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  • Donald Akenson

    Donald Akenson’s latest intercalation of fact and fiction is his homage to the Babylonian Talmud, entitled An Irish History of Civilization, two volumes (Granta, 2005–06, published in Canada by McGill-Queen’s University Press).

  • Salem Alaton

    Salem Alaton teaches journalism at Humber College and the University of Guelph-Humber.

    • Darwinists and Divinity

      A review of Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science, by Michael Ruse

  • Amir Attaran

    Amir Attaran is a lawyer and scientist and Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy in the Faculties of Law and Medicine at the University of Ottawa. He receives financial support from the Canada Research Chairs program and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

    • The Ugly Canadian

      Forget middle power. Forget model citizen. We're becoming one of the bad kids on the block.

  • Margaret Atwood

    Margaret Atwood is the author of more than 35 books. Her most recent books are Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (Anchor Canada, 2003), and the novel Oryx and Crake (McClelland and Stewart, 2003).

  • B

  • John Baglow

    John Baglow is a writer, researcher, and social and policy consultant in Ottawa. He blogs at drdawgsblawg.blogspot.com.

  • Martha Bailey

    Martha Bailey is a professor of law at Queen’s University.

    • Closed Off from the World

      A review of Daphne Bramham’s The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in a Polygamous Mormon Sect

  • Michel Basilières

    Michel Basilières is the author of Black Bird (Knopf Canada, 2003), which has garnered several honours and is available in four languages. He teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto and Humber College, while slowly carving out another novel.

  • Julie Berry

    Julie Berry was born in St. Thomas, Ontario, and she still lives and works in this small, southwestern Ontario city. Her poems have appeared in grain, Room of One’s Own, Quarry, Canadian Forum and Carousel and in numerous anthologies. Her first book of poetry, worn thresholds, was published in 1995 by Brick and reprinted in 2006. Two of her prose poems won in the 2005 short grain contest. Julie recently completed a second collection of poems entitled little strip room in heaven. She is reading a number of books at present, including The Child That Books Built by Francis Spufford, Or by Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. Last summer she read piles of books, two of which she remembers: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk.

  • Conrad Black

    Conrad Black is the author of biographies of Maurice Duplessis, Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and has been publisher of several newspapers.

    • What Do We Owe?

      A review of Margaret Atwood’s Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

  • Charles Blattberg

    Charles Blattberg is an associate professor of political philosophy at the Université de Montréal. His most recent book is Patriotic Elaborations: Essays in Practical Philosophy (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009), and his just completed novel, The Adventurous Young Philosopher Theo Hoshen of Toronto, is looking for a publisher.

    • Bad Faith?

      A review of David Novak's In Defense of Religious Liberty.

    • The Real Tariq Ramadan

      A review of The Theology of Tariq Ramadan: A Catholic Perspective, by Gregory Baum

  • Regan Boychuk

    Regan Boychuk lives in Calgary, where he researches Canadian foreign policy.

  • Douglas Brown

    Douglas Brown is an associate professor of sport history at the University of Calgary.

  • Jeb Brugmann

    Jeb Brugmann has worked on urban issues in 28 countries and is the author of Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities Are Changing the World (Penguin Canada, 2009).

  • Sharon Butala

    Sharon Butala is the author of The Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Friendship, Memory and Murder, published in 2008.

  • C

  • Peter Calamai

    Peter Calamai has been a foreign correspondent, national reporter and editorial page editor for Southam newspapers and, most recently, science reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star. He is now freelancing to avoid the catastrophe of retirement.

  • Kim Campbell

    The Right Honourable Kim Campbell was Canada’s first and only female prime minister. She is currently active internationally in promoting the advancement of women and from 2001 to 2003 she taught a course called “Gender and Power” at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

    • When Women Rule

      A review of Blema S. Steinberg's Women in Power: The Personality and Leadership Style of Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher

  • Leslie Campbell

    Leslie Campbell is senior associate and director of Middle East programs at the Washington-based National Democratic Institute. Before joining NDI he was chief of staff to New Democratic Party leader Audrey McLaughlin and an assistant to Manitoba NDP leader Gary Doer.

  • Warren Cariou

    Warren Cariou teaches aboriginal literature and creative writing at the University of Manitoba.

  • Donald Carveth

    Donald Carveth is a professor of sociology and social and political thought at York University’s Glendon College. A training and supervising analyst in the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis, he is past editor-in-chief of the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis/Revue Canadienne de Psychoanalyse. Many of his publications, including his recent essays on guilt and its evasion, are available on his website.

    • Conscience Aside

      An online review of John W. Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience and Robert Altemeyer's The Authoritarians

  • Stephanie Cavanaugh

    Stephanie Cavanaugh is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. She studies inter-cultural contact and religious conversion in the early modern Atlantic world. Her hometown is Fredericton, New Brunswick.

  • Timothy Cheek

    Timothy Cheek is a professor and the Louis Cha Chair in Chinese Research at the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia. His most recent book is Living with Reform: China Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2006) and he is editor of The Cambridge Critical Introduction to Mao (forthcoming, 2009).

    • The Karaoke Classics

      A review of Daniel A. Bell's China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society

  • Denise Chong

    Denise Chong’s latest book, Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship, was published in 2009.

  • Ian D. Clark

    Ian D. Clark is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto. He is co-author of Academic Transformation: The Forces Reshaping Higher Education in Ontario (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009) with Greg Moran, Michael Skolnik and David Trick. He is former president of the Council of Ontario Universities.

