Tis the season for cozy nights spent curled up by the fire, a cup of hot cocoa in hand, and your nose in a good book. Here at the University of Toronto Press, we’ve put together a thoughtfully curated gift guide of our top picks under $20. We have a perfect book for everyone on your list, and maybe a little something for yourself. Feel good this holiday season by supporting university press publishing. Books make the best gifts!
By Bruce Kidd
In the 1960s, Bruce Kidd was one of Canada’s most celebrated athletes. He started a revolution in distance running and a revival in Canadian track and field. He quickly became a symbol of Canadian youth and the subject of endless media coverage. Depicting a Canadian sport legend’s journey of joy, discovery, and activism, this memoir bears witness to the remarkable changes Bruce Kidd has lived through in more than seventy years of participation in Canadian and international sports.
Paperback | 9781487541040 | $29.95 $19.47
By Shirley Hager and Mawopiyane
In a world that requires knowledge and wisdom to address developing crises around us, The Gatherings shows how Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples can come together to create meaningful and lasting relationships. The Gatherings tells the moving story of these meetings in the words of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants. Reuniting to reflect on how their lives were changed by their experiences and how they continue to be impacted by them, the participants share the valuable lessons they learned.
Cloth | 9781487508951 | $29.95 $19.47
Solved: How the World’s Greatest Cities Are Fixing the Climate Crisis
By David Miller
Foreword by Bill McKibben
Taking cues from progressive cities around the world, including Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Oslo, Shenzhen, and Sydney, this book is a summons to every city to make small but significant changes that can drastically reduce our carbon footprint. It demonstrates that the initiatives cities have taken to control the climate crisis can make a real difference in reducing global emissions if implemented worldwide. By chronicling the stories of how cities have taken action to meet and exceed emissions targets laid out in the Paris Agreement, Miller empowers readers to fix the climate crisis.
Cloth | 9781487506827 | $29.95 $19.47
The Rapids: Ways of Looking At Mania
By Sam Twyford-Moore
The Rapids is an exploration of manic depression (also known as bipolar disorder). With reflections on artists such as Carrie Fisher, Kanye West, Saul Bellow, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Spalding Gray, Sam Twyford-Moore takes readers on a literary and cultural tour of mania and what it means to live with a diagnosis of “bipolarity” in contemporary society. He also looks at the condition in our digital world, where someone’s manic episode can unfold live in real time, watched by millions.
Cloth | 9781487507824 | $29.95 $19.47
Damaged: Childhood Trauma, Adult Illness, and the Need for a Healthcare Revolution
By Robert Maunder, MD and Jonathan Hunter, MD
Childhood adversity that is severe enough to be harmful throughout life is one of the biggest public health issues of our time, yet health care systems struggle to even acknowledge the problem. In Damaged, Dr. Robert Maunder and Dr. Jonathan Hunter call for a radical change, arguing that the medical system needs to be not only more compassionate but more effective at recognizing that trauma impacts everybody’s health, from patient to practitioner.
Cloth | 9781487528348 | $29.95 $19.47
Design Thinking At Work: How Innovative Organizations are Embracing Design
By David Dunne
The result of extensive international research with multinationals, governments, and non-profits, Design Thinking at Work explores the challenges that organizations face when developing creative strategies to innovate and solve problems. Now available for the first time in paper, Design Thinking at Work explores how many organizations have embraced “design thinking” as a fresh approach to fundamental problems, and how it may be applied in practice.
Paperback | 9781487548780 | $29.95 $19.47
Artistry Unleashed: A Guide to Pursuing Great Performance in Work and Life
By Hillary Austen
Foreword by Roger Martin
Imagine if you could make effective progress with no clear plan or destination in view, achieve excellence without sacrificing creativity, and invest passion even as you apply reason and intelligence. Artistry Unleashed is about working and living at the edge of what you know and beyond. Surprise, uncertainty, ambiguity, intensity, and change are all disruptive forces that we often avoid or fear. Yet they are the essential origin of both creativity and great performance.
Paperback | 9781487528386 | $29.95 $14.98
Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning
By Alisse Waterston
Illustrated by Charlotte Corden
What will become of us in these trying times? How will we pass the time that we have on earth? In gorgeously rendered graphic form, Light in Dark Times invites readers to consider these questions by exploring the political catastrophes and moral disasters of the past and present, revealing issues that beg to be studied. This book is at once a lament over the darkness of our times, an affirmation of the value of knowledge and introspection, and a consideration of truth, lies, and the dangers of the trivial.
Paperback | 9781487526405 | $19.95 $12.97
The New Spice Box: Contemporary Jewish Writing
Edited by Ruth Panofsky
The New Spice Box includes short fiction, personal essays, and poetry by Jewish writers from a broad range of cultural backgrounds. Fresh and relevant, profound and lasting, this anthology features works by acclaimed short story writers David Bezmozgis, Mireille Silcoff, and Ayelet Tsabari; groundbreaking memoirists Bernice Eisenstein and Alison Pick; and award-winning poets Isa Milman, Jacob Scheier, and Adam Sol.
Paperback | 9781487526009 | $24.95 $12.48
Sovereignty: The Biography of a Claim
By Peter H. Russell
To be effective, sovereignty must be secured through force or consent by those living in a territory, and accepted externally by other sovereign states. To be legitimate, the sovereignty claim must have the consent of its people and accord with international human rights. In this book, Peter H. Russell traces the origins of the sovereignty claim to Christian Europe and the attribution of sovereignty to God in the early Middle Ages.
Cloth | 9781487509095 | $24.95 $19.47
