Looking to wrap up a “25 in 2025” reading challenge? Need a dose of holiday gift inspiration?
Western News shares books written by members of the Western community to help with both.
Resurgent: How established organizations can fight back and thrive in an age of digital transformation
Julian Birkinshaw, MBA’91, PhD’95, dean, Ivey Business School and John Fallon
Julian Birkinshaw and his co-author John Fallon tackle a critical challenge facing executives: How can businesses survive today’s technological disruptions?
Birkinshaw and Fallon suggest reframing disruption as an opportunity to lead.
Resurgent: How established organizations can fight back and thrive in an age of digital transformation , Birkinshaw’s 16th book, offers a practical handbook examining how established businesses can use their unique advantages to fight back and win in a digital arena often dominated by tech start-ups, disruptors and unicorns.
“In today’s turbulent times, this book offers welcome advice for leaders everywhere . . . We need to have the humility to ask, what are we missing? And we need to have the courage to respond in a bold and agile way.” — Doug Guzman, HBA’88, chair, Royal Bank of Canada
Learn more about Resurgent: a Q & A with author Julian Birkinshaw
Ivey Dean Julian Birkinshaw holds his new book, Resurgent, which redefines how legacy companies can adapt and thrive in the digital age. (Ivey Business School)
A Bow Forged from Ash
Melissa Powless Day, PhD candidate, Indigenous education and chair of Western’s Indigenous Writing Circle
“My cousin makes bows/Shows me how two fingers draw velocities with a snap/Warns me of the learning curve/The flesh sacrifice/To fly an arrow shaft/Hands me a blow, hand-forged from ash.”
In A Bow Forged from Ash, Melissa Powless Day takes readers on a journey of Indigenous reclamation, exploring wholeness, responsibility, belonging and identity. Threading in Anishinaabe language throughout her book, Day explores ancestral memory, experiences and critical engagements with the land. Her poems voice complex stories about community bonds and the messiness of returning home – and prove that reclamation and resistance are inseparable.
“With an honest voice, Melissa Powless Day does not allow the reader to step away from her word journey, revealing Indigenous difficulties both collective and personal served as spiritual balm.” — January Rogers, poet, playwright, media producer, Ojistoh Publishing and Productions
Day is Anishinaabe and Kanien’kehá:ka from Bkejwanong Territory (Walpole Island First Nation), with family ties in Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. Her first chapbook, Secondhand Moccasins, was shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award.
Oil People
David Huebert, PhD’19 (English)
Heralded by the Literary Review of Canada as “one of the most captivating authors of the past decade,” David Huebert’s work has been recognized with the CBC Short Story Prize, The Walrus Poetry Prize and other national awards.
Now Huebert’s attracted further acclaim for his debut novel Oil People, which won the 2025 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the 2025 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.
Part generational saga, part eco-gothic fable, Oil People is about history and family, land and power, and oil “as an object of toxic wonder.” The story blends two narratives – one of Jade, a thirteen-year-old living on her family’s vintage oil farm in 1986 and the other of Clyde Armbruster, a man who strikes it big with Lambton County’s oil gusher of 1862 – coming together to reveal family secrets and deceits.
“Oil People is a story to savour, not devour. Huebert’s debut novel yields much like the earth drilled by one of its main characters, demanding time and attention, focus and forgiveness. It challenges the norm, delicately balancing the good and the bad within the oil industry, through a story that travels across generations, along family lines, through river and over land.” – Judges panel, Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award
The Science of Pets
Jay Ingram, DSc’24
With his latest book, best-selling author, veteran science broadcaster and Western honorary degree recipient Jay Ingram shares new insights into the hearts, minds and bodies of the animals who love us (or do they?).
The Science of Pets explores the animal-human bond, challenging common myths and misconceptions. In his trademark accessible manner, Ingram paints a vivid picture of what we know about our relationship to dogs, cats and a variety of exotic pets. He discusses the myths and misconceptions about our companions: Did dogs entirely evolve from wolves, and why? Can you communicate with a turtle? Why are baby animals, like baby humans, so darned cute: have they evolved to be born cute as a survival mechanism and would that cuteness matter to others of their own kind who might consider them their next lunch?
