Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island is a beautiful region with a unique community whose history and ethnic composition have resulted in the evolution of a powerful sense of identity and place. While outsiders may think only of the island's perennial economic woes and long economic dependence on coal mining and steel production, it is also the home of a rich, vibrant, and distinct culture. Brian Douglas Tennyson's Cape Bretoniana is the first bibliography to gather together all known publications relating to the history, culture, economy, and politics of Cape Breton Island. With more than 6000 entries, it not only provides a comprehensive listing of publications and post-graduate theses, but also detailed annotations on the listings. Each entry lists the author, title, place of publication, publisher, date of publication, volume and issue number in the case of periodicals, and page references, followed by a brief description of the item. Cape Breton has never been so thoroughly documented. This bibliography will help to ensure that ? even in a world becoming increasingly homogenized by the forces of globalization ? unique cultural identities like Cape Breton's can be preserved and nurtured.

Biff and whiff, baker’s fog and lu’sknikn, pie social and milling frolic – these are just a few examples of the distinctive language of Cape Breton Island, where a puck is a forceful blow and a Cape Breton pork pie is filled with dates, not pork. The first regional dictionary devoted to the island’s linguistic and cultural history, the Dictionary of Cape Breton English is a fascinating record of the island’s rich vocabulary. Dictionary entries include supporting quotations culled from the editors’ extensive interviews with Cape Bretoners and considerable study of regional variation, as well as definitions, selected pronunciations, parts of speech, variant forms, related words, sources, and notes, giving the reader in-depth information on every aspect of Cape Breton culture. A substantial and long-awaited work of linguistic research that captures Cape Breton’s social, economic, and cultural life through the island’s language, the Dictionary of Cape Breton English can be read with interest by Backlanders, Bay byes, and those from away alike.

The emergence, dominance, and alarmingly rapid retreat of modernist industrial capitalism on Cape Breton Island during the “long twentieth century” offers a particularly captivating window on the lasting and varied effects of deindustrialization. Now, at the tail end of the industrial moment in North American history, the story of Cape Breton Island presents an opportunity to reflect on how industrialization and deindustrialization have shaped human experiences. Covering the period between 1860 and the early 2000s, this volume looks at trade unionism, state and cultural responses to deindustrialization, including the more recent pivot towards the tourist industry, and the lived experiences of Indigenous and Black people. Rather than focusing on the separate or distinct nature of Cape Breton, contributors place the island within broad transnational networks such as the financial world of the Anglo-Atlantic, the Celtic music revival, the Black diaspora, Canadian development programs, and more. In capturing the vital elements of a region on the rural resource frontier that was battered by deindustrialization, the histories included here show how the interplay of the state, cultures, and transnational connections shaped how people navigated these heavy pressures, both individually and collectively.