  • Ray Conlogue

    Ray Conlogue is a former arts writer for The Globe and Mail and author of a book about the role of the Enlightenment in creating Canada’s French/English divide, as well as being a translator, teacher and author of a young adult novel.

    • Delicious Canadian Ham

      A review of Up Till Now: The Autobiography, by William Shatner with David Fisher and In Spite of Myself: A Memoir, by Christopher Plummer

    • Revisiting a Powerful Myth

      A review of The Children’s Crusade: Medieval History, Modern Mythistory by Gary Dickson and Children's Crusade by Murray Schafer

    • Culture Clash

      A review of The Authenticity Hoax: How We Got Lost Finding Ourselves, by Andrew Potter, and More Money Than Brains: Why Schools Suck, College Is Crap and Idiots Think They’re Right, by Laura Penny

  • Margaret Conrad

    Margaret Conrad is Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies at the University of New Brunswick.

  • Andrew Coyne

    Andrew Coyne is national editor of Maclean's magazine.

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  • Brendan de Caires

    Brendan de Caires was born and grew up in Guyana. He was educated in England and has lived in Port of Spain, Bridgetown, Mexico City and New York. He now lives in Toronto.

    • A Country Worth Living In

      A review of Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, by Citizenship Canada

    • The Winter of a Hundred Books

  • Emily v. de Jeude

    Emily van Lidth de Jeude is a multimedia visual and literary artist. Currently she is reading Siddhartha (again) and has recently finished The Perfect Word Collapses by Jude Neale and Anomaly by Anne Fleming. Emily is greatly influenced by expressionism and the natural sciences, as well as by mythology. She finds inspiration and joy in growing medicinal plants as well as in the rural lifestyle she and her family lead. She is a mother, a healer, an unschooler of two young children and an avid singer of traditional ballads.

  • Barry Dempster

    Barry Dempster is the author of nine collections of poetry, the most recent of which, The Burning Alphabet, won the Canadian Authors Association’s Chalmers Award for Poetry. He has new work forthcoming in Event, The New Quarterly, Queen’s Quarterly and Prairie Fire. Lately, he has been reading Jane Hirschfield’s After, Mark Doty’s Dog Years and Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees, marvelling at how one language can produce so many different musics.

  • Peter Desbarats

    Peter Desbarats spent 30 years as a print and TV journalist before being appointed dean of journalism at the University of Western Ontario. Now retired, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada last year. He can be reached by email at pdesbarats AT sympatico.ca.

    • Moguls of Winnipeg

      A review of Izzy: The Passionate Life and Turbulent Times of Izzy Asper, Canada’s Media Mogul, by Peter C. Newman, and Asper Nation: Canada’s Most Dangerous Media Company, by Marc Edge

  • Shiraz Dossa

    Shiraz Dossa teaches political theory and comparative politics (Iran, Lebanon, Israel, India) at St. Francis Xavier University. In his book The Public Realm and the Public Self: The Political Theory of Hannah Arendt (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1989) and in his articles, his focus has been the Holocaust and its legacy, Auschwitz and Christian conscience, Zionism and Palestinians, and Islam and the West.

    • The Explanation We Never Heard

      Six months after attending a controversial Tehran conference, a Canadian professor charges the media and his own university with ignorance and intolerance.

  • John Doyle

    John Doyle is the television critic for The Globe and Mail and has covered two World Cup tournaments and one European championship for the paper. His book Beautiful Game: Travels in Search of Soccer’s Small Wars and Big Peace will be published by Doubleday Canada in 2010.

    • "Joga Bonito"

      A review of Alan Twigg’s Full-Time: A Soccer Story

  • Dennis Duffy

    Dennis Duffy shares Whitman’s hero worship of Abraham Lincoln. He is currently working on an account of an unusual aspect of Canada’s Great War medical history.

  • Mark D. Dunn

    Mark D. Dunn is a musician, writer and teacher living in Sault Ste. Marie. His reviews, articles and poems have been in The Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire, Rain Taxi, Books in Canada, The Dalhousie Review, Queen's Quarterly, High Times, Education Today and many other publications. Currently, he is teaching writing and communications at Sault College. Samples of his music can be heard at www.mddunn.com.

  • Jeffrey Dvorkin

    Jeffrey Dvorkin has headed two news organizations: CBC Radio and NPR News. He is the executive director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen and the Rogers Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at Ryerson University. He blogs at nowthedetails.blogspot.com.

    • A Dying Breed

      A review of Scott Taylor's Unembedded: Two Decades of Maverick War Reporting and Terry Gould's Murder Without Borders: Dying for the Story in the World's Most Dangerous Places

  • David Dyzenhaus

    David Dyzenhaus is a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Toronto. His books include Judging the Judges, Judging Ourselves: Truth, Reconciliation and the Apartheid Legal Order (Hart Publishing, 1998).

  • E

  • David Eaves

    David Eaves is a fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen’s University.

    • Progressivism's End

      In Obama, both Americans and Canadians can see the promise of something new.

  • James Eayrs

    James Eayrs, former professor at the University of Toronto and professor emeritus at Dalhousie University, is currently writing A Man’s Reach: C.S. Eby in Canada and Meiji Japan.

  • Robert Evans

    Robert Evans is the author of Fueling Our Future: An Introduction to Sustainable Energy, published by Cambridge University Press in 2007 and short-listed for the 2008 Donner Prize. He is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of British Columbia.

  • F

  • Tarek Fatah

    Tarek Fatah is founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and has written for The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and the National Post. Born in Pakistan, he is author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, in which he challenges the premise of Islamists that an Islamic state is a prerequisite to a state of Islam. The book will be available from John Wiley and Sons across Canada in April 2008.

