Quill & Quire » Ezra Levant wins Best Political Book contest

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By Natalie Samson
August 3, 2011
9:00 AM

Filed under: Quillblog , Canadian politics, CLA, contest, crime, Ezra Levant, HarperCollins, John Ralston Saul, Lost, M&S, McClelland & Stewart, Penguin, political books, Politics, Random House, Random House Canada, Samara, Stephen Harper, Terry Fallis, Writers' Trust of Canada

Ezra Levant wins Best Political Book contest

The Writers’ Trust of Canada, in collaboration with Samara, has named Ezra Levant’s Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights (McClelland & Stewart, 2009) the Best Canadian Political Book of the Last 25 Years.

The WTOC and Samara, a non-profit organization for citizen engagement in Canada’s democratic system, announced the contest in June to recognize books “that have captured the Canadian political imagination and contributed in a compelling and unique way to how Canadians understand a political issue, event, or personality” as a means of teaching Canadian political history and sparking political debate. The public was asked to submit their top three recommendations for the longlist, revealed July 1st, and vote on the final 12.

Shakedown, the conservative commentator’s critique of government-appointed human rights commissions and their impact on civil liberties, edged out On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years by Stevie Cameron (Seal Books/Random House, 1995), Harperland: The Politics of Control by Lawrence Martin (Penguin, 2010), and Fights of Our Lives: Elections, Leadership, and the Making of Canada by John Duffy (HarperCollins Canada, 2002) to win the popular vote.

The other eight finalists were:

1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal by Christopher Moore (McClelland & Stewart, 1997)
A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada by John Ralston Saul (Viking Canada, 2008)
The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis (M&S, 2008)
John A: The Man Who Made Us by Richard Gwyn (Random House Canada, 2007)
One-Eyed Kings: Promise & Illusion in Canadian Politics by Ron Graham (HarperCollins, 1996)
Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper’s New Conservatism by Paul Wells (M&S, 2006)
Trudeau and Our Times by Christina McCall and Stephen Clarkson (M&S, 1990)
While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World by Andrew Cohen (M&S, 2003)

The sponsoring organizations are planning an event with the contest finalists on the topic of political writing in Canada later this year.

Poetaster

And in other news, Justin Biebs has been honoured with a lifetime achievement Grammy.
Beam Me Up Scotty

Hey, I heard the title of his next book is going to be Snake Oil: How Our Government is Undermining Rational Thought in Policy Planning by Hiring Guys Like Me
Dazed and Confused

What a hollow gesture. First, this in no way recognizes the best political book of the last twenty-five years but the most popular as recollected by whomever it was out there in the public who felt inspired to vote. Second, in what way do most of these books help people to become “engaged” with the democratic system? Just because I read a biography of Cary Grant doesn’t mean I have become more engaged with the Hollywood process. Third, most of these titles were conventional choices on conventional topics. Debates? Really? What actually might help is for the Writers Trust and Samara to create the means for more writers to publish books that actually address the democratic process in a meaningful way. Why not subsidize an imprint devoted to manuscripts of merit that have been bypassed or ignored by mainstream publishers? Maybe the WT and Samara needs to prove they are more directly engaged with the democratic process first?
anonmyous

how many people who voted actually read the book?
Jeff

Dazed and confused, I know what you mean. My book, Verbatim: A Novel, came out in 2010 from a Winnipeg publisher. I finished it in 1995. It’s a book that was written based on my experiences in Hansard in NL listening to members and learning about parliamentary process. While told in a unique way (dual-columns, letters, lists of members of a fictional Canadian legislature, no narrator), it deals with how we choose to govern ourselves; but no publisher (until its acceptance in 2009) thought that was an important enough topic.

Regular publishers need to get engaged more in the process. Heck, we all do, whatever belief we have.

Jeff Bursey
Dick Chapman

There seems to be a bunch of jealous people out there! Ezra is what is needed in Canada!

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