Honorary Degree Books 2012
Peter Brabeck-Letmathe
Peter Brabeck-Letmathe is Chairman of the Board of Nestlé South America. He is an active member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, where he leads a worldwide project on “Water Resources.” He has received several awards, including "La Orden Mexicana del Aguila Azteca," or Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honour given to foreign experts in Mexico for service to the country or to humanity. He has also received the Schumpeter Prize for outstanding contribution in Economics and the Austrian Cross of Honour for service to the Republic of Austria.
Carson, Rachel. The Edge of the Sea.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955.
The Edge of the Sea
Rachel Carson was a pioneering marine biologist whose writings helped to inspire an international environmental movement in the latter half of the twentieth century. This is an autographed first edition of the third book in her best-selling sea trilogy. In this book, Carson explores the marginal world between land and sea: "The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place. All through the long history of Earth it has been an area of unrest where waves have broken heavily against the land, where the tides have pressed forward over the continents, receded, and then returned. For no two successive days is the shore line precisely the same. Not only do the tides advance and retreat in their eternal rhythms, but the level of the sea itself is never at rest. It rises or falls as the glaciers melt or grow, as the floor of the deep ocean . . . shifts under its increasing load of sediments, or as the earth's crust along the continental margins warps up or down in adjustment to strain and tension. Today a little more land may belong to the sea, tomorrow a little less. Always the edge of the sea remains an elusive and indefinable boundary" (1). [QH 91 C32]
Dr Donald Dingwell
Donald Bruce Dingwell is an experimental volcanologist probing the behaviour of molten rocks and their impact on volcanic systems and volcanic hazard assessment. A U of Alberta alumnus and global academic citizen who has taught at five universities in three countries and two languages, Dingwell is an elected member of the Royal Society of Canada and chair of the Section of Earth and Cosmic Sciences of the Academia Europaea, Europe’s academy of science, arts, and letters.
Dyer, Thomas H. The Ruins of Pompeii.
London: Bell and Daldy, 1867.
The Ruins of Pompeii
Mount Vesuvius is one of the best-known volcanoes in the world because it has shown its devastating power so clearly. This is the first edition of a photographic essay that, in 1867, would have offered many readers their first look at the ruins of Pompeii. This copy is in the publisher’s original gold-stamped cloth binding, and it features pages with gilt edges and eighteen albumen photographic prints on plates. The preface emphasizes the importance of the photographs and indicates that the text is updated from a popular book published by the Society for the Diffusion of Entertaining Knowledge (an odd error, since the correct name of the publisher is “Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge”). [DG 70 P7 D94 1867]
Dr Julio J. Frenk
Julio Frenk is an eminent authority on global health and a highly influential figure at the crossroads of scholarship and practice. He has served as minister of health for Mexico, executive director at the World Health Organization, and senior fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2008, Frenk received the Clinton Global Citizen Award for transforming “the way practitioners and policy makers across the world think about health.”
Berton, Pierre. A Tribute to Tommy Douglas. Toronto:
New Democratic Party of Canada, 1971.
A Tribute to Tommy Douglas
Packed in a specially-made box are a series of items designed to celebrate the career of Canada’s father of medicare, Tommy Douglas. The unusual collection includes an 8x10-inch glossy photograph of Douglas, a biographical essay, a pictorial biography, a book entitled Essays on the Left: Essays in Honour of T.C. Douglas (McClelland and Stewart, 1971), and a long-playing record, which is accompanied by an introduction and a commentary by Pierre Berton. [FC 3525.1 D6 T82 1971 folio]
Leymah Roberta Gbowee
Leymah Gbowee's advocacy for girls’ and women’s rights united women across regional and religious divisions in Liberia and West Africa. Their non-violent movement for peace and democracy helped to end 14 years of civil war in Liberia and brought about the removal of president Charles Taylor in 2003. In 2011, Gbowee shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Yemeni political activist Tawakkol Karman.
Counihan, Noel. War or Peace: Twelve Linocuts.
Melbourne: Gryphon Books, 1979.
