Alberta Formed Alberta Transformed is a two-volume set spanning a remarkable 12,000 years of history and showcasing the work of 34 of Alberta's most respected scholars. Volume 1 sets the stage from human beginnings in Alberta to the eve of Alberta's inauguration as a province in 1905, while Volume 2 takes readers through the twentieth century and up to the 2005 centennial.

With lively, informative contributions by both scholars and activists, Bucking Conservatism highlights the individuals and groups who challenged Alberta’s conservative status quo in the 1960s and 70s. Drawing on archival records, newspaper articles, police reports, and interviews, the contributors examine Alberta’s history through the eyes of Indigenous activists protesting discriminatory legislation and unfulfilled treaty obligations, women and lesbian and gay persons standing up to the heteropatriarchy, student activists seeking to forge a new democracy, and anti-capitalist environmentalists demanding social change. This book uncovers the lasting influence of Alberta’s noncomformists---those who recognized the need for dissent in a province defined by wealth and right-wing politics---and poses thought-provoking questions for contemporary activists.

What does it mean to be a Canadian? What great ideas have changed our country? An award-winning writer casts her eye over our nation’s history, highlighting some of our most important stories. From the acclaimed historian Charlotte Gray comes a richly rewarding book about what it means to be Canadian. Readers already know Gray as an award-winning biographer, a writer who has brilliantly captured significant individuals and dramatic moments in our history. Now, in The Promise of Canada, she weaves together masterful portraits of nine influential Canadians, creating a unique history of our country. What do these people—from George-Étienne Cartier and Emily Carr to Tommy Douglas, Margaret Atwood, and Elijah Harper—have in common? Each, according to Charlotte Gray, has left an indelible mark on Canada. Deliberately avoiding a top-down approach to history, Gray has chosen Canadians—some well-known, others less so—whose ideas, she argues, have become part of our collective conversation about who we are as a people. She also highlights many other Canadians from all walks of life who have added to the ongoing debate, showing how our country has reinvented itself in every generation since Confederation, while at the same time holding to certain central beliefs. Beautifully illustrated with evocative black-and-white historical images and colorful artistic visions, and written in an engaging style, The Promise of Canada is a fresh, thoughtful, and inspiring view of our historical journey. Opening doors into our past, present, and future with this masterful work, Charlotte Gray makes Canada’s history come alive and challenges us to envision the country we want to live in.

One little question propels both author and reader on a genre-bending quest to find the elusive essence of a Canadian province built on sturdy stereotypes of oil-spoiled, beef-eating, bible-thumping rednecks devoid of class or culture. Through essay, interview, colourful observation, and whatever other exposé it takes to amplify the hyperbolic absurdity of seeking a simple answer to an incendiary question, Geo Takach spotlights the cultural complexity of this perplexing province. Readers will be delightfully edified after a dizzying romp around Wild Rose Country with Geo and a cast of citizens and celebs (alive and dead).

Reproduction is the most emotionally complicated human activity. It transforms lives but it also creates fears and anxieties about women whose childbearing doesn’t conform to the norm. Baby Trouble in the Last Best West explores the ways that women’s childbearing became understood as a social problem in early twentieth-century Alberta. Kaler utilizes censuses, newspaper reports, social work case files, and personal letters to illuminate the ordeals that women, men, and babies were subjected to as Albertans debated childbearing. Through the lens of reproduction, Kaler offers a vivid and engaging analysis of how colonialism, racism, nationalism, medicalization, and evolving gender politics contributed to Alberta’s imaginative economy of reproduction. Kaler investigates five different episodes of "baby trouble": the emergence of obstetrics as a political issue, the drive for eugenic sterilization, unmarried childbearing and "rescue homes" for unmarried mothers, state-sponsored allowances for single mothers, and high infant mortality. Baby Trouble in the Last Best West will transport the reader to the turmoil of Alberta’s early years while examining the complexity of settler society-building and gender struggles.

This book explores a relatively small, but interesting and anomalous, region of Alberta between the North Saskatchewan and the Battle Rivers. Ecological themes, such as climatic cycles, ground water availability, vegetation succession and the response of wildlife, and the impact of fires, shape the possibilities and provide the challenges to those who have called the region home or used its varied resources: Indians, Metis, and European immigrants.

Pemmican Empire explores the fascinating and little-known environmental history of the role of pemmican (bison fat) in the opening of the British-American West.