    • Dystopic Utopia?

      A review of Michael Adams' Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism

  • Tom Flanagan

    Tom Flanagan is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary and a former Conservative campaign manager. He recently published Harper’s Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007).

  • Brian Flemming

    Brian Flemming is an international lawyer, policy advisor and writer in Halifax. He was assistant principal secretary and policy advisor to Prime Minister Pierre E. Trudeau from 1976 to 1979. He was twice a candidate for Parliament.

    • Control-Freak Kingdom

      A review of Donald J. Savoie's Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability in Canada and the United Kingdom

    • Flying Naked Next

      Can we replace fear-driven theatrics with resilience in our quest for air travel security?

  • Charles Foran

    Among Charles Foran’s previous eight books are four Canadian novels. His biography of Mordecai Richler, Mordecai: The Life and Times, will be published in October by Knopf.

  • Robert R. Fowler

    Robert R. Fowler was foreign policy advisor to prime ministers Pierre Trudeau, John Turner and Brian Mulroney, served as deputy minister of National Defence, was Canada’s longest-serving ambassador to the United Nations and was ambassador to Italy and United Nations food agencies, the prime minister’s personal representative for the Kananaskis G8 Summit and the personal representative for Africa of prime ministers Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper. He retired in 2006 after 38 years in public service and is now a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

    • Alice in Afghanistan

      A review of Janice Gross Stein's and Eugene Lang's The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar

  • Roderick Fraser

    Roderick Fraser, OC, was president of the University of Alberta from 1995 to 2005, after 30 years at Queen’s University. As president emeritus, he now serves on several boards of directors and is a recipient of the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun, Neck Ribbon with Gold Rays.

  • Mark J. Freiman

    Mark J. Freiman practises law in Toronto. From 2000 to 2004, he was deputy attorney general for Ontario. He acted as lead counsel in the Canadian Human Rights Commission section 13 proceeding against Ernst Zundel.

    • Trial by Anecdote

      A review of Ezra Levant's Shakedown:How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights

  • Mark Fried

    Mark Fried is head of public policy at Oxfam Canada and a literary translator with ten books in print. He is the editor of the forthcoming Oxfam book From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States Can Change the World by Duncan Green.

  • Bernie M. Frolic

    Bernie Michael Frolic is professor emeritus at York University and a senior researcher at the Munk Centre for International Studies in the University of Toronto.

    • An Informed Citizenry?

      An online review of Communication in China: Political Economy, Power and Conflict, by Yuezhi Zhao

  • G

  • Brian Gable

    Brian Gable has worked as an editorial cartoonist for The Globe and Mail since 1987 and lives in Toronto. He will appear in conversation with David Levine at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto on September 25, 2008.

    • A Steady Eye

      David Levine has captured the artistic and political greats of his era with nothing but a pencil.

  • George Galt

    George Galt is the author of the novel Scribes and Scoundrels (ECW Press, 1997). Some reviewers insisted that one of its characters closely resembled Conrad Black.

  • Andrew Gibson

    Andrew Gibson has just completed a doctoral dissertation on the Canadian social criticism of philosopher Charles Taylor. He is a councillor for the Quebec section of the New Democratic Party of Canada.

  • Noreen Golfman

    Noreen Golfman is professor of English literature and dean of Graduate Studies at Memorial University. She is also president of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, chair of the Steering Committee of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting and founding director and chair of the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival.

  • Ron Graham

    Ron Graham is an author and journalist whose family memoir, The French Quarter: The Epic Struggle of a Family and a Nation Divided (Macfarlane, Walter and Ross, 1992), explores the history and politics of French Canada.

  • Charlotte Gray

    Charlotte Gray is the author of seven best-selling books of history and biography, and the winner of the Pierre Berton Award for popularizing Canadian history. She is an adjunct research professor in history at Carleton University.

  • H

  • Ian Hacking

    Ian Hacking is a Canadian philosopher with wide interests. He discusses autobiographies written by people with autism in an essay soon to appear in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

    • Private Thoughts in Public Language

      A review of JPod by Douglas Coupland, The Language of Others by Clare Morrall, Daniel Isn’t Talking by Marti Leimbach, Eye Contact by Cammie McGovern, and So Odd a Mixture: Along the Autistic Spectrum in “Pride and Prejudice” by Phyllis Ferguson Bottomer

  • Dana Hansen

    Dana Hansen is a writer, blogger and reviewer, and teaches literature and composition at the Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto.

  • Nader Hashemi

    Nader Hashemi is a professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

  • Elizabeth Hay

    Elizabeth Hay is the author of Late Nights on Air, winner of the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

  • Joseph Heath

    Joseph Heath is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, and the author of Filthy Lucre: Economics for People who Hate Capitalism (HarperCollins 2009).

  • Jeet Heer

    Jeet Heer, a Regina-based cultural journalist, frequently writes about comics. He is co-editor, with Kent Worcester, of Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium (University of Mississippi Press, 2004). With Chris Ware and Chris Oliveros, he is editing a series of volumes reprinting Frank King’s Gasoline Alley, three volumes of which have been published by Drawn and Quarterly under the umbrella title Walt and Skeezix.

  • Eric Helleiner

    Eric Helleiner is CIGI Chair of International Political Economy and a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. He is co-editor of The Future of the Dollar (Cornell University Press, 2009) and Global Finance in Crisis: The Politics of International Regulatory Change (Routledge, 2010).

