Book on pierre trudeau biography

John English done a brilliant job. Spen Cer. Good, but wow is it detailed and long. Learned a lot and enjoyed the ride but if your just looking for an overview this is not it. Sean Curley. The second volume of John English's account of the life of Canada's most magnetic and controversial prime minister is another well-done piece of writing, though at times one wonders if English has not bitten off more than might be readily put into a single volume.

The first volume covered the period from Trudeau's birth in to his being designated as prime minister in Here, English opts to cover the entirety of Trudeau's ministry in a single volume -- and, indeed, Volume 2's date subtitle might be better-described asbecause the period from to the subject's death in warrants a scant 30 of its pages of text supplemented by another or so pages of notes, etc, and some photos.

Trudeau took office insucceeding Lester B. Pearson now a legend, at the time considered something of a muddled achiever as PM, despite his storied ministerial career, an assessment that now seems kind of baffling given all that he accomplished in his five yearsand immediately took the country by storm with his sheer force of personality. English faithfully catalogues the ups and downs of the year period where he held the prime ministerial office for 15 years, broken up by the 9-month tenure of the ill-fated Joe Clark -- the heady early days of Liberal reform, the October Crisis where a man who has gone down in history as a civil libertarian took a hard line on terrorismthe struggles to navigate the economic doldrums of the s, and the return to power in the s that brought the patriation of the constitution, the creation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the oft-maligned National Energy Program.

Sometimes I don't think English's presentation of all the details is optimal. If you didn't have a strong understanding of what the National Energy Program actually was going into this, I'm not sure how much this would enlighten you. From my perspective, the most novel elements of the governmental picture address Trudeau's foreign policy, an area that doesn't get nearly as much mention in writeups of his career and the public memory as his domestic policies.

Relating to my earlier comment about the amount of material, there are times as well where it feels like English is only perfunctorily sketching many of the key supporting figures in Trudeau's government and elsewhere. And then, of course, there is the book on pierre trudeau biography of Trudeau's personal life, which captivated Canadians and, as English shows, international media at the time, and has remained a subject of discussion since.

Unlike any PM before or since, Trudeau mingled freely with celebrities and intellectuals, and maintained a fascinatingly diverse social life where such figures as Barbra Streisand and Margot Kidder feature prominently at different stages of his life the Streisand relationship, especially, is a rather fascinating what if? Perhaps most importantly there is, of course, the story of Trudeau's marriage to Margaret Sinclair and the raising of their three sons.

While not perfect, this is a well-researched and fairly thorough account of the Trudeau years, a period where Pierre redefined the country, to a very substantial extent. And with his son Justin now leading the country in his own right, there's more reason than ever to revisit his formative years, too. Jill Campbell-Miller. The insane length of time that it too me to read this book reflects in no way on its quality.

It is an excellent book, rich in both personal details and political history. Not surprisingly, the content was not quite as fast-paced as the first one, as Trudeau's early life as a rich intellectual playboy, then superstar politician, is pretty hard to beat. The reality of political life that this book documents can be a bit slow-going at times - the constitutional battles, the oil crisis and stagflation, the no-so-riveting arguments over wage and price controls.

Luckily, Trudeau was an interesting enough character that even these moments usually have some Trudeau-ism within them - especially in the bitter disputes between Levesque and Trudeau. One question that I did not feel was answered is why there seemed to be such a gap between the fiercely political Trudeau of the 50s and 60s - the one who based his views on a firmly classical education, and who had carefully studied economics and politics at Harvard and the LSE - and the at times almost non-views that seemed to take their place in the late s and s.

English makes the case that Trudeau became so absorbed in his quest for patriation, and then later his quest for international peace and development, that he simply left the other issues to his cabinet. While this may be, it does not really answer the why of it. An excellent book, but one I would definitely recommend in e-book format.

Its size made it impossible to transport, and difficult to read in bed or on a couch very comfortably. Volume 2 of the biography. Much more absorbing than volume 1 which I also enjoyed. Full treatment of all the major battles of his years in power; the October Crisis, NEP, the constitutional fight and all the elections won and lost.

