Books published by Rock's Mills Press

This exciting new book explores some of the surprising connections found among mathematics, science, and art. Driven by theory and practice, by rigorous research and free experimentation, Sensing Geometry relates seemingly “unrelated” ideas and phenomena in new and intriguing ways. While abstract mathematical objects, progressively built from self-contained systems, might be said to exist only in the mind, this interdisciplinary study shows how mathematical and scientific concepts have also been adapted into various forms of artistic expression – architecture, poetry, painting, and sculpture – as examples of hybrid thinking and creative process. With Sensing Geometry, the author develops a network of common elements broadly connecting a new world-view of nature.Complementing the text are 123 illustrations and figures, including full-color reproductions of many famous works of art that embody and exemplify many of the concepts discussed in the text.

Every so often in business something comes along of which you need to take note: a new marketing channel, a new technology, a radical discovery. Primal Shopper is that radical discovery. Inspired by Myers-Briggs, Primal Shopper sets out the innate motivations guiding our shopping decisions. Think of these motivations as our shopper DNA. This DNA is predictable and persistent across brands and product categories. In Primal Shopper: Unlocking Shopper DNA to Power Your Marketing, author Eric Bowe explores this discovery and its impact on marketing effectiveness.Bowe begins the book by revealing the behavioral research applied to uncover the shopper DNA and explains the nature of the basic strands. He also reveals how the DNA strands are combined into eight primal shopper typologies defining our retail preferences and discusses the different hypotheses leading to the final survey, including those that fell by the wayside. Sample surveys are supplied so readers can determine their own shopper DNA within different product categories.The second part of the book explores the shopper psychology generated and influenced by the DNA strands. Bowe exposes the reader to 18 primal principles underlying shopping behavior. These principles provide insight into shopping preferences in the context of today's retail environment. The author examines the effectiveness of marketing tactics grounded in these shopper typologies. Drawing on this discussion, he explores different product categories, assessing the impact of tactics like advertising, digital marketing, social media, and loyalty programs on moving the shopper.The power of Primal Shopper is the ability to grow market share. As Bowe points out: "A person's shopper DNA determines whether your marketing tactics will break through or just blend into the retail white noise. By marketing to different shopper DNA combinations, you can increase your motivational share and ultimately your market share."In the book's final section, Bowe applies these learnings to such topics as the effect of advertising on shopper DNA and the difficult process of embedding an understanding of shopper behavior in a marketing organization's own DNA. The result is a book that will leave you looking at shoppers and their behavior in an exciting and productive new way.

With the many dynamic changes going on in today's world, a new prototype of the human personality is needed to guide people's future actions, behaviour, lifestyles, and overall development. This new prototype is the cultural personality. It is grounded in the belief that people should be holistic, centred, creative, altruistic, and humane if they are to achieve more happiness, fulfillment, and spirituality in their own lives as well as live in harmony with other people, cultures, species, and the natural environment as a whole.In this enlightening book, author D. Paul Schafer explores the background, ramifications, and promise of this exciting new personality concept. In Chapter One, an assessment is made of the context within which people find themselves in the world today. In Chapter Two, the cultural personality is examined as a concept, largely by juxtaposing the two interdependent concepts of "culture" and "personality." In Chapter Three, the main characteristics of the cultural personality are revealed. In Chapter Four, the cultivation of the qualities and abilities that are most required to constitute the cultural personality are provided. And in Chapter Five, attention is given to the way the cultural personality can function most effectively in the world in practical terms."In his latest book, The Cultural Personality, Paul Schafer offers a most introspective diagnosis of the two traditional personalities that we are quite familiar with, namely the 'economic personality' and the 'specialist personality'. He argues that both are breaking down. The former is breaking down because 'it treats people as producers and consumers of goods, services, and material wealth at a time when these practices are having a devastating effect on the natural environment and not bringing the satisfaction and happiness people expected to find in them.' The second is breaking down because we have encouraged people to develop only a single skill and occupation at a time when change is accelerating so rapidly that their skills are, or soon will be, out of date or obsolete due to developments in digital technology, ever more rapid communications, and the introduction of artificial intelligence. To address these challenges, Schafer suggests we should pay more attention to what he describes as the 'cultural personality'. As he sees it, we need to cultivate a person who is able to live life as an 'ordered whole'. This is a person who is capable of functioning in a disordered world of increasing complexity, frustration, and anxiety, such as the world we are currently experiencing. He supports his arguments with a wide range of valuable and thoughtful quotations. While this is a challenging book, I highly recommend it, as it is filled with practical advice on how human beings can function most effectively, both now and in the increasingly complex world of our children and grandchildren." -- John Hobday, former director, Canada Council for the Arts

