Since much of the world is presently convulsed by something resembling Trumpophobia, it is timely perhaps that two recently published books hearken to a more innocent time when Canada was convulsed by a national obsession called Trudeaumania. Of the two books, Robert Wright’s Trudeaumania, The Rise to Power of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, is the more conventional political narrative. Like PET’s other chronicler, Paul Litt, Wright is an academic political historian but he writes with commendable journalistic verve. But Wright takes a rather contrarian position about the impact of emotionally charged Trudeaumania on PET’s astonishing political rise in 1968. Trudeau famously dismissed special status as “un connerie.” Still, Wright’s book provides ample evidence that Pierre’s personal élan played its role as well.

Source: thestar November 20, 2016 05:03 UTC