    • Progressive Fortune Telling

      A review of Beyond the Bubble: Imagining a New Canadian Economy, by James Laxer

  • Lee Henderson

    Lee Henderson’s latest novel, The Man Game, was published in 2008.

  • Jonathan Holslag

    Jonathan Holslag is the head of research at the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies and the author of China and India: Prospects for Peace, forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

    • The Myth of Chindia

      A review of Wendy Dobson's Gravity Shift: How Asia’s New Economic Powerhouses Will Shape the Twenty-First Century

  • Margaret Horsfield

    Margaret Horsfield turned to writing after many years with the BBC as a radio reporter. She is the author of four books, including Biting the Dust: The Joys of Housework (Fourth Estate, 1997). She lives in Nanaimo, British Columbia.

    • Out, Damned Spot!

      A review of The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History, by Katherine Ashenburg

  • Linda Hutcheon

    Linda Hutcheon teaches literature at the University of Toronto and is the author of twelve books on contemporary culture. Her most recent work involves the ethics, economics and politics of reviewing across all the arts: she recently gave the 2009 Alexander Lectures on the topic at University College at the University of Toronto.

  • J

  • Mark Jaccard

    Mark Jaccard is a professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University. He is convening lead author for sustainable energy policy with the Global Energy Assessment and co-author, with Jeffrey Simpson and Nic Rivers, of Hot Air: Meeting Canada’s Climate Change Challenge (McClelland and Stewart, 2007).

  • Michael Jackson

    Michael Jackson, QC, teaches in the Faculty of Law at the University of British Columbia and is author of Prisoners of Isolation: Solitary Confinement in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1983) and Justice Behind the Walls: Human Rights in Canadian Prisons (Douglas and McIntyre, 2002).

    • Fear-Driven Policy

      Ottawa’s harsh new penal proposals won’t make us safer, just poorer—and less humane.

  • Sheilla Jones

    Sheilla Jones is the author of The Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition and Science (Oxford University Press, 2008) and the CBC Radio Ideas documentary "Infinite Possibilities: The Science of Parallel Universes." Her website is www.sheillajones.com.

  • K

  • W. J. Keith

    W.J. Keith is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Toronto. His publications include Canadian Literature in English (1985, 2006) and Canadian Odyssey: A Reading of Hugh Hood’s “The New Age/Le nouveau siècle” (2002).

  • Suanne Kelman

    Suanne Kelman is Associate Chair of the School of Journalism at Ryerson University.

  • Sheema Khan

    Sheema Khan is the author of Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman (TSAR Books, 2009), and is an op-ed columnist for The Globe and Mail.

    • Bridging the Divide

      A review of Donna Kennedy-Glans' Unveiling the Breath: One Woman’s Journey into Understanding Islam and Gender Equality

  • Mark Kingwell

    Mark Kingwell is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. His most recent book, Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City, has just been published by Viking.

  • Warren Kinsella

    Warren Kinsella blogs at www.warrenkinsella.com and is the National Post’s media columnist.

  • Paul Knox

    Paul Knox is chair of the School of Journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto and a former Latin America correspondent for The Globe and Mail.

    • Haiti's Fallible Hero

      A review of Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment, by Peter Hallward

  • Myrna Kostash

    Myrna Kostash writes full time from her home in Edmonton. Her most recent book is The Frog Lake Reader (NeWest Press, 2009). She is grateful for the support of the Edmonton Arts Council in the writing of this essay.

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  • Martin Laflamme

    Martin Laflamme is a foreign service officer who has served in Japan and Afghanistan. He is currently working in the Privy Council Office in Ottawa.

    • Thought in Action

      A review of Norman Bethune, by Adrienne Clarkson and “Norman Bethune: trail of Solidarity — La huella solidaria” at the McCord Museum of Canadian History

  • Andy Lamey

    Andy Lamey's Frontier Justice: Human Rights in the Age of Asylum is forthcoming from Doubleday Canada.

  • Philip Lee

    Philip Lee is the author of Bittersweet: Confessions of a Twice-Married Man, published in 2008 by Goose Lane Editions.

  • Ezra Levant

    Ezra Levant is publisher of the Western Standard magazine.

  • Timothy Lewis

    Timothy Lewis is the author of In the Long Run We’re All Dead: The Canadian Turn to Fiscal Restraint (University of British Columbia Press, 2003).

  • Richard G. Lipsey

    Richard G. Lipsey is emeritus professor of economics at Simon Fraser University. His recent book Economic Transformations: General Purpose Technologies and Long-Term Economic Growth (Oxford University Press, 2005) won the Joseph Schumpeter prize for the best writing on evolutionary economics over the two years prior to its publication.


    • The End of the World As We Know It?

      A review of Peter A. Victor's Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster, and Jeff Rubin's Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller

  • Mark Lovewell

    Mark Lovewell was the founding director of Arts and Contemporary Studies at Ryerson University. He is co-publisher of the LRC.

    • Past as Prologue

      An online review of John W. Dean's The Lost Massey Lectures: Recovered Classics from Five Great Thinkers - John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul Goodman, Jane Jacobs, Eric W. Kierans, Martin Luther King, Jr.

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  • Jack MacAndrew

    Jack MacAndrew is a bearded, kindly old gentleman living in an old farmhouse in Meadow Bank, Prince Edward Island, about eleven kilometres outside Charlottetown, with a long-suffering wife of 50 years named Barbara and two cats. He has never been able to stick at a job for very long and generally falls back on scribbling as a journalist to eke out a living.