A one-legged boy, Terry Fox, sets himself the task of running a marathon a day across the length of Canada, the second-largest country in the world, in aid of cancer research, because the children are crying with pain in the cancer wards and somewhere the hurting must stop.Together this novel and the accompanying journal and notebook comprise the nineteenth installment in an ongoing novel-writing project in which the author is exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st century. All of the accompanying journals and notebooks, as well as more information on the project itself, are available on the author's website, www.johnpassfield.ca.The Making of Somewhere the Hurting Must StopThis journal records the author's reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art form.Planning Somewhere the Hurting Must StopDuring the writing of the novel the author kept a handwritten notebook which records the day-to-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook, now in print form, reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel form.

The Upper Canadian Anglican Tory Mind: A Cultural Fragment by Robert W. Passfield is the most comprehensive elaboration of the beliefs, values and worldview of Anglican Toryism since the works of the Anglican divine, Richard Hooker, at the English Reformation, to which has been added the Tory concept of the 18th Century balanced British Constitution and the Tory view of the ultimate purpose of education, within the context of the politics of an English colony: the Province of Upper Canada.

After the terrifying experiences recounted in Island Curse, Selma and Gerry move to a small northern Ontario mining town to start a new life together. An enormous lode of gold ore has just been discovered and the town is booming. But gold isn't all that's waiting to be found in Canada's deepest mine shaft, and soon the entire town is threatened by an ancient evil more monstrous than anything Selma and Gerry could have imagined. Just as they did on Bornay Island, Selma, her family and friends confront forces bent on their annihilation. Can they stop unspeakable evil from destroying everything they love?Help from an unexpected and unearthly source comes to their aid once more-but this time it may not be enough…

Inspired by Rousseau, and in need of a maid, the Baroness sets herself the task of transforming a "pure, unsullied creature" into a presentable maid. But learning how to set a table is one thing; Emily's unforeseen traumas are quite another.What moral imperatives differentiate instinctive behaviour from rational behaviour? What chance have the Baroness' enlightened plans for Emily in the messy human world that is their reality?Published in cooperation with the Shaw Festival, this edition of The Baroness and the Pig includes a foreword by Artistic Director Tim Carroll and an essay by Resident Scholar Leonard Conolly. It also includes information on the Festival's 2018 production of The Baroness and the Pig, directed by Selma Dimitrijevic and designed by Camellia Koo.Based on characters created by Catherine Fitch and Marion Day

The Counterintuitive Writer takes a new perspective on academic writing, encouraging readers to follow the road "less travelled" as they figure out what they want to write and how to write it.Using easy-to-understand examples, practical exercises, and innovative approaches that apply to various types of writing, this text guides the reader on how to:• Overcome writer's block • Develop a focused topic • Organize essays, reports and research papers • Apply the principle of "predictable structure and unpredictable content" to capture - and hold - readers' attention • Craft a compelling introduction and conclusion • Write concise, coherent paragraphs • Summarize key points; and • Avoid common writing pitfalls, including logical fallacies, unintentional plagiarism, and grammatical errors.

A young Canadian doctor, Norman Bethune, sets up a practice which he hopes will lead to money and prestige; however, his social conscience takes him on a journey through the Canada of the Great Depression, the Spain of the Spanish Civil War, and the China of the Chinese Civil War and Japanese invasion. Ultimately, the journey becomes a quest to understand the world in which Bethune finds himself living, to develop a compassionate response to that world, and to discover the essence of himself as a human being.Also AvailableThe Making of The Only Person Alive in the World - a reflective journalThis journal records the author's reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art-form.Planning The Only Person Alive in the World - a planning notebookDuring the writing of the novel, the author kept a hand-written notebook which records the day-by-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook - now in print form - reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel-form.The ProjectTogether, this novel, journal and notebook comprise the eighteenth installment in an on-going novel-writing project in which the author is exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the twenty-first century. All of the published journals and notebooks are available for free download at www.johnpassfield.ca.

