NEW TO THE SHELVES

A Canadian Bestseller

Photo of book cover of Blood on the Coal by Ken Cuthbertson
“The Purrfect Read”

They said it was the world’s deepest and most dangerous coal mine. Those who made that claim were probably correct. What is certain is that in October 1958, the Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation’s No. 2 colliery at Springhill, Nova Scotia, was a leading candidate for both those dubious distinctions. The mine was the proverbial “disaster waiting to happen.” And it did.

Springhill was the quintessential one-industry town, whose existence depended on coal, a commodity with a dying market. However, something far worse than a loss of market was soon to come. On the night of October 23, 1958, a “bump” in the mine — a small earthquake —shook the ground beneath the town. Seventy-five miners would die, and scores more were injured in what remains one of Canada’s worst workplace disasters. The lives of the survivors were shattered, and Springhill would never be the same again.

In compelling detail, Ken Cuthbertson tells the stories of three of the miners and one of the town doctors who cared for the men and their injured co-workers following the disaster. This remarkable book is based on historical documents and interviews, as well as new interviews with the last of the surviving miners and their loved ones. It is a story of heroism, sacrifice and the indomitable strength of the human spirit. It’s also a gripping read.

  • "Cuthbertson seamlessly weaves together the overlapping in-the-moment stories from above and below ground through the voices of those who lived them - the trapped miners, their helpless families, their determined rescuers, the mine managers, town doctors, and journalists who brought the story of the disaster to the world."

    Stephanie Kimber, author of Alexa!: Changing the Face of Canadian Politics

  • "The timing of Blood on the Coal couldn't be better: like the Covid pandemic, the Springhill mine disaster showed us that all too often it takes a tragedy to teach us a lesson about our safety protocols. And that all too often, we don't learn that lesson."

    Wayne Grady, author of Pandexicon

  • "In this gripping, searing, and fresh telling of a terrible mining disaster and rescue operation that unfolded some four thousand metres underground, Ken Cuthbertson offers both an uplifting reminder of the resilience of the human spirit and a cautionary tale about an ancient fossil fuel. The history lesson here? For safety's sake, and for the sake of the planet, leave old black coal where it is."

    Lawrence Scanlan, author of A Year of Living Generously: Dispatches from the Front Line of Philanthropy

  • "This is a profoundly human story of resilience and survival, how nineteen miners endured the terror of entombment after a Canadian industrial disaster in 1958. It is also a critical and timeless account of the usually unintended consequences of corporate decision making, and how working people are obliged to bear the high and often tragic cost of livelihood."

    Linden MacIntyre, author of The Wake: The Deadly Legacy of a Newfoundland Tsunami

OTHER BOOKS BY KEN CUTHBERTSON

1945: the Year That Made Modern Canada

  • On the eve of WWII, the Dominion of Canada was a sleepy backwater still struggling to escape the despair of the Great Depression. But the war changed everything. After six long years of conflict, sacrifice and soul-searching, the country emerged onto the world stage as a modern, confident and truly independent nation no longer under the colonial sway of Great Britain.

    This highly readable narrative commemorates the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII and chronicles the events and personalities of a critical year that reshaped Canada. 1945: The Year That Made Modern Canada showcases the stories of people—some celebrated, some ordinary—who left their mark on the nation and helped create the Canada of today.

    The author profiles an eclectic group of Canadians, including eccentric prime minister Mackenzie King, iconic hockey superstar Rocket Richard, business tycoon E. P. Taylor, Soviet defector Igor Gouzenko, the bandits of the Polka Dot Gang, crusading MP Agnes Macphail, and authors Gabrielle Roy and Hugh MacLennan, among many others. The book also covers topics including the Halifax riot, war brides, the birth of Canada’s beloved social safety net, and the remarkable events that sparked the Cold War. 1945 is the unforgettable story of our nation at the moment of its modern birth.

  • “Ken Cuthbertson takes us back to a pivotal year in our history, and to a Canada that has been almost obliterated by subsequent events in our country. A delightful and timely reminder that today’s Canadian identity is rooted in changes first envisioned in 1945.”

    — Charlotte Gray, author of Murdered Midas: A Millionaire, His Gold Mine, and a Strange Death on an Island Paradise

    “Ken Cuthbertson has captured the personality of an iconic Canadian year. This book shows Canada and Canadians as we’ve not seen ourselves before. He puts a face to our mider foundation myths.”

    — Ted Barris, author of The Battle of the Atlantic and Dam Busters

    “Panoramic and engaging . . .”

    — Canada’s History magazine

The Halifax Explosion, Canada’s Worst Disaster

Short Listed for a 2017 Atlantic Book Award (Non-Fiction)

  • While much has been written about the disaster, there is still more to the story, including the investigation of the key figures involved, the histories of the ships that collided and the confluence of circumstances that brought these two vessels together to touch off one of the most tragic man-made disasters of the 20th century.

    The Halifax Explosion is a fresh, revealing account that finally answers questions that have lingered for a century: Was the explosion a disaster triggered by simple human error? Was it caused by the negligence of the ships’ pilots or captains? Was it the result of shortcomings in harbour practices and protocols? Or was the blast—as many people at the time insisted—the result of sabotage carried out by wartime German agents?

