Michael Bliss – författare

William Osler was born in a parsonage in backwoods Canada on July 12, 1849. In a life lasting seventy years, he practiced, taught, and wrote about medicine at Canada's McGill University, America's Johns Hopkins University, and finally as Regius Professor at Oxford. At the time of his death in England in 1919, many considered him to be the greatest doctor in the world. Osler, who was a brilliant, innovative teacher and a scholar of the natural history of disease, revolutionised the art of practicing medicine at the bedside of his patients. He was idolised by two generations of medical students and practitioners for whom he came to personify the ideal doctor. But much more than a physician, Osler was a supremely intelligent humanist. In both his writings and his personal life, and through the prism of the tragedy of the Great War, he embodied the art of living. It was perhaps his legendary compassion that elevated his healing talents to an art form and attracted to his private practice students, colleagues, poets (Walt Whitman for example) politicians, royalty, and nameless ordinary people with extraordinary conditions. William Osler's life lucidly illuminates the times in which he lived. Indeed, this is a book not only about the evolution of modern medicine, the training of doctors, holism in medical thought, and the doctor-patient relationship, but also about humanism, Victorianism, the Great War, and much else. Meticulously researched, drawing on many new sources and offering new interpretations, William Osler: A Life in Medicine brings to life both a fascinating man and the formative age of twentieth-century medicine. It is a classic biography of a classic life, both authoritative and highly readable.

For too long the history of Canadian society has been hidden in secondhand bookstores, the dark corners of library stacks, and the privacy of the occasional graduate seminar. Contrary to what often seems the common impression, there is a richness and distinctiveness to our labour history, our urban development, our traditions of regional and cultural conflict, our movements for social reform and justice – to all that vast range of topics, events, issues, and ideas that comprise the social history of a nation. The demands of teachers and students and indeed the general public for material relevant to Canadian social history have been matched only by the frustrations raised by the inaccessibility, sometimes the apparent non-existence, of documents basic to a new understanding of our heritage. It is now time that this heritage be retrieved and made available to everyone. It is the purpose of this new series to help meet these demands. The titles in the series will be issued in a common format, in both hardcover and paperback editions, and will deal with all areas of social history. Most of these volumes will consist of a reissue of classic works now out of print – novels, histories, investigations, polemics, tracts; others will contain a compilation of documents in areas where there are no worthwhile book-length studies. Each work will have a new introduction by a scholar who is a specialist in the field. It is hoped that this series will simultaneously enrich our knowledge of the past and lay the groundwork for future advances in scholarship and historical consciousness.

For too long the history of Canadian society has been hidden in secondhand bookstores, the dark corners of library stacks, and the privacy of the occasional graduate seminar. Contrary to what often seems the common impression, there is a richness and distinctiveness to our labour history, our urban development, our traditions of regional and cultural conflict, our movements for social reform and justice – to all that vast range of topics, events, issues, and ideas that comprise the social history of a nation. The demands of teachers and students and indeed the general public for material relevant to Canadian social history have been matched only by the frustrations raised by the inaccessibility, sometimes the apparent non-existence, of documents basic to a new understanding of our heritage. It is now time that this heritage be retrieved and made available to everyone. It is the purpose of this new series, The Social History of Canada, to help meet these demands. The titles in the series, including The Rapids, will be issued in a common format, in both hardcover and paperback editions, and will deal with all areas of social history. Most of these volumes will consist of a reissue of classic works now out of print – novels, histories, investigations, polemics, tracts; others will contain a compilation of documents in areas where there are no worthwhile book-length studies. Each work will have a new introduction by a scholar who is a specialist in the field. It is hoped that this series will simultaneously enrich our knowledge of the past and lay the groundwork for future advances in scholarship and historical consciousness

The transcript of Louis Riel’s trial has never been readily accessible to the general reader interested in the 1885 Rebellion and related events. This work will promote knowledge of the facts, and illustrate a social phenomenon of nineteenth-century Canada.In that age litigation was a prime public spectacle and the trial of Louis Riel in 1885 was followed intently across the country. The crowded, stuffy courtroom in Regina was the stage for the most dramatic and perhaps the most important state trial in Canadian history.Riel had decided never to return to the dreary, hopeless life of an exile. Guided by his own private vision of reality, he tried to carry his revolutionary struggle from the field into a new arena, because he was not a man of action but a man of words. He went to his enemies to demand the great public trail which he had never received – a trial that was the deliberately chosen climax of his political life and an opportunity to vindicate himself. Much of the drama of the courtroom was created by his struggles with his own lawyers to be able to present his own case. In the background were the almost insoluble dilemmas created by a conflict of cultures.In his introduction, Desmond Morton has sought to banish many of the myths which surround both Riel and the trial, doing justice to Macdonald and the government as well as to the prisoner of Regina. In the process, he has restated the issues of the trail in the terms understood by his contemporaries.