His duel with Rene Levesque is given its proper due and so is his wild social life and in particular the stressful years with Margaret are handled well. English could perhaps have revealed more of Trudeau's House of Commons repartee which is how many of us got to see him in action. Very interesting were the inside dealings in the Liberal Party in early after the Conservative Party fell on a House vote.

Does Trudeau return or not? Of course we know he did and took power and helped defeat the Quebec referendum and bring about patriation of the Constitution and a Charter of Rights. But what were the tradeoffs? If Donald McDonald had taken over at this point would the Liberal Party today be an attractive voting option for only urban Ontarians and Quebeckers?

English could have explored questions like this. Still, a marvelous job. A nuanced, captivating, and engrossing biography about the political life of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau a legendary politician who combined the debonaire style of JFK with the transformative stature of FDR and his impact in shaping modern Canada: Trudeaumania of the s; official bilingualism and the policy of multiculturalism; the independent, "third way" policy of rapprochement during the Cold War; the controversial use of the War Measures Act to combat militant, violent Quebecois separatist activities during the FLQ crisis of the early s; the equally-controversial National Energy Program NEP ; the political feud with the separatist Quebec provincial government of Rene Levesque a one-time colleague during much of the s and early s; the repatriation of the Canadian Constitution from Great Britain; and the push for a Charter of Rights.

Love or hate him, Trudeau, during his political life, was one of the most dominant figures in Canadian politics: a legacy, as one of his biographers wrote, to this day "haunts us still. Greg Perowne. For one of the Canadian greats, Trudeau was a shockingly flawed prime minister. English portrays him as a man who frequently lost his drive, neglected numerous portfolios and was a hard man to work along with over an extended period of time.

Yet Trudeau chose his passions well, and his insistence on patriating the constitution, neutralizing the Quebec separatist movement and transforming Canada into a bilingual federation left such deep and lasting effects on Canada. English gets somewhat bogged down in this second volume. The narrative is often flat with lots of detail around his various parliamentary and foreign initiatives.

Sadly, it reads like a laundry list of facts and loses some of the build and excitement such complicated and high stakes political manoeuvring surely entailed. One can't help but admire Trudeau's resistance to political tides. Bismarck said that the job of a statesman is to grab God's cloak as he walks by, but Trudeau book on pierre trudeau biography did that.

He had a few issues he cared out, a couple of core convictions, and he never wavered from them while being willing to compromise on those matters he considered inessential. Another lesson to draw from this work is how much more Trudeau made of his briefer second term in power than his first, much longer one It's a pity that political leaders so often forget that power isn't just to be won or preserved - it's meant to be used.

Both a political and a personal memoir, the author strikes a careful balance between including as much interesting information as possible and overwhelming the reader with detail. The author's summaries and conclusions are interesting and insightful and without a doubt, will be contested, particularly west of Ontario and within Quebec.

I felt I got a sense of what it was like to live through some of these times - how scary it must have been to live through the October Crisis I was only 3 and don't remember muchand how frantic the constitutional debates became. I do remember those! Although this book provides a detailed account of Pierre Trudeau's time as Prime Minister, it offers few insights into the man himself.

Apart from a chapter on his relationship with Margaret, it says little about his life outside the office. I was also disappointed that it didn't to into greater detail about his life after leaving office. More than a decade gets a few paragraphs. In all, the first volume was more informative about Trudeau's life and thinking. This second volume of Pierre Trudeau deals with his life, mainly political, from until his death in You have to like politics, which I do, to enjoy this book.

It also deals with his relationships with his wife and various other ladies as well as his children. Overall a very interesting book, but I doubt if we will ever completely understand this complex and all too human man. Sam Beckwith. A mightily impressive biography, even if the second volume, detailing Trudeau's time in power, is oddly less compelling than the first, which deals mainly with his life before politics.

There were also some strange editing errors in the edition I read, with one passage repeated twice in the same chapter. Recommended all the same. Grant Dawson. This comprehensive but never dull book is the second volume of the biography of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. It follows him through his time as Prime Minister and the years afterward with a compassionate but balanced review of his public and private life.

For anyone interested in the forces that have shaped our country, this is worth a read. More reviews and ratings. Volume One takes us from his birth in to his election as leader in Born into a wealthy family in Montreal, Trudeau excelled at the best schools, graduating as a lawyer with conservative, nationalist and traditional Catholic views.