War or Peace
This book features a series of linocut images that were inspired by the Congress of Peace held in Paris (1949) in the aftermath of World War II. In this limited edition publication, designed by William Pate, the starkly powerful war-time images are accompanied by a series of poems written by Jack Lindsay, who tells us that “Peace is Life, and Life must win.” In the book’s foreword, James Boswell says that Counihan’s art “illuminates the terrible fears and the impatient hopes of mankind in their daily struggle with the danger of war.” One memorable image – entitled “Here Peace Begins” – shows a protest march with women carrying placards, the most prominent of which insists that "MOTHERS DEMAND PEACE.” [NE 1336 C85 1979 folio]
Brian Heidecker
Brian Heidecker became a special advisor to the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry at the U of A in 1984, was appointed to the university’s board of governors in 2000, and served as board chair from 2006 to 2011. His work was recognized in 2008 when the U of A received the Spencer Stuart Conference Board of Canada Public Sector Governance Award. Influential in agricultural development and policy, Heidecker received the Alberta Centenary Award in 2005 and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.
Dept. of Agriculture, NWT. Northwest Brand Book.
Calgary: Henderson Directory Co., 1894.
Northwest Brand Book
One of the earliest “brand books” published in the region, this book made it possible to easily identify the owners of branded livestock. The first part of the book offers images of registered cattle and horse brands, and the second part lists the names, addresses, ranges, and specialties of the ranchers. Published by the Calgary Herald on behalf of the Department of Agriculture, this particular copy contains stamps that indicate that it was a working copy used by officials in the Department of Agriculture. [SF 103 N87 1900]
Dr Steve E. Hrudey
Steve Hrudey is Professor Emeritus in Analytical and Environmental Toxicology, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta. He has co-authored or edited nine books, including the widely acclaimed book inspired by the Walkerton tragedy: Safe Drinking Water: Lessons from Recent Outbreaks in Affluent Nations. Hrudey is the 2012 winner of the American Water Works Association (AWWA) A.P. Black Research Award and only the second Canadian to win this award in its 45-year history.
Carson, Rachel. Under the Sea-Wind: A Naturalist's Picture of Ocean Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1941.
Under the Sea-Wind
Rachel Carson was a pioneering marine biologist whose writings helped to inspire an international environmental movement in the latter half of the twentieth century. This first edition of Carson’s first book makes an important addition to the Library’s collection. The book received strong reviews when it was released late in November 1941, but it did not sell particularly well due to its release just prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Oxford University Press issued a new edition in 1952 that quickly became a bestseller and is sometimes incorrectly taken to be the first edition. In the book’s epigraph, Carson quotes Swinburne’s “A Forsaken Garden” (1876) in which “earth, stones, and thorns” grow for a season, but are destined to be humbled by the “slow sea rise.” For Carson, this is the threat and the promise of the sea: “For in the sea, nothing is lost. One dies, another lives, as the precious elements of life are passed on and on in endless chains” (101). [QH 92 C32 1941b]
Tawakkol Abdel-Salam Karman
Tawakkol Karman is a Yemeni political activist and journalist who became known as the “mother of the revolution” that saw the removal of the country’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, in late 2011. In 2011, Karman shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia, becoming the first Arab woman and the youngest person to receive the honour.
McClung, Nellie L. In Times Like These.
New York: D. Appleton, 1915.
In Times Like These
Written by one of the leading women’s-rights and human-rights activists in Canadian history, this book is dedicated “to men and women everywhere who love a fair deal, and are willing to give it to everyone, even women.” In it, Nellie McClung (1873-1951) tells us that, “War is the antithesis of all our teaching. It breaks all the commandments; it makes rich men poor, and strong men weak. It makes well men sick, and by it living men are changed to dead men.” A leading figure in the suffrage campaign that finally won the vote for Canadian women in 1916, and one of the “Famous Five” who won for women throughout the British Empire the right to be considered “persons” under the law in 1929, McClung challenges the old notion that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and asserts that, “If it did, human life would be held dearer and the world would be a sweeter, cleaner, safer place than it is now!” [HQ 1457 M12 1915a]
Dr Garry Lindberg
Garry Lindberg was project manager for the Canadarm, or Space Shuttle Attached Remote Manipulator System, and also oversaw the creation of the Canadian Astronaut Program and played a key role in establishing the Canadian Space Agency in 1989. A U of A distinguished alumnus and a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Lindberg also received a NASA Public Service Award and the Eadie Medal of the Royal Society of Canada.
