Northern Non-fiction: 5 Must-Reads

Here, to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday, we highlight the Great White North.

Adopted Canadian Jane Jacobs’ centenary is celebrated with typical Canuck humility—a collection of the urbanist’s short works, Vital Little Plans.

The tale of “the world’s most travelled girl”—Winnipeg’s Idris Hall, who, at 16 in 1922, literally drove across four continents while documenting every big city and remote tribe she encountered—uses her “stage name” as its title, Aloha Wanderwell.

Conrad Black talks everything from country to correctional facilities to kittens in Backward Glances: People and Events from Inside and Out, a collection of his journalistic writings.

In non-Canadian books, author Leslie Bennetts covers the good, bad and hilarious in the biography of a comic legend, Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses and Liberation of Joan Rivers.