Books by Ian Williams

Rum: A Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 1776

by Ian Williams

Rum arguably shaped the modern world. It was to the eighteenth century what oil is to the present, but its significance has been diminished by a misguided sense of old-fashioned morality dating back to Prohibition. In fact, Rum shows that even the Puritans took a shot now and then. Rum, too, was one of the major engines of the American Revolution, a fact often missing from histories of the era.

Ian Williams’s book—as biting and multilayered as the drink itself—triumphantly restores rum’s rightful place in history, taking us across space and time, from the slave plantations of seventeenth-century Barbados (the undisputed birthplace of rum) through Puritan and revolutionary New England, to voodoo rites in modern Haiti, where to mix rum with Coke risks invoking the wrath of the gods. He also depicts the showdown between the Bacardi family and Fidel Castro over the control of the lucrative rights to the Havana Club label. Telling photographs are also featured in this barnstorming history of the real "Spirit of 1776."

Rum: A Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 1776

by Ian Williams

Rum arguably shaped the modern world. It was to the eighteenth century what oil is to the present, but its significance has been diminished by a misguided sense of old-fashioned morality dating back to Prohibition. In fact, Rum shows that even the Puritans took a shot now and then. Rum, too, was one of the major engines of the American Revolution, a fact often missing from histories of the era. Ian Williams's book -- as biting and multilayered as the drink itself -- triumphantly restores rum's rightful place in history, taking us across space and time, from the slave plantations of seventeenth-century Barbados (the undisputed birthplace of rum) through Puritan and revolutionary New England, to voodoo rites in modern Haiti, where to mix rum with Coke risks invoking the wrath of the gods. He also depicts the showdown between the Bacardi family and Fidel Castro over the control of the lucrative rights to the Havana Club label. Telling photographs are also featured in this barnstorming history of the real "Spirit of 1776."

Deserter: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past

by Ian Williams

Deserter looks objectively at the military record of George W. Bush, his role in the armed forces, and his treatment of them. Over the past year, Bush’s military poses have been contrived to convince the American public that he is a National Security President. Others have found his playacting less convincing. While George W. Bush supported the Vietnam War, his contribution was to enlist in a nepotistic unit of the Texas National Air Guard, which, short of World War III, was guaranteed never to see military action. Even in this safe position, Lieutenant Bush broke under the strain and went AWOL for the best part of a year. In contrast, American National Guardsmen have not only been called up for frontline action in Iraq, but they have had their terms of service extended. While the military budget soars, the war is being fought with a dangerously inadequate number of troops. The dead and disabled are shipped home under cover of darkness; those who eventually return in one piece find that their veterans’ medical benefits and facilities are being axed. Deserter strips away the illusion of Bush as “commander-in-chief” to reveal a hypocrite who has betrayed his troops and his country.

Disorientation: Being Black in The World

by Ian Williams

A BOSTON GLOBE BEST BOOK OF 2021
Bestselling Scotiabank Giller Award-winning writer Ian Williams brings a fresh point of view and new insights to the urgent conversation on race and racism in these illuminating essays born from his own experience as a Black man in the world.
With that one eloquent word, disorientation, Ian Williams captures the impact of racial encounters on racialized people—the whiplash of race that occurs while minding one's own business. Sometimes the consequences are only irritating, but sometimes they are deadly. Spurred by the police killings and street protests of 2020, Williams offers a perspective that is distinct from that of U.S. writers addressing similar themes. Williams has lived in Trinidad (where he was never the only Black person in the room), in Canada (where he often was), and in the United States (where as a Black man from the Caribbean, he was a different kind of "only"). He brings these formative experiences fruitfully to bear on his theme in Disorientation.
Inspired by the essays of James Baldwin, in which the personal becomes the gateway to larger ideas, Williams explores such matters as the unmistakable moment when a child realizes they are Black; the ten characteristics of institutional whiteness; how friendship forms a bulwark against being a target of racism; the meaning and uses of a Black person's smile; and blame culture—or how do we make meaningful change when no one feels responsible for the systemic structures of the past.
Disorientation is a book for all readers who believe that civil conversation on even the most charged subjects is possible. Employing his vast and astonishing gift for language, Ian Williams gives readers an open, honest, and personal perspective on an undeniably important subject.
“Disorientation is so honest, vulnerable, courageous and funny that it left me dying to sit down over a long coffee with Ian Williams. Make that two lattes, and I’m buying!”—Lawrence Hill, author of The Book of Negroes

Reproduction: A Novel

by Louisa Hall, Ian Williams

A lucid, genre-defying novel that explores the surreality of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in a country in crisis

A novelist attempts to write a book about Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, a mother and artist whose harrowing pregnancies reveal the cost of human reproduction. Soon, however, the novelist’s own painful experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as her increasing awareness of larger threats from climate change to pandemic, force her to give up on the book and turn instead to writing a contemporary Frankenstein, based on the story of an old friend who mysteriously reappears in her life.
In telling a story that ranges from pregnancy to miscarriage to traumatic birth, from motherhood to the frontiers of reproductive science, Louisa Hall draws powerfully from her own experiences, as well as the stories of two other women: Mary Shelley and Anna, a scientist and would-be parent who is contemplating the possibilities, and morality, of genetic modification.
Both devastating and joyful, elegant and exacting, Reproduction is a powerful reminder of the hazards and the rewards involved in creating new life, and a profoundly feminist exploration of motherhood, female friendship, and artistic ambition.

