In 2025 I read 168 books.
That total is not counting unpublished theses or long articles. To be included in this list, I had to have read 75% of the text, and this year I counted rereads that met that threshold, especially if I was rereading to take notes. Some of these I don't entirely recall - read in a few days for a class discussion or skimmed rapidly. Others I allowed myself to luxuriate in, or am simply proud to have finished. At least two of these were slightly different editions of the same book I was writing about...
168 is a lot of books. Not something likely to be repeated. I was finishing a well-funded Master's and working on several article drafts, and generally almost monomaniacally focused on academic research. I'm not sure what to say about having a passing familiarity with the 'canon' of Canadian academic history, except some of it is very good, some very dull, and some remarkably shallow. Which is better than some of the amateur history I read - the book on the 1980 New Mexico Penitentiary riot I read was one of the worst books (in terms of organization, clarity of writing, contribution to scholarship, and general reading pleasure) I have read in many, many years. I also learned that a lot of literature about the Soviet gulag is remarkably myopic, unconcerned or unaware of other incarceration systems (except the Nazi one) and their similarities or parallels. (Not good when one of these only cites Foucault on Western European prisons, but gets the citation wrong!) I also regret that I was a little too focussed on Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Below the cut is a full list of every book. Ones marked with an asterisk (*) are re-reads, and those with an + are my favourites this year. Titles are listed row by row, top to bottom, left to right.
1st row: Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (University of California Press, 1977 / 1987)
Joy Parr, The Gender of Breadwinners: Women, Men and Change in Two Industrial Towns, 1880-1950 (University of Toronto Press, 1990)+
Craig Heron, editor, Workers' Revolt in Canada: 1917-1925 (1998)*
Sarah-Jane Mathieu, North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870-1955 (University of North Carolinia Press, 2010)+
Denyse Baillargeon, To Be Equals in Our Own Country: Women and the Vote in Quebec (UBC Press, 2019)
Lily Cho, Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax and the Making of Non-Citizens (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021)+
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 1983)*
Mary Janigan, Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark: The West Versus the Rest Since Confederation (Knopf, 2012) Kristin Ross, Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune (Verso, 2016)+
Tina Loo, States of Nature: Conserving Canada's Wildlife in the Twentieth Century (UBC Press, 2006)
Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo, Making Good: Law and Moral Regulation in Canada, 1867-1939 (University of Toronto Press, 1997) Jennifer L. Bonnell, Reclaiming the Don: An Environmental History of Toronto's Don River Valley (University of Toronto Press, 2014)
2nd row: Jim Phillips, Philip Girard, R. Blake Brown, A History of Law in Canada, Volume Two: Law for a New Dominion, 1867-1914 (University of Toronto Press, 2022)
Alf Lüdtke, Police and State in Prussia, 1815–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 1990)+
Maurice Zeitlin, The Civil Wars in Chile, Or, the Bourgeois Revolutions That Never Were (Princeton University Press, 1984)
Brittany Luby, Dammed: The Politics of Loss and Survival in Anishinaabe Territory (University of Manitoba Press, 2020)+
Dominique Clement, Canada's Rights Revolution: Social Movements and Social Change, 1937-82 (UBC Press, 2009)
Christopher MacLennan, Toward the Charter: Canadians and the Demand for a National Bill of Rights, 1929-1960 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003)
Ross Lambertson, Repression and Resistance: Canadian Human Rights Activists, 1930-1960 (University of Toronto Press, 2005)
Jennifer Tunnicliffe, Resisting Rights: Canada and the International Bill of Rights, 1947–76 (UBC Press, 2019)
Mark Kuhlberg, Killing Bugs for Business and Beauty: Canada's Aerial War against Forest Pests, 1913-1930 (University of Toronto Press, 2022)
