We all have our favourite Tragically Hip song. Mine happens to be “Fifty Mission Cap.” But “Ahead By A Century” gets the vote of Robert Morrison, a professor of literature at Queen’s University in the Hip’s hometown of Kingston, Ont. A year after the band’s historic farewell tour, Prof. Morrison argues that “Ahead by a Century” truly was ahead by a century. “It is a song in which the Hip asks us to shed what holds us back, and to imagine a future that sets us free,” he writes.

As you prepare to settle in for the weekend, we suggest you crank the Hip (“Fifty Mission Cap” or "Ahead By A Century") and check out book recommendations from Joshua Gans, a University of Toronto strategic management professor who gives two thumbs’ up to offerings on Bitcoin, BlackBerry and time travel. His picks are part of our summer books series.

For more sobering fare about global unrest and terror, The Conversation Australia has a piece about Thursday's ghastly terrorist attack on a beloved tourist precinct in Barcelona, one of Europe’s most well-travelled cities. Tony Walker of La Trobe University in Melbourne argues that regular Islamic terror attacks are now a grim reality, adding: “Barcelona is just the latest in a series of targets of Islamic terrorism over the past year in which a vehicle has been used to mow down those in its path indiscriminately.”

And in Latin America, particularly Venezuela, it’s youth, not necessarily ideology, fuelling the unrest that has the United States making threats. “While it may look like the Cold War Redux, a closer look reveals a generational divide as opposed to a political one,” writes Russell Cobb of the University of Alberta.

Four fascinating reads. Enjoy them.