But always conscious of his French-English heritage, desperate to know the outside world, and an adventurer to boot, he embarked on a pilgrimage of discovery—first to Harvard and the Sorbonne, then to the London School of Economics and, finally, on a trip through Europe, the Middle East, India and China. He was a changed man when he returned—socialist in his politics, sympathetic to labour, a friend to activists and writers in radical causes.

Suddenly and surprisingly, he went to Ottawa for two mostly unhappy years as a public servant in the Privy Council Office. He frequently shocked his colleagues when, on the brink of a Quebec election, for example, he departed for New York or Europe on an extended tour. Yet in the s and 60s, he wrote the most important articles outlining his political philosophy.

And there were the remarkable relationships with friends, women and especially his mother whom he lived with until he was middle-aged. He wrote to them always, exchanging ideas with the men, intimacies with the women, especially in these early years, and lively descriptions of his life. He even recorded his in-depth psychoanalysis in Paris. Clever and cunning.

Czarny Pies. Jim Zubricky. Author 0 books 6 followers. As an American, I am intrigued and fascinated by all things Canadian. One of the things that intrigues me is this period in history: as we were contending with President Nixon and this surge of conservatism, Canadians were enjoying a period of liberalism with Prime Minister Trudeau.

I wanted to learn more about him and his times, and that's what brought me to this book. This was a little bit more challenging to read - primarily because I didn't know who the people that the author talked about were but with a lot of help from Wikipedia, I got that sorted out. I think that if I was more well-versed in 20th century Canadian history, it would have been much faster for me to read.

That being said, the first part of the book was a little rough, and I had to put the book down for a few months and come back to it. But I'm glad I did - it was very cool to see how Pierre Trudeau came to his first term as Prime Minister from his beginnings in Montreal. I'm excited to read part two! Dubi Kanengisser. This is, I think, the first actual biography I ever read, so this is one of those cases where I feel weird writing a review because I'm not familiar with a genre.

So take this with a grain of salt. Trudeau is an incredibly interesting character. His life story has so many twists and turns and often doesn't seem to make sense. The access John English had here to Trudeau's own private and meticulous archive of letters, drafts and clippings adds much welcome insight into the psyche of this remarkable man, especially during his early years.

Supplementing his extensive public writing with the even more extensive correspondence he had had throughout his life with a number of women adds a new perspective to this oft-told story, and English does this with flourish. He weaves the historical story of this exciting period in Quebec and Canada as a whole into the personal story in a way that pulls it away from the pages of the history books and brings it to life.

One issue that bothered me is the treatment of women in this book. Each and every one. Even just the random women who try to get close to Trudeau or other charismatic people. Were all these women "beautiful"? Was this characterization really necessary? It's a small thing, but in an otherwise sensitive depiction of the inner worlds of the characters in the book, this really stuck out like a sore thumb.

The story of Trudeau is fascinating for me because of the parallels I could draw from it to my own personal obsession - Israel's relations with its Arab minority. I found the emphasis here on the development of Trudeau's thinking about democratic values and the relationship between Canada and Quebec was truly enlightening when considering where Israel and Canada diverged in their treatment of their respective national-religious-linguistic minorities.

This is something I hope to give more thought to in the future, but this book certainly provided a good starting point for this book on pierre trudeau biography for me. Probably a 4. Enjoyed learning about his early years of which I know little and the book was just staring to get really interesting so can't wait for the second volume. I suspect one I will read again to really take all the points in.

I received both volume's of John English's Trudeau biography for Christmas a number of years ago. As is often the case, it sat on the shelf until I felt like I it was the right time to read. I picked up this first volume hoping it might provide some insight into our current election. Volume 1 starts with PET's childhood and ends at the leadership conference in which he wins the Liberal leadership and becomes Prime Minister.

In many ways, the political environment of the s was much more difficult than today. The federal government and the provinces where in a full-on fight about federal and provincial rights which wasn't solved until the repatriation of the constitution in Trudeau and others were fighting for a Bill of Rights for Canadians to ensure individual human rights.