    • The Year of Anne

      A review of Budge Wilson’s Before Green Gables, Deidre Kessler’s Anne of Green Gables: Stories for Young Readers, Don Harron’s Anne of Green Gables, The Musical: 101 Things You Didn’t Know, Elizabeth Rollins Epperly’s Imagining Anne: The Island Scrapbooks of L.M. Montgomery, Irene Gammel’s Looking for Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic and Elizabeth Waterston’s Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery

  • Linden MacIntyre

    Linden MacIntyre is the author of The Bishop’s Man, winner of the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

  • David M. Malone

    David M. Malone is Canada’s high commissioner to India and ambassador to Bhutan. He is the author of The International Struggle over Iraq: Politics in the UN Security Council, 1980–2005 (Oxford University Press, 2007). The views reflected here are his alone, not those of the Canadian government.

    • Our Man in Bhutan

      How a Canadian Jesuit founded a secular education system in a remote mountain nation.

  • Philip Marchand

  • Stephen Marche

    Stephen Marche is the author of Shining at the Bottom of the Sea (Penguin, 2007) and Raymond and Hannah (Harcourt, 2005). He writes columns for Esquire and the National Post. This essay has been adapted from a talk given to students in the “Literature for Our Time” lecture series organized by Nick Mount at the University of Toronto.

    • Here, Now

      Canadian writers, living on the edge of the world, have the best view.

  • Gregory P. Marchildon

    Gregory P. Marchildon is Canada Research Chair of Public Policy and Economic History at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Regina and is the author of Profits and Politics: Beaverbrook and the Gilded Age of Canadian Finance (University of Toronto Press, 1996). He was the executive director of the Romanow Royal Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada.

  • Steven Mayoff

    Steven Mayoff’s fiction and poetry have appeared in literary journals across Canada, the USA, Ireland, Algeria and France. His first fiction collection, Fatted Calf Blues, is currently on the long list for the 2010 ReLit Award.

  • Steven McCabe

    Steven McCabe is a poet and multidisciplinary artist originally from the American midwest now living in Toronto. He is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Hierarchy of Loss (Ekstasis Editions, 2007). He has exhibited works on canvas, paintings on paper, collaborative artworks, mixed media sculpture and video. In 2006 he illustrated a chapbook, Orpheus and Eurydice: Before the Descent (LyricalMyrical Books), which he co-authored with Tanaz Nanavati. Currently he is reading The Once and Future Goddess: A Sweeping Visual Chronicle of the Sacred Female and Her Re-emergence in the Cultural Mythology of Our Time by Elinor W. Gadon as well as View with a Grain of Sand, selected poems by Wislawa Szymborska.

  • Barbara McDougall

    Barbara McDougall is an advisor to Aird & Berlis LLP. She served as secretary of state for external affairs in the government of Brian Mulroney.

    McDougall reviewed Robert Wright's Our Man in Tehran: Ken Taylor, the CIA and the Iran Hostage Crisis in the April 2010 issue.

  • Ken McGoogan

    Ken McGoogan’s latest book, How the Scots Invented Canada, will be published by HarperCollins in October 2010.

  • Paul F. McKenna

    Paul F. McKenna is the president of Public Safety Innovation, Inc. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Interdisciplinary program at Dalhousie University.

  • George Melnyk

    George Melnyk teaches Canadian studies and film studies at the University of Calgary.

  • Jack Mitchell

    Jack Mitchell is a poet living in Toronto, composer of an epic poem, The Plains of Abraham, and author of two historical novels for young adults, The Roman Conspiracy and The Ancient Ocean Blues.

    • Dying in Hell

      A review of Passchendaele, a film by Paul Gross; of Norman Leach's Passchendaele: Canada’s Triumph and Tragedy on the Fields of Flanders; and of Paul Gross's novel Passchendaele

    • A Loaded Anniversary

      A review of D. Peter MacLeod's Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham; of Jacques Lacoursière's and Hélène Quimper's Québec ville assiégée; of Joy Carroll's Wolfe and Montcalm: Their Lives, Their Times, and the Fate of a Continent; of Gérard Saint-Martin's Les plaines d'Abraham: L'adieu à la Nouvelle-France?; and of Stephen Manning's Quebec: The Story of Three Sieges.

  • Christopher Moore

    Christopher Moore (www.christophermoore.ca) is a Toronto writer on historical subjects. His The British Columbia Court of Appeal: The First Hundred Years (University of British Columbia Press) is being published in April 2010.

  • Lisa Moore

    Lisa Moore’s most recent book February was longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.

  • Desmond Morton

    Desmond Morton, author of 40 books on Canadian military, political and labour history, was the founding director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.

  • Susan Musgrave

    Susan Musgrave has been nominated and received awards in five different genres—poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, children’s writing—and for her work as an editor. She teaches at the University of British Columbia in the Optional Residency Creative Writing MFA Programme and conducts workshops in libraries, prisons, high schools and psychiatric wards across the country. Her latest book, You’re in Canada Now… A Memoir of Sorts, was published by Thistledown in the fall of 2005. Musgrave has recently read No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, What It Means to Be Human by Marilyn Bowering, Ravens in Winter by Bernd Heinrich (with thanks to Graeme Gibson who recommended it) and The Blue Hour of the Day: Selected Poems by Lorna Crozier.

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  • Peter C. Newman

    Peter C. Newman is currently completing his biography of Israel “Izzy” Asper, the Winnipeg-based media tycoon. It will be his 24th book.