Locke, Richard Adams. The Moon Hoax; Or, a Discovery That the Moon Has a Vast Population of Human Beings. New York: William Gowans, 1859.
The Moon Hoax
The New York Sun published a series of articles in the final week of August 1835 that caused a sensation around the world. It was declared that the eminent British astronomer, Sir John Herschel (1792–1871), had discovered life on the moon, which included fantastical creatures such as unicorns and bat-winged humanoids. This book is a reprint of the entire lunar narrative, by Richard Adams Locke, that was originally published over six days. Interest in the sensational story was intense, so it is no surprise that it is now remembered as one of history’s most fascinating media hoaxes. This copy includes an unusual frontispiece of the moon purportedly as seen by Lord Rosse’s telescope. [PS 2248 L835 G7 1859]
The Right Honourable Paul Martin
Paul Martin was the 21st prime minister of Canada from 2003 to 2006. As prime minister he signed agreements with the provinces and territories to establish a national early learning and child-care program and sought a historic consensus between Canada’s Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in the Kelowna Accord. Martin currently leads the Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative and serves on the advisory council of the Coalition for Dialogue on Africa.
Ex Libris Printing Plate of Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier. 1897.
Ex Libris Printing Plate of Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier
This handsome copper printing plate was created approximately a year after Wilfred Laurier (1841–1919) became the seventh Prime Minister of Canada in 1896. It was used to print bookplates with Laurier’s coat of arms for the books in his personal library. Canadian bookbinder Alexander J. McGuckin was recently commissioned to create a special presentation box for the plate. After careful inspection, McGuckin noticed that the three leaves motif appears twice on Laurier’s coat of arms, so he decided to create a three leaves leather onlay for the box, which he covered in full red goatskin and encased in a leather slipcase. Laurier’s bookplate seemed an obvious choice to honour Paul Martin on this special occasion. Indeed, in Hell or High Water: My Life in and Out of Politics, Martin describes himself as “a fiscal conservative,” but goes on to explain, “I have always coupled that to a belief that sound finances are the underpinning, the way to pay for the social Liberalism I also believe in and that I inherited from my father. This brand of Liberalism begins with Laurier—a deep respect for individual freedom and a belief that the state has the responsibility to open up the social, educational, and economic opportunities that will enable the poor to achieve that freedom” (19). [Z 995 L38 1897 folio]
Sunita Narain
Sunita Narain is Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in New Delhi, India. Her key achievement has been to galvanize interest and action in India on the need for water security, using rainwater harvesting to augment resources and pollution control to minimize waste. She has also been actively engaged in seeking solutions for air pollution control. In 2005 and again in 2008 and 2009 she was listed by the US journal Foreign Policy as one of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals.
Carson, Rachel. The Sea Around Us. New York: Oxford University Press, 1951.
The Sea Around Us
Rachel Carson was a pioneering marine biologist whose writings helped to inspire an international environmental movement in the latter half of the twentieth century. This is a first edition of the award-winning book that made Carson a household name and inspired her to focus on her writing full time. In this book, Carson explores the depth and meaning of the sea for, as she writes, “the sea lies all about us. The commerce of all lands must cross it. The very winds that move over the lands have been cradled on its broad expanse and seek ever to return to it. The continents themselves dissolve and pass to the sea, in grain after grain of eroded land. So the rains that rose from it return again in rivers. In its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life and receives in the end, after, it may be, many transmutations, the dead husks of that same life. For all at last return to the sea—to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end” (216). [GC 21 C32]
Dr James Jude Orbinski
James Orbinski, former president of Médicins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, is internationally renowned as a physician, writer, and advocate for social justice. An officer of the Order of Canada and chair and professor in Global Health at the University of Toronto, Orbinski is also co-founder of Dignitas International, a medical humanitarian organization dedicated to providing community-based care and improving the international response to HIV/AIDS and related illnesses in the developing world.
