Customer Reviews

The Illustrated History of Canada: A Canadian Classic, Now Completely Revised

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This is an excellent history of a fascinating country. The editor, Craig Brown, uses different chapter authors to bring a variety of perspectives to Canadian history while still editing the chapters into a cohesive whole with a consistent voice and detailed internal references. The ability to turn these diverse perspectives into a sensible history is a significant achievement, and this book deserves its status as a classic.

In part, the need for cohesion does limit the ability to pull in some perspectives -- there is not a detailed analysis by an economic historian, for example, or an analysis of some particular component of history by someone from a clear Marxist tradition. Similarly, there are criticisms that can be leveled against each chapter for its breadth, depth or perspective, as with any history. But, for the intelligent reader, these short falls can produce fodder for further thought, and help build a framework for that thought.

Best of all, this history has enough analysis and detail to satisfy an academic reader while being accessible enough for the casual reader - making it, in many ways, an ideal survey. While ultimately I would like a bit more detail in the footnotes and a bit of additional higher level analysis, there is far more in this book than you'll find in most historical surveys.

I have family roots from the 17th Century in Quebec and from the 19th Century in Ontario. I wanted to know more about their lives so I bought this book. Pretty broad spectrum of needs on my part and this book worked quite well. A description of the daily lives of the "habitants" is nestled in with the overall history of Canada. It's great. Using the index, I can easily skip around and read the pages relevant to my genealogy. Although I found no reference to any of my 500 plus ancestor-relatives, I do feel like I have a sense of who they were, why they came, and what they were doing in Canada. Even what they were wearing, from the illustrations. Yes, lots of illustrations. I appreciate the effort gone to to provide such classic ones of people, places, maps, and events. I found myself reading beyond my family history partly because of the illustrations, but also because this book is easy to read, despite the small print. Such an ambitious book. Thank you Craig Brown.

The book starts out with praise for Native wife-swapping and ends with praise for the National Energy Program. I'm not kidding.

In fairness, there is a lot of competent history writing in between, but certainly not the authoritative version it claims to be.