A featured article is Charlotte Gray's review of Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of A Mining Superpower by savant and MP Charlie Angus. There's a timely republication of Jeffrey Collins 2019 essay on Timothy Sayles' history of NATO, as well as Tim Cook's review of Michael Nieberg's After the Fall, a study of the Vichy crisis of 1940 and how it impacted the Anglo-American alliance.
Beth Haddon reviews Flora!, the memoirs of politician Flora Macdonald (with Geoffrey Stevens), and Michael Taube reviews Barry K. Wilson's life of Mackenzie Bowell -- noted here first, may I say. And Sandra Martin explores the oddities of cultural critic and assisted-suicide advocate John Hofsess.
J.D.M. Stewart reviews Robert Wardhaugh's and Barry Ferguson's new history of the Rowell-Sirois Commission, the 1930s investigation of the trials and tribulations of confederation. Dan Dunsky considers the state of Canadian relations with China through three recent books, and Yuen Pao Woo considers Hollowed Halls, a new book that argues both Canadian foreign policy and the study of it are in the doldrums.
Speaking of doldrums, Jack Granatstein starts his review of two new books in Canadian military history by declaring, "As I have observed in these pages before, military history in our universities is in terminal decline." I found this hard to accept the other time he said that -- of all the understudied fields in Canadian history, I doubt military history would make the top ten -- but at least a couple of of our impressive corps of academic military historians do get their books reviewed in his vigorous take-no-prisoners style.
So, reviewing of Canadian history may be struggling, but not so much at the LRC.
Update, March 24: Helen Webberley responds from Australia:
I would really like to read Robert Wardhaugh's and Barry Ferguson's history of the Rowell-Sirois Commission, the 1930s investigation of the trials and tribulations of Confederation. Firstly I know the beginning of the Confederation process was uncertain, but by the 1930s, most of the issues should have been long sorted out.
Secondly the Australian states and territories Federated, after a long period of debate, all on the one day:1st January 1901. Were the issues in the two British countries similar?
The Wardlaugh-Ferguson book The Rowell-Sirois Commission and the Remaking of Canadian Federalism is available for order from here -- and/or some large Australian libraries should eventually have copies.
Australia must be a more peaceable kingdom than Canada, constitutionally speaking! Far from being "sorted out," contestation over the issues has never stopped here. In the 1930s, the Rowell-Sirois problem was that the federal government held most of the taxation power and hence the revenues needed to address the depression, but the provinces had constitutional authority over most of the fields where spending was needed.
Shared-cost programs do now exist, but this is very much still a live Canadian issue: today the federal government has a plan to subsidize daycare nationally, but it can only do so by striking deals province by province. Medicare has long worked the same way, and no doubt the newly-announced commitment to adding dental care to medicare will require new federal-provincial negotiations. And wait until we are ready to abolish the monarchy -- what would be the price of provincial consent for that?
Were the issues similar in Canada and Australia? It strikes me not very much, but I wish I knew a good book on Australian federation that would help with that. And, of course, as the author of the authoritative current account of Canadian confederation, I'd be glad to come and help Australia with that question for a modest retainer and some plane tickets.