Paré, Ambroise. The Works of That Famous Chirugeon Ambrose Parey, Translated out of Latin, and Compared with the French. London: Mary and John Clark, 1678.
The Works of That Famous Chirugeon Ambrose Parey
This is an early English translation of a medical text by the French royal surgeon Ambrose Paré, who was a pioneering figure in the development of early surgical techniques and battlefield medicine. Appended to the text by Paré is a series of three anatomy tracts by the great Flemish physician Adrianus Spigelius. Interspersed throughout the book are approximately three hundred woodcut illustrations, largely of surgical tools and medical procedures. [R 128.6 P224 E5 1678 folio]
Holger Petersen
Holger Petersen is an award-winning broadcaster and co-founder/owner of the independent roots and blues music label Stony Plain Records. A founder and past artistic director of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, he was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2003 for his contributions to Canadian culture. In 2009, Petersen was voted Best Public Broadcaster by the Blues Foundation in Memphis, the first time the award was presented to someone outside the United States.
Hughes, Langston. Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods For Jazz.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961.
Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods For Jazz
Langston Hughes was a true original. His poetry is so deeply influenced by African American music, so “bursting with sound and rhythm,” that it is frequently characterized as blues and jazz on a page. It is poetry to be read aloud, to be inhabited and savoured. And for those who do not “get it,” Hughes has included liner notes at the back of this book “for the poetically unhep.” Dedicated to Louis Armstrong, “the greatest horn blower of them all,” this first edition was designed to celebrate the magical connection between music and words. [PS 3515 U265 A8]
Chantal Petitclerc
Chantal Petitclerc is the only Canadian athlete to have won gold medals at the Olympics, Paralympics, and Commonwealth Games. An ambassador for the international Right to Play organization, Petitclerc was named a companion of the Order of Canada in 2009 “for her achievements as a Paralympics champion known internationally as an inspiration, and for her commitment to developing sports for athletes with a disability.”
Baillie-Grohman, William Adolph. Sport in Art; An Iconography of Sport Illustrating the Field Sports of Europe and America from the Fifteenth to the End of the Eighteenth Century, with Two Hundred and Forty-Three Illustrations. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, & Kent, 1919.
An Iconography of Sport
A celebration in pictures, this book examines the historical development of sport and its representation in art through the reproduction of drawings, engravings, etchings, and woodcuts from the fifteenth through the eighteenth century. More important than the modest first edition, this second edition is profusely illustrated, containing two hundred and forty-three illustrations. Of particular interest is the final chapter, which focuses on early representations of the tragedy and triumph of mountaineering as a pastime. [N 8250 B15 1919]
Mary May Simon
Mary May Simon has been devoted to advancing sustainable and equitable development in the circumpolar region. She was a key figure in the evolution of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Canada’s national Inuit organization, and has served as its president since 2006. Simon is also the founding chairperson of the Arctic Children and Youth Foundation, a charitable organization that advances standards of living, educational opportunities, and health and well-being.
Lopez, Barry. Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986.
Arctic Dreams
This is a signed first edition of an award-winning book that celebrates the spirit and the beauty of the far north in profoundly poetic language. Barry Lopez speaks of the “the serene arctic light” that inhabits “the land like breath, like breathing.” He tells the reader that, “This is a land where airplanes track icebergs the size of Cleveland and polar bears fly down out of the stars.” In a powerful and moving passage, he explains the deep sense of reverence that moved him to (literally) bow down before a nesting arctic bird. Lopez asks us to believe that “it is possible to live wisely on the land, and to live well,” and he asks readers to explore a variety of cultural perspectives as we contemplate “the long human struggle, mental and physical, to come to terms with the Far North” and the baffling ways that this landscape manages “to transcend whatever we would make of it.” [QH 84.1 L86 1986]
John Stanton
John Stanton is president and founder of the Edmonton-based retailer the Running Room, recognized three times in the past five years as one of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies. Author of eight books on running and walking, Stanton has been honoured by the Order of Canada, the Canadian Retail Hall of Fame, and the Canadian Medical Association Award for excellence in health promotion.
Olympic Games. The Games of the Xth Olympiad, Los Angeles, 1932: Official Report. Los Angeles: Olympic Games, 1932.