    • The Adventurers Are Back

      A review of James Raffan's Emperor of the North: Sir George Simpson and the Remarkable Story of the Hudson’s Bay Company and Deirdre Simmons' Keepers of the Record: The History of the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives

    • The New Canadian Establishment

      A review of Gordon Pitts' Stampede! The Rise of the West and Canada’s New Power Elite

  • Andrew Ng

    Andrew Ng was most recently junior fellow in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. He now lives in Ottawa and can be reached at andrew.yc.ng[at]gmail.com.

  • Noah B. Novogrodsky

    Noah B. Novogrodsky is the director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.

  • O

  • David Orrell

    David Orrell is a mathematician and the author of several books, including Apollo's Arrow: The Science of Prediction and the Future of Everything (HarperCollins 2007). His next book is Economyths: Ten Ways that Economics Gets It Wrong, forthcoming from Wiley. His website is www.davidorrell.com.

    • Blind Oracles

      A review of Florin Diacu's Megadisasters: The Science of Predicting the Next Catastrophe

  • Taylor Owen

    Taylor Owen is a doctoral candidate and Trudeau Scholar at the University of Oxford.

    • Progressivism's End

      In Obama, both Americans and Canadians can see the promise of something new.

  • P

  • P. K. Page

    P.K. Page writes: “I find the glosa form intriguing, from the initial search for four stealable lines, to the almost crossword puzzle-like execution of the poem itself. A new book of glosas is my ongoing project. I have recently published a book of essays, The Filled Pen: Selected Non-Fiction (University of Toronto Press, 2006) and a book of short stories, Up on the Roof (Porcupine’s Quill, 2007). Forthcoming: Jake the Baker Makes a Cake, a children’s play in verse. As to the books I have been reading lately, everything from John Donne and Blake to Dionne Brand and Don McKay. Beside my bed, waiting for the glosas to subside, are The Tree of Meaning by Robert Bringhurst, Sorry, I Don’t Speak French by Graham Fraser and My Name Is Red by Orham Pamuk.”

  • Pamela D. Palmater

    Pamela D. Palmater is a Mi'kmaq lawyer from New Brunswick who holds the new chair in indigenous governance at Ryerson University.

    • Opportunity or Temptation?

      A review of Beyond the Indian Act: Restoring Aboriginal Property RIghts by Tom Flanagan, Christopher Alcantara, and André Le Dressay

  • Jeremy Paltiel

    Jeremy Paltiel is a professor of political science at Carleton University. His most recent book is The Empire’s New Clothes: Cultural Particularism and Universal Value in China's Quest for Global Status (Palgrave, 2007).

    • Spiritual Dissent

      An online review of Falun Gong and the Future of China, by David Ownby

  • Erna Paris

    Erna Paris’s most recent book is The Sun Climbs Slow: Justice in the Age of Imperial America (Knopf, 2008).

    • Are We Being Helpful?

      A review of Patricia Marchak’s No Easy Fix: Global Responses to Internal Wars and Crimes Against Humanity

  • Geoff Pevere

    Geoff Pevere has been writing, broadcasting and teaching about film, media and popular culture for more than 25 years. He is currently employed as a movie critic with the Toronto Star.

  • Anna Porter

    Anna Porter is the author of Kasztner’s Train: The True Story of Rezsó Kasztner, Unknown Hero of the Holocaust and of The Storyteller: A Memoir of Secrets, Magic and Lies. She was the founding publisher of Key Porter Books.

  • Andrew Potter

    Andrew Potter is a public affairs columnist for Maclean’s.

  • André Pratte

    André Pratte is editorial page editor at La Presse. He has written several books on politics and the media and received the Canadian Journalism Award for Editorial Writing in 2007 and 2008.

    • Fearful Acrimony

      The seductive danger of scapegoating Quebec.

  • R

  • Norm Ravvin

    Norman Ravvin's essays on Holocaust literature are collected in A House of Words: Jewish Writing, Identity and Memory (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997). He is chair of the Concordia Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies.

    • Troubling Tactics

      A review of Michael R. Marrus's Some Measure of Justice: The Holocaust Era Restitution Campaign of the 1990s

  • Jeffrey G. Reitz

    Jeffrey G. Reitz is the R.F. Harney Professor of Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies at the University of Toronto. His most recent book is Multiculturalism and Social Cohesion: Potentials and Challenges of Diversity (Springer, 2009; with co-authors Raymond Breton, Karen Kisiel Dion and Kenneth L. Dion).

  • John Richards

    John Richards, a former member of the Saskatchewan legislature, teaches in the graduate public policy program at Simon Fraser University and holds the Roger Phillips chair in social policy at the C.D. Howe Institute.

    • Canada's Candide

      While Calgary wants to govern, Vancouver cultivates its garden.

  • Bob Robertson

    Bob Robertson is a Vancouver writer and member of the comedy group Double Exposure.

  • John Robinson

    John Robinson is a professor in the Institute for Environment, Resources and Sustainability and the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia.

  • Laura Robinson

    Laura Robinson is a former member of the national cycling team, former Canadian rowing champion, and Ontario Nordic ski champion. The Vancouver Olympics will be her fifth to cover as a journalist. She coaches the Anishinaabe Nordic Racers at Cape Croker First Nation Elementary School in Ontario.

  • Spider Robinson

    Spider Robinson’s collaborators include Jeanne Robinson (The Stardance Trilogy, Baen, 2006), the late Robert A. Heinlein (Variable Star, Tom Doherty Associates, 2006) and David Crosby (“On the Way to the Stars”). A 1960s survivor just entering his sixties, Robinson wrote the introduction for Stephen Gaskin’s Amazing Dope Tails: Haight Street Flashbacks (Ronin Publishing, 1980). His podcast Spider on the Web can be downloaded free from either iTunes or www.spiderrobinson.com, and a video of his wife, Jeanne, experimenting with dance in zero gravity can be seen at www.stardancemovie.com.