Reproduction: A Novel

by Louisa Hall, Ian Williams

A lucid, genre-defying novel that explores the surreality of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in a country in crisis

A novelist attempts to write a book about Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, a mother and artist whose harrowing pregnancies reveal the cost of human reproduction. Soon, however, the novelist’s own painful experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as her increasing awareness of larger threats from climate change to pandemic, force her to give up on the book and turn instead to writing a contemporary Frankenstein, based on the story of an old friend who mysteriously reappears in her life.
In telling a story that ranges from pregnancy to miscarriage to traumatic birth, from motherhood to the frontiers of reproductive science, Louisa Hall draws powerfully from her own experiences, as well as the stories of two other women: Mary Shelley and Anna, a scientist and would-be parent who is contemplating the possibilities, and morality, of genetic modification.
Both devastating and joyful, elegant and exacting, Reproduction is a powerful reminder of the hazards and the rewards involved in creating new life, and a profoundly feminist exploration of motherhood, female friendship, and artistic ambition.

Reproduction: A Novel

by Louisa Hall, Ian Williams

WINNER OF THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE AND CBC’S BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR, this best-selling debut novel is an energetically told, funny, and moving book about how strangers become family.

Reproduction tells a crooked love story in which love takes strange, winding paths and grows in a context shaped by community, family, longstanding friendships, and fleeting interactions that leave their mark on us forever.

Felicia, a nineteen-year-old student from a West Indian family, and Edgar, the lazy-minded and impetuous heir of a wealthy German family, meet by chance when their ailing mothers are assigned the same hospital room. After the death of Felicia’s mother and the recovery of Edgar’s, Felicia drops out of high-school and takes a job as caregiver to Edgar’s mother. The odd-couple relationship between Edgar and Felicia, ripe with miscommunications, misunderstandings, and reprisals for perceived and real offenses, has some unexpected results.

Years later, Felicia’s son Armistice―“Army” for short―is a teenager fixated on a variety of get-rich-quick schemes that are as comic as they are indicative of the immigrant son’s fear of falling through the cracks. When Edgar re-enters Felicia’s life at a typically (for him) inopportune moment, the book’s exhilarating final act is set in the motion and the full import of its title is revealed.

“This gorgeous novel vibrates with life…Stylistically inventive and narratively compelling, Reproduction is stunning.”―Aminatta Forna, author of The Memory of Love
A JUNE 2020 INDIE NEXT GREAT READ

Tequila: A Global History (Edible)

by Ian Williams

With its unique aroma and heady buzz―the perfect accompaniment to even the spiciest tacos―tequila has won its way into drinkers’ hearts worldwide. There are few places on earth besides Mexico that have the climate and terrain to evolve the agave plant that makes tequila―and there are even fewer people who have the patience to wait the seven years or more that it takes “the tree of marvels” to grow. In this book, Ian Williams presents a lively history of this potent and popular drink. Beginning with pulque, the drink fermented by the Mayans, Olmecs, and Aztecs and reserved for pregnant women and priests―and their sacrifices―he traces how the Mexicans distilled tequila and mezcal (mescal) and began its heady surge into global popularity. From twenty-year añejos to giggle-inducing margaritas to the bravado―and regret―of that round of shots, he offers a history as gripping as the drink itself.

Williams visits countless tequila producers, distributors, and connoisseurs to tell the story of how tequila started in the agave lands of Mexico, became an icon of youthful inebriation, and developed, today, into a truly artisanal product drawing the most discerning drinkers. Peppered throughout are illustrations that capture tequila’s Mexican heritage and commercial image. Including recipes for tequila-based cocktails, as well as advice on the buying, storing, tasting, and serving of tequila, this history will delight any beverage aficionado or anyone interested in the history of Mexico and its culinary riches.

What I Mean to Say Remaking Conversation in Our Time

by Ian Williams

Enough small talk. Let's get right to it: Why can't we talk to each other anymore? What makes good communication? And how do we restore the lost art of conversation?

In contemporary society, much of our communication exists in a new dimension, the online space, and it's changing how we regard each other and how we converse. In the digital realm, we can be anonymous, we can make false and hurtful comments yet evade consequences in a hurried scroll of clicks and swipes. But a good conversation takes time and patience, courage, even. We need to realize that one-half of our conversations is, in fact, listening. And aren't the best conversationalists--like the best musicians--good listeners?

With What I Mean to Say, award-winning novelist and poet Ian Williams seeks to ignite a conversation about conversation, to confront the deterioration of civic and civil discourse, and to reconsider the act of conversing as the sincere, open exchange of thoughts and feelings. Alternately serious and playful, Williams nimbly leaps between topics of discussion and, along the way, is discursive, digressive, and endlessly generous--like any great conversationalist.