Frederick Banting was thirty-one when he received the Nobel Prize for his part in the discovery of insulin. He was catapulted to instant fame, for which he was neither personally nor professionally prepared. Set up as head of his own research institute by a grateful government, he struggled fruitlessly to duplicate his first triumph. His marriage to a beautiful socialite ended in a scandal that rocked Toronto, and he returned to work and painting to dull his frustration. He died in a mysterious plane crash; a new preface to this edition discusses recent findings about the crash.Michael Bliss's highly acclaimed biography explores the life of a scientist who during his lifetime was the most famous of all Canadians, but who in his private life stands revealed as a passionate, troubled man, in many ways the victim of his own fame.

What we see, and what we seem, are but a dream, a dream within a dream. Michael Bliss views Miranda's voice-over at the beginning of ""Picnic at Hanging Rock"" as so pivotal in explaining the films of Peter Weir that he borrows her words to create the title of his own study of the Australian filmmaker's work. Bliss views Weir as an artist whose values are rooted in the realm of the dream, of the unconscious. Surrealistic in technique, Weir avoids the pedestrian assurances of a material realm in favour of an irresolution that, while potentially frustrating, is nonetheless for him a more truthful representation of what he considers reality. For Weir, as for Plato, Bliss demonstrates, ""empirical reality is nothing more than a shadow of what is real"". Bliss also considers Weir's heritage. Australian cinema, Bliss explains, is characterized by melodramatic narratives born of a desire to see good and evil portrayed in striking opposition. Weir, for example, dramatizes the contradictory forces of light versus darkness, reason versus mystery, and rationality versus magic in such films as ""Picnic at Hanging Rock"" and ""The Last Wave"". This melodramatic emphasis is evident as well in the polarized characterizations in such films as ""Witness"", ""Dead Poets Society"", and ""The Truman Show"". Bliss also discusses Weir's use of another staple of Australian cinema - ""mateship"", the celebration of the bond between male companions. But by making self-knowledge dependent on action involving one's friends, Weir gives mateship a new meaning. Moreover, like other Australian filmmakers, Weir emphasizes the starkness of the Australian landscape, which functions either as a hazard or a deadly challenge, at least until American mythology caused him to see nature in a more positive light. Also prominent in Weir's films is an Australian spirit of rebellion coupled with the Aussie ambivalence toward all aspects of British culture. To help explain Weir's films, Bliss looks to Freud and Jung, whom Weir has studied, and also to two other prominent purveyors of myth and archetype, Northrop Frye and Joseph Campbell. Virtually all Weir characters struggle toward a new mode of awareness, a psychological awareness based on archetypal truths. Many of his films involve archetypal journeys heading through conflict to spiritual unity. Weir's quest is to find out what we really know and how we know what we know

Written exclusively for this collection by today’s most significant writers and researchers on Sam Peckinpah, the nine essays in Peckinpah Today explore the body of work of one of the most important American filmmakers, revealing new insights into his artistic process and the development of his lasting themes. By unearthing new sources—from modified screenplay documents and pulp fiction novels to interviews with screenplay writers and editors—this book, edited by Peckinpah scholar Michael Bliss, provides groundbreaking criticism of Peckinpah’s work. To better understand Peckinpah’s artistic process, four of the essayists examine the transformation of written material into film, while acknowledging the significant contributions of screenwriters and producers. Included is a rare interview with A. S. Fleischman, author of the screenplay for The Deadly Companions, the film that launched Peckinpah’s career in feature films. The collection also contains essays by scholar Stephen Prince and Paul Seydor, editor of the controversial special edition of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, who explains his editing rationale in detail. In his essay on Straw Dogs, film critic Michael Sragow reveals how Peckinpah and co-scriptwriter David Zelag Goodman transformed a pulp novel into a powerful film. Other contributors explore spiritual and biblical themes in The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, The Killer Elite, and Cross of Iron. Tony Williams’s essay on The Osterman Weekend proposes that this underappreciated film is a sophisticated tract on the media. The final essay of the collection surveys Peckinpah’s career, showing the dark turn that the filmmaker’s artistic path took between his first film, The Deadly Companions, and his last film, The Osterman Weekend. This broad assessment helps to reinforce the book’s dawn-to-dusk approach, which provides a fascinating picture of the great filmmaker’s work.