  • John Robson

    John Robson is a columnist with the Ottawa Citizen, a policy analyst and a host with Breakout Educational Network and an invited professor at the University of Ottawa.

  • Bob Rodgers

    Bob Rodgers produced and directed As Long as the River Shall Run. Aired on CBC in 1970, it was the first network exposé of mercury contamination in Canada, the effects of which continue to this day.

  • Wade Rowland

    Wade Rowland is a former producer and senior executive at both CBC and CTV, and is now a professor at York University, teaching in the joint York-Ryerson graduate program in communication and culture and in the Atkinson School of Arts and Letters program in culture and expression. He is a former Maclean Hunter Chair of Ethics in Communication at Ryerson University and is author of a number of books, including Greed, Inc. (Thomas Allen, 2005), Galileo’s Mistake (Arcade Publishing, 2003), Spirit of the Web (Key Porter, 1999) and Ockham’s Razor (Key Porter, 1999). He is an unreconstructed CBC radio addict.

  • Norbert Ruebsaat

    Norbert Ruebsaat travelled and studied in Haida Gwaii in the early 1990s and has written articles and book reviews related to the Queen Charlotte Islands for magazines and newspapers including Geist, Borderlines, The Vancouver Sun and The New Catalyst. His radio documentary “Walking around Eating,” a collaboration with Diane Brown from Skidegate, aired on CBC Radio's Ideas in 1996. To read more of his writing online, visit www.dooneyscafe.com or www.geist.com.

    • Words of an Artist

      A review of Solitary Raven: The Essential Writings of Bill Reid, edited by Robert Bringhurst

  • Michael Ruse

    Michael Ruse, after 35 years of teaching at the University of Guelph, now teaches at Florida State University, where he spends the winters thanking God that he no longer lives in Ontario and the summers wishing to God that he did.

    • Darwin on My Mind

      A review of Ronald de Sousa's Why Think? Evolution and the Rational Mind

  • S

  • John Ralston Saul

    John Ralston Saul is author of A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada (Viking, 2008) and chair of the LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium.

  • Doug Saunders

    Doug Saunders is European bureau chief for The Globe and Mail and lives in London.

  • Rebecca Saxe

    Rebecca Saxe researches the cognitive neuroscience of social cognition—how we think about other minds—in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  • Arthur Schafer

    Arthur Schafer is the director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba.

  • Stephen Schneider

    Stephen Schneider is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Saint Mary's University. He is the author of four books, including his latest, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada, which was published in 2009 by John Wiley and Sons.

  • Edward Shorter

    Edward Shorter is professor of the history of medicine and professor of psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto. One of his recent books is Before Prozac: The Troubled History of Mood Disorders in Psychiatry (Oxford University Press, 2008). His latest book, Endocrine Psychiatry, co-authored with Max Fink, has just been published by Oxford.

    • Smart Bombs and Sex Robots

      A review of Sex, Bombs and Burgers: How War, Porn and Fast Food Created Technology As We Know It, by Peter Nowak

  • Sandy Shreve

    Sandy Shreve has published four poetry collections, most recently Suddenly, So Much (Exile Editions, 2005). She founded British Columbia’s popular Poetry in Transit project and co-edited the groundbreaking anthology, In Fine Form, with Kate Braid. For the past year, Sandy has been steeped in Karen Armstrong’s books on comparative theology (two must-reads are The Great Transformation and A Short History of Myth). She has also been reading lots of poetry over the past several months—including, unforgettably, Don McKay’s Strike/Slip.

  • Philip Slayton

    Philip Slayton’s book about the Supreme Court of Canada will be published in the spring of 2011.

    • Strange Bedfellows

      A review of Canadian Maverick: The Life and Times of Ivan C. Rand, by William Kaplan

  • Patricia Smart

    Patricia Smart is the author of a number of books on Quebec literature and culture, including Les Femmes du Refus global (Boréal, 1998), which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award.

    • Quebec’s Abstract Radicals

      A review of The Automatiste Revolution: Montreal, 1941–1960, by Roald Nasgaard and Ray Ellenwood

  • Ian Smillie

    Ian Smillie, an Ottawa-based writer and consultant, has been a leader in the campaign to halt blood diamonds. His most recent book, with Larry Miner, is The Charity of Nations: Humanitarianism in a Calculating World (Kumarian Press, 2004).

    • The Dove is Never Free

      A review of James Orbinski's An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-First Century and Richard Heinzl's Cambodia Calling: A Memoir from the Frontlines of Humanitarian Aid

  • LRC Staff

  • Janice Gross Stein

    Janice Gross Stein is Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management and the director of the Munk Centre for International Studies at Trinity College in the University of Toronto.

  • Graham Stewart

    Graham Stewart is a former executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada.

    • Fear-Driven Policy

      Ottawa’s harsh new penal proposals won’t make us safer, just poorer—and less humane.

  • Kevin Sylvester

    Kevin Sylvester is a broadcaster, writer and illustrator. He has worked on seven Olympic Games and has written two non-fiction books on sports. His children’s mystery novel, Neil Flambé and the Marco Polo Murders, has just been released by Key Porter. He has two other titles due out in fall 2010: Splinters and Team Work.

