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Alastair Gillespie’s MADE IN CANADA – reviewed in Globe and Mail and Literary Review of Canada

“Gillespie became … the voice of economic nationalism, responsible under the Foreign Investment Review Act to screen foreign investment, requiring that it provide ‘significant benefit to Canada.’ He regrets bitterly that later governments, Progressive Conservative and Liberal, ‘emasculated’ FIRA. The book’s greatest contribution is his passionate plea that the federal government use its powers of intervention to develop and retain multinational head offices in Canada.” William Johnson, Globe and Mail, February 27, 2010

“Gillespie also differed from his colleagues in the corporate world in that he favoured responsible enterprise over free enterprise.… Government should act as a countervailing force against the power of big business, particularly the multinationals.…
   … Trudeau was an enigma, even to his senior ministers. He gave his Cabinet members a large degree of autonomy, a latitude that must seem strange in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa. Trudeau was suspicious of nationalism, but sensitive to the political situation in the early 1970s and willing to experiment with moderate measures to deal with the challenges posed by the multinational firms.…
    … Gillespie succeeded in promoting both nationalism and good business principles. He bridged the divide by being neither a typical nationalist nor a typical businessperson. Today, in Stephen Harper’s Canada, that brand of nationalism is a moribund force.”
Stephen Azzi, Literary Review of Canada, May 2010

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LATEST NEWS ABOUT ROBIN BRASS STUDIO BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Donald MacKay’s Safe Passage reviewed in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald: "What present-day journalist wouldn't envy Donald MacKay's career? Over the course of a 65-year stint in the news business, he covered the repressive Salazar dictatorship in Portugal, Franco's fascist regime in Spain, the Hungarian revolution crushed by the Soviets in 1956 and China during the Cultural Revolution."

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Dragon Rampant: The Royal Welch Fusiliers at War, 1793-1815 is the latest book from Canadian author Donald E. Graves and an important addition to Napoleonic military history.

“Donald Graves has an entertaining and engaging style of writing….” Soldier Magazine [more reviews]

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Strange Fatality reverberates in Maine and Mercer County, Pennsylvania, and the Erie Times-News

A full-length review in the Portland Press Herald of James Elliott’s book on the Battle of Stoney Creek focuses on the role of Maine’s General John Chandler, one of two American generals captured in the battle. Regarded by all who knew him as having no military competence, Chandler nonetheless went on to become military commander of Maine and one of that state’s first senators.

The review in The Herald of Sharon, Pennsylvania, focuses on Mercer County resident James Crawford, first casualty of the war from that county, which provided a disproportionate number of the American soldiers who fought and died in the Battle of Stoney Creek.

“Elliott relates the details of this little-known nighttime clash with the panache of a good novelist,” says the Erie Times-News.

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Toronto Public Library “Keep Toronto Reading Week 2010”
Councillor Paul Ainslie extols Strange Fatality in this Youtube clip.


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Visiting a fort this summer?

Many of our books are available in the gift shops at forts and historic places in eastern Canada and the United States, particularly those relating to the War of 1812. Among the places you will run into our books are Fort George (Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.), Fort Henry (Kingston, Ont.), Fort Erie (Fort Erie, Ont.), Upper Canada Village (Morrisburg, Ont.), Fort Malden (Amherstburg, Ont.), Fort York (Toronto), and in the U.S.A., Jean Lafitte NHS (New Orleans), Fort Meigs (Ohio), Old Fort Niagara (Youngstown, NY) and the Seaway Trail Center (Sackets Harbor, NY).

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