Anthony M. Platt, The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency (Rutgers University Press, 2009 edition)+
Jennifer A. Stephen, Pick One Intelligent Girl: Employability, Domesticity, and the Gendering of Canada's Welfare State, 1939-1947 (University of Toronto Press, 2007)+
Carmela Patrias, Jobs and Justice: Fighting Discrimination in Wartime Canada, 1939-1945 (University of Toronto Press, 2012)
3rd row: Taylor Hollander, Power, Politics, and Principles: Mackenzie King and Labour, 1935-1948 (University of Toronto Press, 2018)
Steve Marti and William John Pratt, editors, Fighting with the Empire: Canada, Britain, and Global Conflict, 1867–1947 (UBC Press, 2019)
Donald H. Avery, The Science of the War: Canadian Scientists and Allied Military Technology During the Second World War (University of Toronto Press, 1998)
Jeffrey A. Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers: Canada's Second World War (UBC Press, 2004)
Lauren A. Benton and Lisa Ford, Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800-1850 (Harvard University Press, 2016)+
Shirley Tillotson, Give and Take: The Citizen-Taxpayer and the Rise of Canadian Democracy (UBC Press, 2017)
Franca Iacovetta, Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada (Between The Lines, 2006)+
Varpu Lindström, From Heroes to Enemies: Finns in Canada 1937-1947 (Aspasia Books, 2010)+
Tamara Myers, Caught: Montreal's Modern Girls and the Law, 1869-1945 (University of Toronto Press, 2006)*
Michel Pigenet, Au coeur de l'activisme communiste des années de guerre froide: La manifestation Ridgway (L'Harmattan, 1992)+
Olivier Dard, editor, Le corporatisme dans l’aire francophone au XX ème siècle (Convergences series, Peter Lang, 2012)
Stéphane Savard, Martin Paquet, Brève histoire de la Révolution tranquille (Boreal, 2021)
4th row: Michael Gauvreau, La Révolution Tranquille : Ses Origines Catholiques, 1931-1970 (Fides, 2007)+
Stephen Barber, ANNIHILATION ZONES: Récits d'atrocités commises en Asie au XXème siècle (Camion Blanc, 2015, originally 2002) (terrible book)
Liza Piper, When Disease Came to This Country: Epidemics and Colonialism in Northern North America (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
John Sandlos, Hunters at the Margin: Native People and Wildlife Conservation in the Northwest Territories (UBC Press, 2007)+
Catherine Cox and Hilary Marland, Disorder Contained: Mental Breakdown and the Modern Prison in England and Ireland, 1840 – 1900 (Cambridge University Press, 2022)+ Frank Morn, Forgotten Reformer: Robert McClaughry and Criminal Justice Reform in Nineteenth-Century America (University Press of America, 2010) Stephen A. Toth, Mettray: A History of France's Most Venerated Carceral Institution (Cornell University Press, 2019) Austin Reed, The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict. Edited by Caleb Smith (Modern Library, 2017)
Funké Aladejebi, Schooling the System: A History of Black Women Teachers (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021)
Sarah A. Nickel, Assembling Unity: Indigenous Politics, Gender, and the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBC Press, 2019) Joan Sangster, One Hundred Years of Struggle: The History of Women and the Vote in Canada (UBC Press, 2018)
David Austin, Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal (Between the Lines, 2013)
5th row: Sean Mills, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010)
Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile, The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation (UBC Press, 2019) James B. Waldram, The Way of the Pipe: Aboriginal Spirituality and Symbolic Healing in Canadian Prisons (University of Toronto Press, 1997)
Michael Jackson, Prisoners of Isolation: Solitary Confinement in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1983)+
Luc Gosselin, Prisons In Canada (Black Rose Books, 1980) Marsha Hewitt and Dimitrios I. Roussopolous, 1984 And After (Black Rose Books, 1984) Claire Culhane, Barred from Prison: A Personal Account (Arsenal Press, 1979)+
Claire Culhane, Still barred from prison: Social injustice in Canada (Black Rose Books, 1985) Claire Culhane, No Longer Barred from Prison: Social Injustice in Canada (Black Rose Books, 1991)