And of course the Quiet Revolution was underway, though it seems to me, not so quietly. Already in the s there had been home grown terrorist attacks in favour of an independent French state in North America. What does this tell about the election? In the s they were grappling with issues that would define us as a nation, with politicians whose skill on all sides remains unparalled in Canadian politics.

It makes this election look lacklustre at best and the candidates juveniles at worst. From his childhood, PET was interested in a life of public service, as a politician. How do we groom such people? Those who have an authentic interest in public life? I'll end with something PET told Peter Newman then of the Toronto Star when he was reforming the Criminal Code: "Justice, should be regarded more and more as a department planning for the society of tomorrow, not merely the government's legal advisor Society is throwing up problems all the time - divorce, abortions, family planning, pollution, etc.

Seeing a man come together is an incredible sight. Very few of us actually manage to become our best selves. Not to mention the heroic aspects of throwing oneself against the world to reach at some accommodation with the fraudulent sham that surrounds us. Such a process is all the more worthy if the man changes through this journey. John English solves this puzzle by digging deep into heretofore sealed private papers and shows us why the young Trudeau was so remarkable.

Namely, two factors are at play here: 1 young Pierre went around the world and studied in large parts of it and 2 he had an ability to reject idiotic arguments. I believe this largely gave him eyes clear enough to see the Quebec separatist movement for the lie it was and why the book on pierre trudeau biography solution was best to unite such a diverse country.

If you believe, as I do, that our upbringing manifests itself loudly in our day-to-day, his argument is clear and convincing. The author never drifts into hagiography nor does he vilify needlessly. And in an era where academics have lost their way in absurd trivialities, this is a welcome effort. Paul Nelson. The amount of research and analysis is astounding; English gained access to more of Trudeau's private papers than any previous biographer.

The coverage of Trudeau as a budding left-wing intellectual is remarkable, although scant coverage is offered to Trudeau's years as a backbencher in the House of Commons and Trudeau's rise as Lester Pearson's Minister of Justice. This is lamentable because Trudeau made fundamental changes in the lives of Canadians as Justice Minister. Moreover, Trudeau's personal life does not receive the promised coverage in the second half of the book.

Trudeau's fabled relationships with women, for example, are covered more in depth early but less so in the second half of the book, where the volume seems to bog down in professional detail. John English had an impossible task: trying to clarify Trudeau the man vs. Trudeau the legend. English did this about as well as anyone could, and did so with a fairly remarkable and readable first volume.

However, the most enigmatic figure in Canadian history remains just that. Eric Schultz. For lovers of Canadian history and politics or just biographies in general this book is a great read. In covering the man who would go on to become such a polarizing figure among Canadians throughout his career the author does a careful job in neither fawning over or being unjustly critical of the future Prime Minister.

Rightly calling out Trudeau on his intricacies, both good and bad, English paints a fully-formed picture of his subject during the formative years of his life and onto adulthood as he worked to find his place in the world. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a one of a kind individual and John English certainly does him justice in Volume One of this biography.

Greg Perowne.

Book on pierre trudeau biography

Trudeau is a fascinating character, and English does a good job in portraying why he was so polarizing throughout his life. I can relate to Trudeau's youth in many ways growing up in a bilingual Montreal family and with extensive international experience in my 20's, but even then I'm not sure I'd get along with him at all were I to meet him in his late 20's today.

However, I respect a man who is able to reflect on his own opinions and have the strength of mind to change positions on significant issues. It is also interesting to read Trudeau's vision of Quebec and Canada's place in the world which resonates strongly with my own view, considering the influences in his youth and early adulthood were heavily religious and from the francophone sphere vs.

Looking forward to learning in more detail how he puts it all together in practice as prime minister in Volume Two. Comprehensive biography of Trudea's life up until his assumption of the Liberal leadership in The biographer's access to the Trudeau family and friends, as well as Trudeau's personal papers led to a whole picture of Trudeau, both his strengths and failings.

The book reveals a complicated but brilliant man who could be mercurial and whimsical, and at the same time he displayed amazing charisma also appear arrogant and aloof. I'm looking forward to reading volume 2, and in particular, the coverage of the FLQ crisis, the imposition of the War Measures Act, and "Just watch me. John English is a fantastic writer.