The Word Made Flesh is an exploration of the thematic concerns and the underlying humanism and morality found in Martin Scorsese's films. It contains individual chapters on fifteen Scorsese films, the most complete Scorsese filmography available, and a host of illustrations.Generally acknowledged as one of the most important and influential directors of his generation, Scorsese has directed a wide range of films, from documentaries to musicals to comedies to dramas. Although Scorsese has a well-known penchant for violence, as in the films Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Cape Fear, he is also a master of the character study. The Word Made Flesh is an essential addition to any film collection.

Originally a Hong Kong-based director, John Woo is now considered one of the ten most successful directors working in American films, receiving world-wide attention for his highly stylized violence in films such as The Killer (1989), Hard-Boiled (1992), Face/Off (1997), and Mission Impossible 2 (2000). While Woo is widely regarded as a master action director, scant attention has been paid to the manner in which Woo's films reflect the director's religious and ethical concerns. Through an examination of representative films from the director's Hong Kong and American periods, Michael Bliss demonstrates that Woo should be regarded as a predominantly religious director, in whose films action is the vehicle by virtue of which a concern with spirituality is dramatized. Contains a chapter on Chinese opera tradition as relates to Woo's films, an exclusive interview with John Woo, and a complete filmography.

One of the most innovative films ever made, Sam Peckinpah's motion picture The Wild Bunch was released in 1969. From the outset, the film was considered controversial because of its powerful, graphic, and direct depiction of violence, but it was also praised for its lush photography, intricate camera work, and cutting-edge editing. Peckinpah's tale of an ill-fated, aging outlaw gang bound by a code of honor is often regarded as one of the most complex and impactful Westerns in American cinematic history. The issues dealt with in this groundbreaking film -- violence, morality, friendship, and the legacy of American ambition and compromise -- are just as relevant today as when the film first opened. To acknowledge the significance of The Wild Bunch, this collection brings together some of the leading Peckinpah scholars and critics to examine what many consider to be the director's greatest work. The book's nine essays cover an array of topics. Explored are the function of violence in the film and how its depiction is radically different from what is seen in other movies, the background of the film's production, the European response to the film's view of human nature, and the strong sense of the Texas/Mexico milieu surrounding the film's action.

In January 1885, as the people of Montreal celebrated one of the greatest winter carnivals of the century, a deadly epidemic inched its way through the city streets. When the case of a railway porter suffering from smallpox was gravely mishandled, what followed was a “carnival of death” causing the preventable demise of over 3,000 Montrealers.In Plague, historian Michael Bliss uncovers one of the most remarkable untold stories in Canadian history. Crafted through thorough and comprehensive research, Bliss recounts this tale of carnage and humanity in an engaging and vividly detailed format. Now updated with a foreword by infectious diseases expert Gerald A. Evans, this new edition of Plague puts forth an unflinching portrayal of the city of Montreal featuring quack doctors, French-Canadian strongmen, black-robed priests, crusading journalists, Louis Riel, and more. Bliss depicts how every single death could have been avoided through vaccination even as the epidemic turned people against each other. The book shows how troops had to be called upon to guard smallpox hospitals against anti-vaccination rioters. In an uncanny mirroring of modern day, the whole city of Montreal was quarantined by the rest of North America as a charnel house of disease and death.Bliss paints a picture of a Montreal routed by divisions and brought to its knees by an epidemic. By bringing to life the last epidemic of smallpox to devastate a city in the Western world, he writes a stark history of life, living, and the human condition. This book is a thriller, a horror story, and a parable about the infectious diseases that have shocked our times.