Wayne Sumner, Prairie Justice: The Hanging of Mike Hack (University of Toronto Press, 2024)
Lee Samuelson and Bernard Schissel, Criminal Justice: Sentencing Issues and Reform (University of Toronto Press, 1991)
Mark Lawrence Schrad, Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State (Oxford University Press, 2016)
6th row: David J. Cornwell, Prisons, Politics and Practices in England and Wales 1945–2020: The Operational Management Issues (Palgrave, 2021)
Jamie Bennett, Managing Prisons: Managerialism, Austerity and Moral Blindness (Palgrave, 2024)+
Marion Vannier and Paula Harriott, editors, Prisoner Leaders: Leadership as Experience and Institution (Palgrave, 2025)
John J. Dilulio, Jr., Governing Prisons: A Comparative Study of Correctional Management (Free Press, 1990)+
Richard Sparks, Anthony Bottoms, and Will Hay, Prisons and the Problem of Order (Claredon, 1996)+
David Skarbek, The Puzzle of Prison Order: Why Life Behind Bars Varies Around the World (Oxford University Press, 2020)+
George Katsiaficas, Asia's Unknown Uprisings Volume 2: People Power in the Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand and Indonesia 1947-2009 (PM Press, 2013)
Justin Ciale, Tales of Saint Vincent de Paul Penitentiary (Legas, 1997) Leo Carroll, Hacks, Blacks and Cons: Race Relations in a Maximum Security Prison (Waveland, 1974)
Dean Jobb, A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue (Harper Collins, 2024)
Negley K. Teeters, World Penal Systems: a Survey (Pennsylvania Prison Society, 1944)
Herbert Gamberg and Anthony Thomson, The Illusion of Prison Reform: Corrections in Canada (Peter Lang, 1991)*
7th row: Ian Taylor, Crime, Capitalism and Community: Three Essays in Socialist Criminology (Butterworths, 1983)+
John Pratt, Punishment and Civilization: Penal Tolerance and Intolerance in Modern Society (Sage, 2002)
John W. Ekstedt and Carl T. Griffiths, Corrections in Canada: Policy and Practice, 2nd edition (Harcourt Brace & Butterworths, 2013)* Philip Goodman, Joshua Page and Michelle Phelps, Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press, 2017)*
Orisanmi Burton, Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt (University of California Press, 2023)* Chris Clarkson and Melissa Munn, Disruptive Prisoners: Resistance, Reform, and the New Deal (University of Toronto Press, 2021)* Martin L. Friedland, Sentencing Structure in Canada: Historical Perspectives (Canada, 1988)*
Barry Ferguson, Remaking Liberalism: The Intellectual Legacy of Adam Shortt, O.D. Skelton, W.C. Clark and W.A. Mackintosh, 1890-1925 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993) Alasdair Roberts, So-Called Experts: How American Consultants Remade the Canadian Civil Service, 1918-1921 (Xebec Press, 2012)
Peter Whitewood, Soviet-Polish War and its Legacy, The: Lenin’s Defeat and the Rise of Stalinism (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Maurice Isserman, Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism (Basic Books, 2024)
Elaine Player and Michael Jenkins, editors, Prisons After Woolf: Reform through Riot (Routledge, 2002)
8th row: Herman Bianchi and René van Swaaningen, editors, Abolitionism: Towards a non-repressive approach to crime (Free University Press, 1986) Thomas Mathiesen, The Politics of Abolition (Halstead Press, 1974)+
Hermann Mannheim, The Dilemma of Penal Reform (George Allen and Unwin, 1939) Hermann Mannheim, War and Crime (Watts & Co., 1941)+ Thorsten Sellin, Culture, Conflict, and Crime (Social Science Research Council, 1938)
D. Ross Pugmire, The Administration Of Personnel In Correctional Institutions In New York State (Columbia University, 1937)
J. Patrick Boyer, A Passion for Justice: How 'Vinegar Jim' McRuer Became Canada's Greatest Law Reformer (University of Toronto Press, 1994)*
A.B. McKillop, Contours of Canadian Thought (University of Toronto Press, 1987)
Robert A. Wardhaugh and Barry Ferguson, The Rowell-Sirois Commission and the Remaking of Canadian Federalism (UBC Press, 2021) Joseph Archambault, R.W. Craig, J.C. McRuer, The Royal Commission Report on Penal Reform in Canada (Canada, 1938)*
H. G. Wyatt, Crime in Canada and the War (Oxford University Press, 1944) Desmond Ellis, Disturbances in Canadian Penitentiaries During the Years 1971 – 1980 (York University, 1982)
