Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Published by: W. Isbister in 1874 in 141 pages; Subjects: Confession; History / General; Religion / Christianity / Catholic; ... Read more

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In Reflections of a Siamese Twin, Saul turns his eye from a reinterpretation of the Western world to an examination of Canada itself. Caught up in crises-political, economic, and social-Canada continues to flounder, unable to solve or even really identify its problems. Instead, we assert absolute differences between ourselves: we are English or we are French; Natives or Europeans; early immigrants or newly arrived, from the east or from the west. Or we bow to ideologies and deny all differences in the name of nationalism, unity, or equality. In a startling exercise in reorientation, John Ralston Saul makes sense of Canadian myths-real, false, denied-and reconciles them with the reality of today's politics, culture, and economics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Excellent political primer for ex-colonies
I found lots in this book that speaks directly to the Australian experience.I wish our politicians here would read it.

Disappointing and full of false myths
The main problem with the book is that the author tries to artificially build a "Canadian myth", which unfortunately does not exist.The author does not realize that Canada has never been a fully sovereigncountry, altough the author timidly admits the colonial attitude of ourpolitical and economic elite.His attack on the "cult of thehero" is baseless and shallow.He does not realize that heros andgreat figures shape the destiny of a nation.A country without great menwho can be emulated by its fellows is doomed to fail. Also, his almostgratuitous bashing of carefully selected politicians and politicalideologies make us wonder if Ralston Saul is indeed a serious thinker or acheap left-leaning propagandist. The other flaw I found in the book is theoveremphasis and quasi-glorification of little trivial events in Canadianhistory that has absolutely no bearing in the balance of world history. The author pointlessly attacks the "monolithic culture" ofFrance, Britain and the U.S., without admitting the legacies of thesecultures to human progress.

Intriguing
Thought provoking book about the re-writing of Canadian history.He brought out a number of interesting angles (art, music etc.) and staying with his philosophical methodology.However, I had hoped he would back uphis "assertions" instead of stating "x" and expectingthe reader tobelieve it is true as a matter of faith.Kierkagaard he isnot, but a great writer none theless.

Psychological history
Saul's therapized perspective of cultural dynamics in the nation-state is really entertaining and a bit perverse. Canada needs a good cognative therapist, it seems, and Saul is just the guy.

Disappointing
Saul is now straining desperately to be different and provocative. This comfortable, central Canadian establishment voice seems to me largely to miss both the nature of Canada and the genuinely stupid developmentsoccurring with respect to Federal power and the senseless and dangerousethnically based politics of Native policies. ... Read more

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Examines the implications of health policy on five key areas: clinical practice, politics, economics, ethnics and law, and proposes new directions for Canadian health care. One of Canada's preeminent social thinkers, John Ralston Saul, begins the book with a reminder that public policy can be successful only when driven by the humanistic principles which fueled its formulation. Once saving money becomes a goal in itself, rather than "something we do on the side", public policy has little chance of survival. "Do We Care?" is the result of a conference entitled "Directions for Health Care: A framework for Sound Decisions" held in Toronto in October 1998. ... Read more

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In two previous widely-read volumes of essays prepared for Africa World Press (Socialist Ideology and the Struggle for Southern Africa and Recolonization and Resistance: Southern Africa in the 1990s) John S. Saul chronicled developments in Africa, and especially in southern Africa, as the continent neared century's end. Here he returns to issues raised in those volumes and projects his analysis forward into the new century and the new millennium.

Saul moves from the broadest kind of evaluation of the prospects for capitalist development in Africa as a whole to an especially detailed (and markedly sobering) reading of the present situation in post-apartheid, neo-liberal South Africa. In the course of doing so, he painstakingly confronts central questions related to the practice of war and peace and to the prospects for democracy and development throughout the continent—while also emphasizing that the problems of Africa continue to be powerfully shaped by the particular mode of the continents insertion into the wider global capitalist system. Saul's conclusion: that African countries are most unlikely to realize either substantial economic growth or a significant measure of humane development under conditions so defined. In investigating South Africa, for example, he emphasizes the recent reinforcing of social inequalities, shaped both by external and internal compromises, that has produced a particularly bleak denouement to that country's heroic struggle against apartheid. This suggests, in turn, that in South Africa, as elsewhere on the continent, the struggle for socialism -- however difficult such a socialism may be both to define and to practice -- must be part of the solution in contemporary Africa.

And yet, as Saul also argues in these pages, much of contemporary "African Studies" is of limited assistance in advancing along these lines our understanding either of Africa's difficulties or of their possible solutions. By increasingly abandoning the insights of political economy in favor of a more "realistic" political scienceon the one hand, or of a more eclectic post-modernism on the other, Africanists have too often made their separate peace with the grim process of capitalist globalization. In sharp resistance to this trend, Saul concludes with a ringing defense of the kind of radical and committed approach to an understanding of Africa that the various essays in this book themselves seek to exemplify. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more