Calgary: Secrets of the City [Illustrated] [Paperback]

James Martin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James Martin is a columnist for Calgary's FFWD Weekly and a freelance writer on the side. Until last year he was a true-blue Calgarian. He's since moved to Montreal where he is learning how to eat bagels.

Product Details

• Paperback: 230 pages
• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Pr Ltd; 1st edition (February 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1551520761
• ISBN-13: 978-1551520766
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,345,006 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #41 in Books > Travel > Canada > Cities > Calgary

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars enjoyable,... if only it were written by Aldous Huxley!, March 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Calgary: Secrets of the City (Paperback)

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.