Bennett: The Rebel Who Challenged and Changed a Nation
Richard Bedford Bennett, who served as Canada’s 11th prime minister from 1930 to 1935, was savaged by the unemployed and destitute during the grimmest years of the Great Depression. They denounced him as uncaring, unthinking and undemocratic, and the labels stuck. For…
Obama’s Wars
Bob Woodward is no stranger to anyone intrigued or fascinated by the American political process. Since he entered the world’s consciousness in 1972 with his riveting account of the Watergate scandal in All the President’s Men, he has produced on average a…
The Constant Diplomat: Robert Ford in Moscow
Robert Ford joined Canada’s foreign ministry – then the Department of External Affairs – in July 1940, when being a diplomat, especially a Canadian diplomat, still mattered. It was a simpler time, or so it sometimes seems in retrospect, when diplomacy was…
Canada’s Voice: The Public Life of John Wendell Holmes
As readers of bout de papier will appreciate, it is a formidable challenge for any biographer to write about someone who wrote so well as John Holmes, as quotations from the subject may eclipse the author’s prose. Moreover, what endeared Holmes to…
Transforming Rights: Reflections from the Front Lines
Former Foreign Service Officer Maxwell Yalden has written a book faithful to his own persona: informed, thoughtful, eloquent, and straight talking. Anyone concerned about bilingualism, human rights and Canada’s future should appreciate it. The book opens with a mini-memoir of an impeccably…
A Soldier First: Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War
I read General Rick Hillier’s A Soldier First with mixed feelings. I was impressed that our popular General came out with a book on his experience so soon after retirement, but I was disappointed that he did not explain his own role…
The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency
If you read only one book on intelligence this year, make it The Secret Sentry by Matthew M. Aid.
The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008
Books dealing with military strategy or even military tactics are usually the work of retired generals who, in the softly glowing afterlife from the battlefields, update the records and correct historical judgements. These form their own literary genre and library shelves groan…
Missing the Bus: Making the Connection
As student, journalist, Canadian diplomat, and academic sabbaticant, our former colleague and now professor emeritus, Terry Keenleyside, tells us about connections with characters, humour, smells and tastes that compose memorable moments for him and his family as they discovered the world. The…
Six Books on Canada’s Role in Afghanistan
Harper’s Magazine in its monthly index of numbers, recently reported that there had been some 835 books published in the United States about the war in Iraq and some 32 of that number were books for children. I have searched the various…