Out of more than 180 science fiction films produced in the United States between 1950 and 1959, twenty were concerned with the notion of an invasion. Of these, a select number used the invasions as metaphors of issues that were of importance to America at the time, such as assaults upon individuality and marriage and debates about the supremacy of the human race. The invasion may be real (The Day the Earth Stood Still and War of the Worlds), dreamed (Invaders from Mars), or the result of a mental breakdown, as seems to be the case in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Real or not, all of these massive disturbances to the status quo convey the same anxiety: In the 1950s, many Americans felt that things in their world weren’t quite right, and this sense of unease was expressed in the country’s art, notably these films.In Invasions USA: The Essential Science Fiction Films of the 1950s, Michael Bliss examines movies that stripped away the veneer of normality during a decade often portrayed as the last innocent period in American history. From a boy’s nightmares about his alien-controlled parents and a young woman’s fears that her fiancé has been replaced by an emotionless alien to an extraterrestrial visitor who comes to warn mankind about its self-destructive ways, the stories of these films offer a variety of messages, both subtle and overt. With detailed discussions and analyses of the films in question, this book examines a unique group of movies with profound messages. By exploring depictions of insecurities—whether personal or political—Bliss shows how science fiction films spoke to American audiences deeply troubled by their circumstances. Invasions USA will appeal to science fiction buffs and film aficionados interested in this significant phenomenon in movie and cultural history.

Originating in the prestigious Joanne Goodman Lecture Series, and drawing on the author's series of award-winning books, The Making of Modern Medicine explores the foundations of medicine through three case studies that elucidate turning points in the evolution of health care. Michael Bliss first sketches the religiously-based attitudes of fatalism that enveloped the Montreal of 1885 during the last great epidemic of smallpox in the Western world. He then traces the scientific, research-based approach to disease of the Canadian-born doctor William Osler, practicing at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. The final study reveals how the values that Osler espoused helped to inspire those who discovered insulin at the University of Toronto. In a provocative epilogue, Bliss reflects on how these events have contributed to our current anxieties about and attitudes towards health care. A tour de force, The Making of Modern Medicine is an essential summation of the work of Canada's leading historian of medicine.

The discovery of insulin at the University of Toronto in 1921–2 was one of the most dramatic events in the history of the treatment of disease. Insulin, discovered by the Canadian research team of Frederick Banting, Charles Best, James Collip, and John Macleod, was a wonder drug with the ability to bring diabetes patients back from the brink of death. It was no surprise that in 1923 the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded for its discovery.In this engaging and award-winning account, historian Michael Bliss draws on archival records and personal adventures to recount the fascinating story behind the discovery of insulin – a story as much filled with fiery confrontation and intense competition as medical dedication and scientific genius. With a new preface by Michael Bliss and a foreword by Alison Li, the special centenary edition of The Discovery of Insulin honours the one hundredth anniversary of insulin’s discovery and its continued significance a century later.

One of America’s most beloved comic duos, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have entertained generations of viewers with their unique, heartwarming brand of slapstick comedy. The pair’s teamwork and friendship set their films apart, softening both pratfalls and hardships, and earning them a cherished place in cinema history. From their first joint on-screen appearance in 1921’s The Lucky Dog through their work at the Hal Roach studios, their comic signature remained unique. But what made the films of Laurel and Hardy so enduring?In Laurel and Hardy’s Comic Catastrophes: Laughter and Darkness in the Features and Short Films, Michael Bliss illustrates why these films continue to make audiences laugh. Combining an appreciation for the pleasure that these films elicit with a critical examination of what made them work, Bliss first investigates the milieu in which the pair’s comedy takes place. The author then explores Stan and Ollie’s friendship and their troubled—and troubling—relationships with women. The book also features a detailed discussion of Stan Laurel’s approach to gag structure, while the remainder of the book focuses on many of the pair’s silent and sound films, such as Duck Soup, Pack Up Your Troubles, Chickens Come Home, and The Music Box.By delving into the pair’s films—including several neglected short films—in greater detail than any previous work, this volume provides readers with a fundamental understanding of Stan and Ollie’s universal appeal. Featuring an extensive filmography, Laurel and Hardy’s Comic Catastrophes will engage a wide audience, from film scholars to fans of humor everywhere.