate to this day.

Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

Far more than simply a riveting read and a crackling medical mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her identity after suffering a mysterious mental illness and to rediscover herself among the fragments left behind. Using all her considerable journalistic skills, and building from hospital records and surveillance video, interviews with family and friends, and excerpts from the deeply moving journal her father kept during her illness, Cahalan pieces together the story of her “lost month” to write an unforgettable memoir about memory and identity, faith and love. It is an important, profoundly compelling tale of survival and perseverance that is destined to become a classic.

The Black Count by Tom Reiss

Here is the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo – a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature.

Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave — who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time.