    December 6, 2017, marked the centennial of the great Halifax explosion. The Halifax Explosion tells the gripping story of Canada’s worst disaster—a haunting tale of survival, incredible courage and, ultimately, the triumph of the human spirit.

  • “This vivid page-turner is the definitive work on Canada’s worst-ever man-made disaster.”

    — Ken McGoogan, author of Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage

    “The most mature and certainly the best general history of the disaster to have appeared so far.”

    — Atlantic Books Today

A Complex Fate: William L. Shirer and the American Century

Coming Soon to Netflix: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

  • William Shirer (1904-1993), a star foreign correspondent with the Chicago Tribune in the 1920s and ’30s, was a prominent member of what one contemporary observer described as an extraordinary band of American journalists, “some with the Midwest hayseed still in their hair,” who gave their North American audiences a visceral sense of how Europe was spiralling into chaos and war.

    In 1937, Shirer left print journalism and became the first of the now legendary “Murrow boys,” working as an on-air partner to the iconic CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow. With Shirer reporting from inside Nazi Germany and Murrow from blitz-ravaged London, the pair built CBS’s European news operation into the industry leader and, in the process, revolutionized broadcasting. But after the war ended, the Shirer-Murrow relationship shattered. Shirer lost his job and by 1950 found himself blacklisted as a supposed Communist sympathizer. After nearly a decade in the professional wilderness, he began work on The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Published in 1960, Shirer’s magnum opus sold millions of copies and was hailed as the masterwork that would “ensure his reputation as long as humankind reads.”

    A Complex Fate is a thought-provoking, richly detailed biography of William Shirer. Written with the full cooperation of Shirer’s family, and generously illustrated with photographs, it introduces a new generation of readers to a supremely talented, complex writer, while placing into historical context some of the pivotal media developments of our time.

  • “Cuthbertson recounts the improvised thrill of the first-ever roundup from correspondents dotted all across Europe beaming the voices back to the United States, a model for network television broadcasts to this day but an outright marvel at the time.”

    — Nicholas Kulish, New York Times

    “A richly detailed biography . . . “

    — Richard Ernsberger, Jr., American History Reviews

Ring of Truth: The Memoirs of the Hon. Henry E. MacFutter

  • MacFutter’s trial of mischief and misdeed became treacherous as he crossed paths with the likes of – among others-- a beautiful American temptress, the infamous river pilot Bill Johnston, the murderous captain of the Fort Henry guard, and rebel leader William Lyon Mackenzie. This rollicking, whimsical tale features a duel, sex in a canoe, mystery, intrigue, murder, and much more.

  • "[The Ring of Truth] is not a thriller, even though much of the action is thrilling. It is more of a picaresque, which usually depicts in . . detail and considerable humour, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society.”

    — Merilyn Simonds, Kingston Whig-Standard

    “MacFutter’s outrageous antics place him squarely in the class of notorious Bartholomew Bandy, so bitterly do prominent characters from Canadian history hate him.”

    — David More, author of the award-winning Smithyman series of historical novels

    “Written in the style of George Macdonald Fraser’s Flashman series, this rolicking historical novel is set in Kingston during the two years the city was the capital of . . . Canada.”

    — Western Alumni Gazette

Nobody Said Not to Go: The Life, Loves, and Adventures of Emily Hahn

The partial inspiration for a forthcoming television series from Mark Yellen Productions

  • A feminist trailblazer before the word existed, Hahn also wrote hundreds of articles and short stories for The New Yorker from 1925 to 1995, as well as fifty books in many genres. As Roger Angell wrote in her obituary in The New Yorker: “She was, in truth, something rare: a woman deeply, almost domestically, at home in the world. Driven by curiosity and energy, she went there and did that, and then wrote about it without fuss.”

    The partial inspiration for a forthcoming television series on the life and times of Emily Hahn.

  • “[Cuthbertson] deserves praise for taking note of a woman who has been too-little remembered.”

    — Brigid Hughes, Chicago Tribune

    “[Cuthbertson] adroitly brings [Hahn] back into the limelight by detailing her achievements…. Thanks to Cuthbertson, Hahn has an encore in front of an audience hungry for just her kind of story.”

    — Donna Seaman, Booklist

INSIDE: The Biography of John Gunther

Short Listed for a 1992 Governor General’s Literary Award (Non-Fiction)

  • In his heyday, which stretched from 1936 until the late 1960s, Gunter was among the most famous and influential journalists alive. His books were translated into 90 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide. His reporting earned his name a spot on a “death list” complied by Hitler’s Gestapo. Winston Churchill sang Gunther’s praises, and he was on a first-name basis with President Eisenhower, Indian nationalist leader Jawaharlal Nehru, film star Greta Garbo, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and famous people of the era too numerous to mention.

    To his admirers and colleagues, Gunther was a man who seemed to have it all – success, money, adventure, and romance. But there was another John Gunther. He was a man bedeviled by self-doubt, artistic frustrations, failed loves, and the tragic deaths of his only two natural children. This book covers Gunther’s remarkable journalism career and his tumultuous personal life with page-turning intensity, in splendid detail, and with wondrous lucidity.

  • “A well-paced, sympathetic, diligently researched biography.”

    — Publishers Weekly

    “A strong biography [and] a big-hearted book.”


    — Kirkus Reviews