Books without Bosses: 40 Years of Reading Between the Lines

Written by Robert Clarke, Illustrated by Kara Sievewright

Between the Lines (2017)

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Between the Lines Books burst onto the publishing scene with a muckraking attack on Inco, the world’s largest producer of nickel.

The Big Nickel: Inco at home and abroad was published in 1977. It dug into how concentrated economic power operates in Canada and developing countries, and explores the human consequences.

This first book established Between the Lines’ early connection with a trade union. A foreword was written by the then-president of Steelworkers Local 6500 at Inco.

Other hard hitting titles followed, from environmental books to examinations of working conditions, like telephone operation at Bell Canada.

The publisher’s titles were well timed with the rise of social action movements of the day. They even reached the halls of academia, thanks to Errol Sharpe, founder of Fernwood Publishing. Sharpe helped small radical presses like Between the Lines sell their titles to institutions of higher education. Universities regularly added books by Between the Lines to their reading lists.

By the publisher’s 20th anniversary in 1997, 104 books were published on capitalism, technology, race and identity, surveillance and sexuality.

Between the Lines established a strong reputation for tackling the day’s critical issues.

Here are some pages from the comic history celebrating Between the Lines’ 40th anniversary.

Part three: the independent publisher celebrates its 40th anniversary of being a literary gadfly this year.

Our contest to win a copy of Books without Bosses is now closed, but you can learn more about the comic history here.

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