Two brutal slayings-dubbed the "Millennial Murders" by the media-have shocked residents of Steeltown. But that's only the beginning …In this new novel, Peter Abbot, author of Librarian and Voice of the Lord and himself a long-time resident of Canada's tenth largest city, explores the meaning of hope, despair, and redemption-and introduces readers to a number of Hamiltonians they won't soon forget.

"I am a flat chested teenybopper and nobody likes me. At least not today. Maybe if I'm lucky someone will like me tomorrow." That's how I started my project on family and community that Mrs. McKinney gave us for our first grade eight assignment. Pathetic, eh? It's not really true, I guess. Just feels like it most days.…And so begins Jenny Grant's account of the trials and tribulations of her final year of elementary school. Along the way Jenny finds her world rocked by a family crisis, breaks the leg of one of the most popular girls in school, and discovers (can it be?) true love. By turns hilarious and heartwrenching, When Am I Supposed to Sleep? is guaranteed to prevent readers from getting to sleep themselves as they wait to find out how Jenny's grade 8 year will turn out.

DELUXE CASEBOUND EDITION, IDEAL FOR GIFTS AND PERMANENT COLLECTIONSAt the time of Canadian Confederation, many Canadians were their own doctors, cooks, farmers, veterinarians, beekeepers, and even rat catchers. This survival guide, compiled fifteen decades ago, is a fascinating glimpse into Canadian life before modern conveniences. Melissa McAfee's fascinating preface notes that "receipt" is an older term, a set of instructions not only for cooking, but also for medicine and food preservation. In The Canadian Receipt Book, these "receipts" cover many tasks, some of which may seem hair-raising to the modern reader: removing worms from a cow's bronchial tubes may have been as important in 1867 as knowing how to make English-style tea cakes. Recipes for lemon pudding and rice "snow-balls" are found in one chapter; remedies for pig leprosy and a cow's "mad staggers" in another. The Receipt Book also contains business advertisements, a dizzying array from the moderately recognizable (insurance and jewellery) to the more dubious ( a "drug warehouse" advertising"cocoaine" and "liver syrup"). Set to become a classic of early Canadian cooking and household management alongside Catherine Parr Trail, this page-turning collection reminds Canadians of the long distance we have travelled in 150 years.

At the time of Canadian Confederation, many Canadians were their own doctors, cooks, farmers, veterinarians, beekeepers, and even rat catchers. This survival guide, compiled fifteen decades ago, is a fascinating glimpse into Canadian life before modern conveniences.Melissa McAfee's fascinating preface notes that "receipt" is an older term, a set of instructions not only for cooking, but also for medicine and food preservation. In The Canadian Receipt Book, these "receipts" cover many tasks, some of which may be hair-raising to the modern reader: removing worms from a cow's bronchial tubes may have been as important in 1867 as knowing how to make English-style tea cakes. Recipes for lemon pudding and rice "snow-balls" are found in one chapter; remedies for pig leprosy and a cow's "mad staggers" in another. The Receipt Book also contains business advertisements, a dizzying array from the moderately recognizable (insurance and jewellery) to the more dubious (a "drug warehouse" advertising "cocoaine" and "liver syrup").Set to become a classic of early Canadian cooking and household management alongside Catherine Parr Trail, this page-turning collection reminds Canadians of the long road we have travelled in 150 years.

At the time of Canadian Confederation, many Canadians were their own doctors, cooks, farmers, veterinarians, beekeepers, and even rat catchers. This survival guide, compiled fifteen decades ago, is a fascinating glimpse into Canadian life before modern conveniences. Melissa McAfee's fascinating preface notes that "receipt" is an older term, a set of instructions not only for cooking, but also for medicine and food preservation. In The Canadian Receipt Book, these "receipts" cover many tasks, some of which may seem hair-raising to the modern reader: removing worms from a cow's bronchial tubes may have been as important in 1867 as knowing how to make English-style tea cakes. Recipes for lemon pudding and rice "snow-balls" are found in one chapter; remedies for pig leprosy and a cow's "mad staggers" in another. The Receipt Book also contains business advertisements, a dizzying array from the moderately recognizable (insurance and jewellery) to the more dubious ( a "drug warehouse" advertising"cocoaine" and "liver syrup"). Set to become a classic of early Canadian cooking and household management alongside Catherine Parr Trail, this page-turning collection reminds Canadians of the long distance we have travelled in 150 years.