Today you get an eclectic list from your humble e-scribbler:
1. Jeff Webb, The Voice of Newfoundland: A Social History of the Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland, 1939–1949. This is a book about how radio helped shape Newfoundland at a crucial time in its social, economic, and political development. Grab the Kobo edition if you don't want the hard copy.
2. Consider Ray Guy: the Smallwood years and Ray Guy: the revolutionary years as one huge compilation of Ray Guy's political columns broken into two pieces. Ray was a fine writer, more mythologised since his death than he was regarded through most of his life but that is often the way it is with prophets in their own land. So many of the columns could be about more recent events. Just the names have changed.
3. Edward Roberts, How Newfoundlanders got the baby bonus is a collection of columns the former lieutenant governor wrote for The Compass newspaper. Each column is engaging, accessible, and informative. Together they cover virtually every period in Newfoundland and Labrador history.
4. As a bonus, Roberts included a suggested reading list in the back broken down by topic. One of the books Roberts highly recommends is Jerry Bannister's The Rule of the Admirals: Law, Custom, and Naval Government in Newfoundland, 1699-1832. Roberts calls this one of the most important scholarly works about Newfoundland's history. Roberts is right.
5. John R. Martin is a retired physician who served as chief occupational medical officer for the provincial government from 1984 to 1992. The fluorspar mines of Newfoundland: their history and the epidemic of radiation lung cancer combines the author's considerable professional knowledge and experience with prodigious research that included access to Alcan's corporate archives.
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