9th row: James R. Winning, Behind These Walls (Macmillan, 1933)+
H. U. Triston, Men in Cages (John Gifford, Ltd., 1938)+ Mark Benney, Gaol Delivery (Longmans, 1948)+
M.D. Ettinger, The Problem of Crime (Long & Smith, 1932)
Thomas Mathiesen, Prison on Trial, third edition (Whiteside Press, 2005)
David Ward, Alcatraz: The Gangster Years (University of California Press, 2009)*
Charles Bright, The Powers that Punish: Prison and Politics in the Era of the "Big House", 1920-1955 (University of Michigan Press, 1996)*
Lorna A. Rhodes, Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum Security Prison (University of California Press, 2004) Richard Somerset MacKie, Trading Beyond the Mountains: The British Fur Trade on the Pacific, 1793-1843 (UBC Press, 1998)
Reg Whitaker, A Sovereign Idea: Essays on Canada as a Democratic Community (McGill-Queen's Press, 1991) Luc Juillet and Ken Rasmussen, Defending a Contested Ideal: Merit and the Public Service Commission, 1908-2008 (University of Ottawa Press, 2008) J.E. Hodgetts, William McCloskey, Reginald Whitaker, and V. Seymour Wilson, The Biography of an Institution: The Civil Service Commission of Canada 1908-1967 (Volume 1) (McGill-Queen's University, 1972)
10th row: Raymond Boyer, Barreaux de fer, hommes de chair (Editions du Jour, 1972)+ Richard W. Ireland, A Want of Good Order and Discipline: Rules, Discretion and the Victorian Prison (University of Wales Press, 2007)+
Joan Sangster, Girl Trouble: Female Delinquency in English Canada (Between the Lines, 2002)+
James B. Jacobs, New perspectives on prisons and imprisonment (Cornell University Press, 1983)
Mark E. Fleisher, Warehousing Violence (SAGE, 1989)
Joshua Page, The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers Union in California (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Laurel Sefton MacDowell, Remember Kirkland Lake. Revised edition (Canadian Scholars Press, 2002, orig. 1983)
Everett C. Hughes, French Canada in Transition (Oxford University Press, 2009, orig. 1943)
Paul Kahan, Seminary of Virtue: The Ideology and Practice of Inmate Reform at Eastern State Penitentiary, 1829-1971 (Peter Lang, 2012)
Phil Scraton, Joe Sim, Paula Skidmore, Prisons Under Protest (Open University Press, 1991) Albert Morris, Criminology (Longmans, 1934)
Robert Graham Caldwell, Red Hannah: Delaware's Whipping Post (Oxford University Press, 1947)+
11th row: Joe Sim, Medical Power in Prisons: The Prison Medical Service in England, 1774-1988 (Open University Press, 1990)+
Merrily Weisbord, The Strangest Dream: Canadian Communists, the Spy Trials, and the Cold War (Vehicule Press, 2022, orig. 1983) Alexander Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands (Cambridge University Press, 2010)+
John P. Riordan, Red DIME: Dissecting the Bolshevik Liquidation Campaign in the Ferghana Valley Against the Basmachi Resistance (self-published, 2012)
Robert F. Baumann, Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan (Leavenworth Papers, 1993)
T. Derbent, The German Communist Resistance (Foreign Language Press, 2021)+ Andrew Smith, Which East Is Red?: The Maoist Presence in the Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc Europe, 1956-1980 (Foreign Language Press, 2019)
Colin Forster, France and Botany Bay: The Lure of a Penal Colony (Melbourne University Press, 1996)
Dan Malleck, When Good Drugs Go Bad: Opium, Medicine, and the Origins of Canada’s Drug Laws (UBC Press, 2015) Gerald Tulchinsky, Joe Salsberg: A Life of Commitment (University of Toronto Press, 2013) David Garland, Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies (Gower, 1987)+
Christian Rioux, The British Garrison at Quebec 1759-1871 (Parks Canada, 1997)
12th row: Peter Entwisle, Taka: a vignette life of William Tucker 1784-1817 : convict, sealer, trader in human heads, Otago settler, New Zealand's first art dealer (Port Daniel Press, 2005)
Rod MacLeod, Sam Steele: A Biography (University of Alberta, 2018)
C. Nathan Hatton, Rugged Game: Community, Culture and Wrestling at the Lakehead to 1933 (Lakehead University Centre for Northern Studies, 2012)
Sherry Olson and Patricia Thornton, Peopling the North American City: Montreal, 1840-1900 (McGill-Queen's Press, 2011)
Heinrich von Kleist, Michael Kohlhaas. Translated by Michael Hofmann (New Directions, 2020, orig. 1810)