The Games of the Xth Olympiad, Los Angeles, 1932
Ostensibly an official report, this beautiful book is a photographic celebration of the tenth Olympiad and of the spirit behind the games. In 1896, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin expressed this spirit as follows: “The main issue in life is not the victory, but the fight; the essential is not to have won, but to have fought well. To spread these precepts is to pave the way for a more valiant humanity, stronger, and consequently more scrupulous and more generous.” This is a very special copy because it contains, in an inside front pocket, an “all events” stadium pass for the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. [GV 722 1932 O69 1933]
Dr Shirley Marie Stinson
University of Alberta Professor Emerita Shirley Stinson is internationally recognized as a visionary leader in the development of nursing scholarship. Chair of the first International Nursing Research Conference, former president of the Canadian Nursing Association, and inaugural chair of the Alberta Foundation for Nursing Research, Stinson has made contributions to clinical nursing practice and education that have improved standards of patient care around the world.
Shrimpton, Charles. The British Army and Miss Nightingale. Paris: A. & W. Galignani & Co., 1864.
The British Army and Miss Nightingale
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) is a nursing icon; her influence on the health care field initiated important reforms in nursing and midwifery, hospitals, and training. She established the Nightingale School where student nurses were introduced to a modern curriculum that included a hands-on apprenticeship, character training, ethical standards for patient care, and pioneering advice for health promotion and disease prevention. Her life’s work was to advance the profession of nursing and to raise the status of nurses. When British troops were sent to the Crimea in 1854 to support Turkey in its dispute with Russia, Nightingale followed with a contingent of nurses to provide care for the wounded. This book provides a detailed account of the exceptional service she rendered to the British Army. [RT 37 N5 S57 1864]
Marguerite Jean Trussler
Marguerite Trussler was a Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta from 1986 to 2007 and was president of the Canadian chapter of the International Association of Women Judges from 1998 to 2000. A pioneer in family law in Canada, she was instrumental in implementing Parenting After Separation, a mandatory educational seminar for divorcing parents that was the first of its kind in Canada. She received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002, the Alberta Centenary Medal in 2005, and the U of A’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2011.
Hobart, Henry. The Reports of That Reverend and Learned Judge, the Right Honorable Sr. Henry Hobart, Knight and Baronet, Lord Chief Justice of His Majesties Court of Common Pleas, and Chancellor to Both Their Highnesses Henry and Charles, Princes of Wales. London: Printed for W. Lee, A. Banks & C. Harper, 1671.
The Reports of That Reverend and Learned Judge
The third edition of Hobart’s Reports was substantially corrected and enlarged with new marginal notes as well as an index. This is a nice copy with an early binding and the original frontispiece (a portrait of Hobart). In addition to the reports, the book contains an alphabetical listing of all cases reported or cited and a detailed “Table,” or subject index, attributed to Sir Heneage Finch. The importance of the reports is underscored typographically: the reports appear in black letter while the tables and marginal notes appear in roman and italic fonts. [KF 346 E57 1671 folio]
Professor Fan Zeng
Professor Fan Zeng is a well-known Chinese painter, calligrapher, and poet. He is dean of the Chinese Painting Institute of Peking University, PhD supervisor of the College of Literature and the College of History of Nankai University, and PhD supervisor of the Chinese National Academy of Arts. Zeng was honoured as a UNESCO Special Consultant of Diversified Culture in 2009 and as Knight of the National Order of the Legion of Honour in France in 2010.
Sirén, Osvald. Early Chinese Paintings from A.W. Bahr Collection. London: Chiswick Press, 1938.
Early Chinese Paintings
Abel William Bahr (1877–1959) was a devoted collector of Chinese art; his important collection has been featured in several books and exhibition catalogues. Bahr was born in Shanghai and made his living as a coal merchant and importer, and he became an influential figure in the Chinese art market. Throughout his career as a collector and dealer, he shared his knowledge of and taste in collecting Chinese art with other collectors, museum curators, and exhibition organizers. This splendid catalogue of 25 paintings from Bahr’s estate was printed at the Chiswick Press in England. It is number 465 of only 750 copies. [ND 1043 S57 1938 folio]