We’re organizing our Policy Holiday Book List this year by theme, staring with books about Canadian prime ministers for every patriotic politico on your gift list. You can follow Policy Books @Policymag_Books and on LinkedIn. And you’ll find all our book reviews at Policy Book Reviews. Many thanks to all our Policy reviewers.

The Prime Ministers: The Surveys

Policy Contributing Writer Tom d’Aquino’s review of J.D.M. Stewart’s The Prime Ministers: Canada’s Leaders and the Nation They Shaped (Sutherland House) is typically gracious, partly because he genuinely appreciated Stewart’s treatment of the leaders, so many of whom d’Aquino — author of the bestselling Private Power, Public Purpose — has known personally, but also for its value as a study in leadership. “One of the most important contributions of Stewart’s book is what it teaches about leadership — especially in a uniquely Canadian context,” he writes in his review, ‘The Prime Ministers’: Profiles in Canadian Leadership.

Also on the subject of leadership, contributing Writer Colin Robertson‘s recent review of Raymond Blake’s Shaughnessy Cohen Award-winning Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity (UBC Press). “When it comes to defining what it means to be Canadian, leaders matter and so do their words,” writes Colin. “The most successful Canadian prime ministers have been as much storytellers as statesmen, especially those who adapted to master the medium of their time.” Here’s Colin Robertson with How Canada’s Prime Ministers Shaped its Identity. 

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Again from Colin Robertson, who kindly serves as our Policy global affairs book reviewer (with many reviews including episodes of Colin’s Global Exchange podcast interviews with the authors), a review of Statesmen, Strategists & Diplomats: Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Making of Foreign Policy (UBC Press), the 2023 anthology edited by Patrice Dutil. “When it all comes together, as Dutil and his fellow contributors demonstrate in Statesmen, Strategists & Diplomats,” writes Colin, “Canada has been able to punch above and beyond its weight.” Here’s Colin Robertson with ‘Statesmen, Strategists and Diplomats’: Ranking Canada’s PMs on Foreign Policy.

Prime Ministers: The Individuals

In their anthology of essays on Canadian foreign policy under Jean Chrétien, Jack Cunningham and John Meehan establish Chrétien as a prime minister “who cared about foreign policy but who was confident enough in his ministers and their deputies to let them lead, a lesson from which his successors might have profited.,” writes Colin Robertson in his review. “Chrétien and the World is timely, ambitious, and successful in its portrayal of Canadian foreign policy from 1993 to 2003.” Here’s Colin Robertson with Chrétien and the World: Dispelling the Myth of Domestic Preoccupation.

In our reviews of individual prime ministers’ memoirs and biographies, Policy contributor and The Prime Ministers author J.D.M. Stewart tackled the 2024 Paul Wells Sutherland Quarterly volume Justin Trudeau on the Ropes: Governing in Troubled Times (Sutherland House). “Every prime minister comes to the job with a set of strengths and weaknesses,” writes Stewart, “and Wells does an excellent job of profiling both for the current occupant of 24 Suss– oops, I mean Rideau Cottage.” Here’s J.D.M. Stewart with ‘Justin Trudeau on the Ropes’, or A Brief History of Disenchantment.

From former White House economic aide, former BMO and CN VP and longtime Contributing Writer Paul Deegan, a review of Mark Carney’s pre-politics manifesto, Value(s): Building a Better World for All. “Carney’s book is a historical examination of the relationship between value and values,” writes Paul. “He defines values as the principles or standards of behaviour. He defines value as the regard that something is held to deserve.” Here’s Carney’s Strong Case for a Better Tomorrow.

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“The story of John Napier Turner, Canada’s 17^th prime minister, is a story of expectations – on the part of his family, on the part of his political party, on the part of the country,” opens veteran political journalist, strategist and academic Bill Fox in his review of Steve Paikin’s John Turner: An Intimate Biography of Canada’s 17th Prime Minister. Here’s Fox with The Man Behind the Myth: An Intimate Biography of John Turner.​

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The same prime minister who received the highest marks in foreign policy from Patrice Dutil in his foreign affairs ranking anthology, Louis St-Laurent, received individual treatment three years earlier in the collected essays, The Unexpected Louis St-Laurent: Politics and Policies for a Modern Canada. In his review, Historica Canada President and Policy Contributing Writer Anthony Wilson-Smith writes, “St-Laurent often found a solution before most Canadians, including some of his cabinet colleagues, even knew there was a problem.” Here’s Wilson-Smith with ‘Uncle Louis’ – A Quiet Man of Excellence.

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