Why am I passionate about this?

Why Vancouver? Yes, it's my hometown, but I've lived in other places for about 20 years of my life, and I'm anything but a thoughtless booster. Vancouver is a beautiful city, but it's a conflicted one between dreamers of its potential greatness, people wanting a laid-back West Coast lifestyle, and those for whom it's the end of the poverty road with the mildest climate in Canada. Thinking about it, painting it, and writing about itā€”it's an itch I have to scratch.


I wrote

Surviving Vancouver

By Michael Kluckner,

Book cover of Surviving Vancouver

What is my book about?

"Surviving" as an adjective and as a verb. What's survived in Vancouver? Where are the neighbourhoods where people are retainingā€¦

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Greater Vancouver Book

Michael Kluckner Why did I love this book?

Announced as an "urban encyclopedia," the late Chuck Davis's almost 900-page work covers history, culture, recreation, buildings, and events through the pens of myriad writers. Davis had a reputation for interesting anecdotes and for tying dates to places and events that make history fun and memorable, and he encouraged the writers (including myself) to do the same.

If you want to know about your neighbourhood's past, the background on Hollywood North, or the shipping industry, this book has all sorts of rabbit holes to explore.

By Chuck Davis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Greater Vancouver Book as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Vancouver: A Visual History

Michael Kluckner Why did I love this book?

A unique work of visual storytelling using maps created by the author that trace the evolution of this place defined by a major river, a natural harbour, and a backdrop of snowcapped mountains, decade by decade from Indigenous times through the 1980s.

Each map has detailed notes focusing on changes and developments and a two-page spread of the key players of each period.

By Bruce Macdonald,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Vancouver as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Absolutely unique in its presentational style, Vancouver: A Visual History is a delightful and important book. This stunning, full-colour historical atlas brings to life Vancouverā€™s first fourteen decades, beginning with a map of the 1850s depicting the land use, economy and settlement patterns of its first peoples, and ending with a map of the 1980s.

Using a repeating grid format, in which each ten-year period of the cityā€™s history is examined through the application of the same criteria, each decade is introduced by a full-colour map that illustrates land use patterns. A column of text to the left of thisā€¦


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Book cover of Everything We Had: A Novel of the Pacific Air War November-December 1941

Everything We Had by Tom Burkhalter,

War is coming to the Pacific. The Japanese will come south within days, seeking to seize the oil- and mineral-rich islands of the Dutch East Indies. Directly astride their path to conquest lie the Philippines, at that time an American protectorate. 

Two brothers, Jack and Charlie Davis, are part ofā€¦

Book cover of Exploring Vancouver: Ten Tours of the City and Its Buildings

Michael Kluckner Why did I love this book?

A crash course in how the city's evolution has been shaped by its buildings old and new, their architects and developers, and touching on the campaigns to make the city "world class" while others try to hang on to its historic areas. Presented in an engaging tour format with excellent colour photos.

By Harold Kalman, Robin Ward,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Exploring Vancouver as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This new edition of the classic urban guidebook brings the cityā€™s architectural story up to date.

Harold Kalman and Robin Ward, long-time chroniclers of Vancouver, offer an authoritative and highly readable book about Vancouverā€™s most interesting places and explain how, why and by whom the cityā€™s urban environment was created.

Containing more than four hundred entries, ten self-guided tours highlight significant buildings from all eras in the city and its metro region, and feature new projects that transform the skyline more radically than ever before. The toursā€•organized by neighbourhood and planned variously for walking, cycling, car and transitā€•reveal Vancouver inā€¦


Book cover of Becoming Vancouver: A History

Michael Kluckner Why did I love this book?

The first chronological and comprehensive history of the city in about 50 years, this book covers the battles of the 1960s and 1970s to keep freeways out of the city and save Chinatown and nearby areas from urban renewal, saving a little of Vancouver's rich and diverse past as it awaited the onslaught of international development money that came with Expo '86. 

By Daniel Francis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Becoming Vancouver as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A brisk chronicle of Vancouver, BC, from early days to its emergence as a global metropolis, refracted through the events, characters and communities that have shaped the city.

In Becoming Vancouver award-winning historian Daniel Francis follows the evolution of the city from early habitation by the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, to the areaā€™s settlement as a mill town, to the flourishing speakeasies and brothels during the 1920s, to the years of poverty and protest during the 1930s followed by the long wartime and postwar boom, to the cityā€™s current status as real-estate investment choice of the global super-rich.ā€¦


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Book cover of Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World

Harry and Arthur by Lawrence J. Haas,

With Franklin Rooseveltā€™s death in April 1945, Vice President Harry Truman and Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican leader on foreign policy, inherited a world in turmoil. With Europe flattened and the Soviets emerging as Americaā€™s new adversary, Truman and Vandenberg built a tight, bipartisan partnership at a bitterly partisan timeā€¦

Book cover of Historical Atlas of Vancouver and the Lower Fraser Valley

Michael Kluckner Why did I love this book?

Historic photos and maps weave a rich tale of the settlement of the southwest corner of British Columbia, complementing Bruce MacDonald's work with an extraordinary range of images, including of the oft-overlooked suburbs and farming communities on Vancouver's doorstep.

Compared with MacDonald's maps, many of the images here are artā€”birds-eye views by artists from an era before people could fly and others that dream of a great, huge city when, in reality, it was a collection of little cabins.

By Derek Hayes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Historical Atlas of Vancouver and the Lower Fraser Valley as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Map researcher and collector Derek Hayes here presents the sixth in a series of critically acclaimed, award-winning historical atlases. Gathered together in a single volume for the first time, here are the maps that shaped Vancouver and the surrounding Lower Fraser Valley. More than 370 original maps chart the regionā€™s development beginning with the years of discovery and exploration. They depict its days as a fledgling colonial outpost, its appearance on the world scene after the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway, through to its emergence as a postwar Pacific metropolis. These maps evoke such historic events and developments asā€¦


Explore my book šŸ˜€

Surviving Vancouver

By Michael Kluckner,

Book cover of Surviving Vancouver

What is my book about?

"Surviving" as an adjective and as a verb. What's survived in Vancouver? Where are the neighbourhoods where people are retaining old buildings, who believe they make for a complete, mature city and are part of a green strategy? (This was the subject of my earlier Vanishing Vancouver books from 1990 and 2012.) And how do you survive in Vancouver? The text follows the debates about densification, land speculation, luxury housing, and the displacement of tenants. It reviews 90 years of homeless people arriving and trying to survive amidst some of the most expensive housing in the world.

My artwork from the past 25 years illustrates Vancouver's neighbourhoods and public spaces. It's an art book with a lot of text, trying to wrap up my thoughts about this beautiful city.

Book cover of The Greater Vancouver Book
Book cover of Vancouver: A Visual History
Book cover of Exploring Vancouver: Ten Tours of the City and Its Buildings

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