    • Blaze of Glory

      A review of Off the Chain: An Insider’s History of Snowboarding, by Ross Rebagliati

  • T

  • Kate Taylor

    Kate Taylor, an arts journalist at The Globe and Mail, is the 2009 Atkinson Fellow for Public Policy, researching Canadian cultural sovereignty in the digital age. Her second novel, A Man in Uniform, will be published by Doubleday Canada in 2010.

    • Palace on the Rideau

      A review of Sarah Jennings' Art and Politics: The History of the National Arts Centre

  • Robert Thacker

    Robert Thacker has been writing about Alice Munro since 1976. His critical biography, Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives, was published by McClelland and Stewart in 2005. He is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Canadian Studies at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, near Ottawa.

  • Madeleine Thien

    Madeleine Thien’s novel Certainty was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2006.

  • Joan Thomas

    Joan Thomas is the author of a new novel, Curiosity, published in March 2010.

  • Eva Tihanyi

    Eva Tihanyi is the author of five books of poetry, including Wresting the Grace of the World (Black Moss, 2005) and Restoring the Wickedness (Thistledown, 2000). She teaches at Niagara College in Welland, Ontario, and is a regular book reviewer for the National Post. She recently completed her first short story collection and is now contemplating a novel. She is currently reading The Spiritual Brain by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary, Radical Knowing by Christian de Quincey and The Wave in the Mind by Ursula K. Le Guin.

  • Thomas Trofimuk

    Thomas Trofimuk’s most recent novel, Waiting for Columbus, was published in 2009.

  • U

  • Priscila Uppal

    Priscila Uppal is a poet, short story writer, novelist and professor of humanities and English at York University. Her latest book of poetry, Ontological Necessities, was shortlisted for the 2007 Griffin Prize. Her work has been translated into several languages. At the moment, she is reading an advance copy of Barry Callaghan’s Between Trains, Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and many, many graduate essays.

  • Alex Usher

    Alex Usher is vice-president of the Educational Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank with offices in Toronto, Virginia Beach and Melbourne.

    • Campus Navel Gazing

      A review of James Côté's and Anton Allahar's Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis and George Fallis' Multiversities, Ideas and Democracy

  • V

  • Michael Valpy

    Michael Valpy is a journalist with The Globe and Mail.

    • The Noisy Christian Right

      A review of Michael Wagner's Standing on Guard for Thee: The Past, Present and Future of Canada’s Christian Right

  • W

  • Christopher Waddell

    Christopher Waddell is associate director of Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication and holds the Carty Chair in Business and Financial Journalism. He is a former CBC TV parliamentary bureau chief and executive producer of news specials, and prior to that was a reporter, Ottawa bureau chief, associate editor and national editor of The Globe and Mail.

    • Inside the Wire

      A review of Outside the Wire: The War in Afghanistan in the Words of Its Participants, edited by Kevin Patterson and Jane Warren; Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army by Christie Blatchford; Kandahar Tour: The Turning Point in Canada’s Afghan Mission by Lee Windsor, David Charters and Brent Wilson; On Assignment in Afghanistan: Maritimers at War by Chris Lambie (text) and Christian Laforce (photography); Contact Charlie: The Canadian Army, the Taliban and the Battle That Saved Afghanistan by Chris Wattie; and The Long Walk Home: Paul Franklin’s Journey from Afghanistan by Liane Faulder

  • Fred Wah

    Fred Wah, former poetry editor of the LRC, lives in downtown Vancouver and works on the Kootenay School of Writing collective. These poems are from a chapbook, Articulations, to be published in 2007 by Nomados. He usually reads literary magazines, and on his desk at the moment are Open Letter (London), West Coast Line (Vancouver), Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics (Minneapolis) and The Poker (Cambridge).

  • Myna Wallin

    Myna Wallin is a poet, prose writer, editor and host of In Other Words on CKLN 88.1 FM, where she interviews authors from across Canada. Her first full-length collection of poetry, A Thousand Profane Pieces, was published by Tightrope Books in 2006. She also co-hosts the Art Bar Poetry Reading Series, co-organizes the Toronto Small Press Book Fair and has recently become poetry editor of Tightrope Books. She is reading Susan Swan’s What Casanova Told Me and Sylvia Plath’s Ariel: The Restored Edition.

  • Paul Wells

    Paul Wells writes for Maclean’s magazine.

    • We’re Still Watching

      A review of Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968–2000, by John English

  • Jennifer Welsh

    Jennifer Welsh is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.

  • Grace Westcott

    Grace Westcott is a practicing copyright lawyer, Vice Chair of the Canadian Copyright Institute, and a fan of fiction.

  • Carl Wilson

    Carl Wilson is the author of Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3 Series, Continuum Books), a book about class aesthetics, democracy, and Céline Dion. He lives in Toronto, where he works at The Globe and Mail and as doorman of the Trampoline Hall Lecture Series. For more on Carl's writing and projects, visit www.zoilus.com.

    • A Middling Marvel

      A review of Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown by Chris McDonald

  • Keith Wilson

    Keith Wilson is a professor of English at the University of Ottawa. His most recent book is the edited collection Thomas Hardy Reappraised: Essays in Honour of Michael Millgate (University of Toronto Press, 2006).

  • Robert Charles Wilson

    Robert Charles Wilson is the author of more than a dozen novels of speculative fiction. His novel Spin (Tor Books, 2005) received the Hugo Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, the German Kurd Lasswitz Prize and the Japanese Seiun Award. His latest novel is Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (Tor Books, 2009).

  • Charles J. Wright

    Dr. Charles J. Wright is a healthcare consultant based in Toronto. From 1999 to 2007 he was Scientific Officer of the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, after a career in surgery, teaching, research and administration at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of British Columbia.

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