This book could have been very dry and academic, just piles of facts and figures and retrospective pages seen through a lens of 30-40 years of history. It's anything but that. The facts and figures and historical retrospectives are there, of course, and often provided with contextual recollections of the key players in the Broadside collective themselves. But there is a real human element here as well and I found myself wondering about the people and places and businesses touched on in the pages of the journal. There are classified ads from people looking for roommates, friends, incest survivor groups, housemates, ride shares. Presumably most all of them were living locally at the original time of publication. I found myself wondering how it's gone with the baby one couple was expecting (they were looking for a downstairs neighbor to rent the other half of their duplex), and whether anything came of the gay/lesbian rights research which was looking for researchers and writers, and a hundred more. The whole book is peppered with notes from actual lives written contemporaneously and I found it fascinating. Much of the content is like a time capsule into a time which is different and also frighteningly, depressingly unchanged from the 'Alt-right, alt-truth, misogyny filled political dystopia' we wake up in every day.
Most of the content of the book contains reprinted material from the original paper during the time of publication, along with context and commentary. Each of the entries contains original publishing date info as well as author attributions. The entries are arranged thematically: Opinions editorials & comments, items pertaining to the women's movement, feature stories, interviews, arts & reviews, and an introduction and conclusion. The book contains a fair number of facsimiles from the original paper as well as a few (credited) photos. There is no index or other reference/annotation given, however, there is a short listing of the original and current collective (it's still going), and original contributors including authors, artists, political activists, and cultural icons (Margaret Atwood, Eve Zaremba, Susan G. Cole and so many others).
I found this an engaging and immersive read on its own merits, but it would also make a good selection in an academic setting as a support text for many courses such as contemporary history, political history, North American/Canadian history, gender studies, etc.
Five stars. Superlative (and melancholy).
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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