Colin Argyle Thomson, Swift Runner (Brush Education, 1984)
Patryk Polec, Hurrah Revolutionaries: The Polish Canadian Communist Movement, 1918-1948 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015) Dan Malleck, Liquor and the Liberal State: Drink and Order before Prohibition (UBC Press, 2022)
Dirk Cameron Gibson, Way Worse Than Attica: the 1980 Riot at the Penitentiary of New Mexico (self-published, 2022)
Pao-Yu Ching, From Victory to Defeat: China's Socialist Road and Capitalist Reversal (Foreign Languages Press, 2019) David R. Shearer, Policing Stalin's Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924-1953 (Yale University Press, 2009)+
Ian Ona Johnson, Faustian Bargain: The Soviet-German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War (Oxford University Press, 2021)
13th row: Steven A. Barnes, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton University Press, 2011)
Dominique Nantel, Prisonnier A Bordeaux. Recit D'adolphe Nantel 1931-1932 (Septentrion, 2023)+
D. L. Howard, The English Prisons: Their Past and Their Future (Metheun, 1960) Mike Fitzgerald, Prisoners in revolt (Penguin, 1977)
John Lea, Jock Young, What is to Be Done About Law and Order?: Crisis in the Nineties (Pluto Press, 1993, orig. 1984)+
David Cowell, Trevor Jones, and Jock Young, Policing the Riots (Junction Press, 1982)
Vivien Stern, Bricks of Shame: Britain's Prisons (Penguin, 1989)
Trevor James, "There's One Away": Escapes from Dartmoor Prison (Orchard Books, 1999)
Johann Chapoutot, Libres d’obéir : Le management, du nazisme à aujourd'hui (Gallimard, 2020)+
David T. Courtwright, Dark Paradise: Opiate Addiction in America before 1940 (Harvard University Press, 1982)+
Andrée Lévesque, Scènes de la vie en rouge: L'époque de Jeanne Corbin, 1906-1944 (Les Éditions du remue-ménage, 1999)+
Bill Waiser, In Search of Almighty Voice: Resistance and Reconciliation (Fifth House, 2020)+
14th row: Felix Dzerzhinsky, Prison Diaries and Letters (Foreign Languages Press, 2023)+
Loren R. Graham, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 1993)
Harvey Henry Blackstock, Bitter Humour: About Dope, Safe Cracking and Prisons (Burns & MacEachern, 1967)+
Stephan Sander-Faes, Crime, Enlightenment, and Punishment: Bureaucratic and Scientific Change in Habsburg Austria, 1750s–1820s (Routledge, 2025)
Jean-Claude Vimont, La Prison Politique en France: genèse d'un mode d'incarcération spécifique, XVIIIe-XXe siècles (Economica, 1993)+
Frank Anderson, Up the Ladder: An Autobiography (self-published, 1999)+
Jim Tully, Beggars of Life: A Hobo Autobiography (Rare Treasures, 2024, orig. 1926)+
A.A. Den Otter, Civilizing the Wilderness: Culture and Nature in Pre-Confederation Canada and Rupert’s Land (University of Alberta Press, 2012) Jean-Francois Lozier, Flesh Reborn: The Saint Lawrence Valley Mission Settlements through the Seventeenth Century (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018)+ Walter Havighurst, The Long Ships Passing: The Story of the Great Lakes (University of Minnesota Press, 2002, orig. 1942)
Lin Chun, Revolution and Counterrevolution in China: The Paradoxes of Chinese Struggle (Verso, 2021)
Babur, The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor. Translated by W.M. Thackston Jr. (Modern Library, 2002, orig. 1531)
Top five articles (and one thesis): Desmond Ellis, "The Prison Guard as Carceral Luddite: A Critical Review of the MacGuigan Report on the Penitentiary System in Canada," Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 4, no. 1 (1979): 43-64. Darius Scott, "Good Roads and Anti-Black Violence," Annals of the American Association of Geographers 113, no. 3 (2023): 567-580
Ross Wolfe, "Neo-Stalinism & Philosophy: Domenico Losurdo’s New School of Falsification," three part series, New International, 2025. Online.
Daniel Chardell, "The Origins of the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait Reconsidered," Texas National Security Review, 6, no. 3 (Summer 2023): 51-78.
Norman S. Hayner and Ellis Ash, "The Prison As a Community," American Sociological Review 5, no. 4 (1940): 577-583.
Jarett Henderson, "Uncivil Subjects: Metropolitan Meddling, Conditional Loyalty, and Lord Durham's 1838 Administration of Lower Canada." PhD thesis, York University, 2010.
