Calgary: The Unknown City: Second Edition

by James Martin

Book Overview

Deep inside Calgary's glass office towers beats a Wild West heart. It's a city of contradictions, a shiny corporate giant with a six-gun justice past. Calgary: The Unknown City ferrets out Cowtown's deepest secrets, exposing fun and offbeat factoids, anecdotes, and statistics about the city you only thought you knew.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1551521113
• ISBN13: 9781551521114
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
• Length: 267 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Weekend of Discovery.

I was flying into Calgary for a couple days and this book really came in handy for someone seeking out the unique parts of the city. I have Toronto: The Unknown City and really enjoy all the adventures. The Calgary version is a little outdated though, some of the clubs mentioned have since shut down and at times was more of a history textbook than guide to discovery, but there was enough to keep me fulfilled. And for $2, who wouldn't love to check out a taxidermied rodent museum!

enjoyable,... if only it were written by Aldous Huxley!

The book suffers from being far too personal, and lacks detail. Anecdotes abound, but they are, in toto, not particularly interesting or helpful ones, mostly along the lines of childhood vacations to the beach and the like. After the first 25 pages I became frustrated with the fact that his story and ideas had progressed no further. Clearly a novelist of great potentials, he is nevertheless mistaken if he believes that an unconnected narrative (with whole chapters almost reading like store catalogues) is the defining characteristic of the time. But, once you get at least 50 pages into the book you will not stop reading it. The author sustains the plot while challenging us to consider reality and progress.Murders, suicide and incest give a gothic aura to the tale, but then no one should underestimate the horrors of that handful of half-cocked insights - the type that flit through your head while brushing your teeth in the morning - that actually develop into a collection of oddly believable urban myths. You'll be surprised how many of them you've heard and believed to be true! Don't miss the chapter that compares "The Wizard of Oz" with anarcho-capitalism. A good critique of government education is also offered as well as a two part section on monopolies. But, the author should read Hayek and then rewrite this book. For sure it would be better then and certainly more accurate, as one must know the meaning of the term before pronunciation becomes an issue.The language was excessively complex, but anyone interested in rationality and departures from rationality, anyone who is fantastic at bringing sexual tension and the macabre to the surface of fairy tales and folklore, anyone who can enjoy an 11-minute vacation and come back with something to think about, anyone seriously interested in politics and theology, anyone that wishes to understand how the author thought about these problems should read this book.