“Curling up with a book as good as this one is the next best thing to having your favourite pooch at your side or cat in your lap. From the origin of dogs to the robotic pets of the future, Ingram covers every aspect of our relationships with the animals that become beloved members of our families, seamlessly combining rich insights across the sciences, from evolution to the psychology of both humans and our furry (or feathered or scaly!) companions.” – Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author
(L to R) Western University Chancellor Kelly Meighen presents prominent science communicator Jay Ingram with his Doctor of Science degree during spring convocation in 2024. (Christopher Kindratsky/Western Communications)
Cicada Summer
Erica McKeen, BA’17, BA’19, MA’20 (English)
Longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction with Cicada Summer, Erica McKeen takes us back to the pandemic days of 2020.
With a heat wave bearing down and a brood of periodical cicadas climbing into the trees, a woman, her grandfather and her lover quarantine in the remote lakeside wilderness –where their world splits apart at the seams. A discovery of a strange book, “crawling with unsettling imagery and terrifying transformations,” leads to a reckoning of loss, longing and “what it means to truly know another person.”
“Mesmerizingly subtle and elegant, Cicada Summer investigates which stories must be told in order to unravel that which is unfathomable. As the cicadas chirp, their husks dropping from trees, Erica McKeen masterfully takes us into the liminal space of grief, into a world that crisps alive while it vanishes.” – Gerardo Sámano Córdova, author of Monstrilio
McKeen won the 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction for her first novel Tear, which tells the story of a reclusive Western student questioning the realities of her existence.
Canadian Architectural Styles: A Field Guide
Don Mikel, BA’77 (Social Science)
In Canadian Architectural Styles: A Field Guide, architecture scholar and heritage consultant Don Mikel takes readers on an educational journey through the country’s architectural history, showcasing buildings from heritage homes to schools, churches and commercial structures.
The book contains more than 1,100 photographs taken by Mikel over a decade of travel and research.
His images depict and describe more than 40 architectural styles, along with simple checklists on how to identify them.
“This is the most comprehensive guide to architectural style that I’ve seen in a long time, and the only one that is strictly Canadian and on a national scale. Bonus: it comes right up to the present day.” – Tom Cruickshank, author of Old Toronto Houses and Old Ontario House
Starry, Starry Night
Shani Mootoo, BFA’80, D.Litt.’21
Set in celebrated author Shani Mootoo’s homeland of Trinidad in the 1960s, Starry, Starry Night is an autofictional story about family secrets, trauma, race, class and loss.
The story is told by Anju Ghoshal, a young girl whose innocent and clear-eyed observations take the reader through her unexpectedly new and complex life, just before and after Trinidad gained its independence from British rule.
While preoccupied with their own dramas, the adults in Anju’s socially advancing family often fail the needs of the children who depend on them. Despite her privileged appearance, Anju learns she must ultimately fend for herself because her safety depends on it.
“Starry Starry Night reminds us of what childhood feels like, but it also reminds us how clearly children see and how frequently we underestimate them.” – Amarah Hasham-Steele, Power Corporation of Canada fellow for emerging BIPOC journalists, for The Walrus
Mootoo is a four-time Giller Prize nominee and her work has been long and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Lambda Literary Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
The Golden Generation: How Canada Became a Basketball Powerhouse
Oren Weisfeld, BA’17 (Media, Information and Technoculture)
In his first book, Oren Weisfeld tells “the untold story of Canadian basketball,” from Steve Nash’s breakthrough at the 2000 Olympic Games to two decades of struggle, controversy and missed opportunity.
The Golden Generation: How Canada Became a Basketball Powerhouse follows the Canadian basketball journey from obscurity to resurgence as NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and a new generation of stars propel Canada back to international glory.
Drawn from more than 100 interviews, Weisfeld’s detailed history begins with the sport’s origins, when James Naismith of Almonte, Ont., created the game at an American YMCA and helped popularize it through the organization’s gym classes. Weisfeld also explores the role systemic racism played in Canada’s national basketball program in the 1980s and 90s, and how pioneers like Cory Joseph and Tristan Thompson, both selected in the 2011 NBA draft, paved a new path for the next generation.
“Weisfeld captures the highs and lows of the journey, with voices from the sport’s gritty past and luminous present. Essential reading for basketball fans of any country, but especially for fans of Canadian sports history.” – Michael Grange, Sportsnet
Weisfeld is a freelance sports journalist and lifelong basketball fan living in Toronto. He’s been published in The Guardian, Toronto Star, VICE, SLAM, Complex, Sportsnet and Yahoo!
