The late Greg Donaghy was the director of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto. His publications include Grit: The Life and Politics of Paul Martin Sr and Tolerant Allies: Canada and the United States, 1963–1968. P. Whitney Lackenbauer is a professor and Canada Research Chair in the Study of the Canadian North at Trent University. Among his more than fifty books are The Canadian Rangers: A Living History; Breaking Through? Understanding Sovereignty and Security in the Circumpolar Arctic; and China's Arctic Ambitions and What They Mean for Canada.Contributors: Stephen Azzi, Jennifer Levin Bonder, Robert Bothwell, P.E. Bryden, Norman Hillmer, Galen Roger Perras, Asa McKercher, John Milloy, Angelika Sauer, Ryan Touhey.

• Introduction / P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Greg Donaghy1 Canada's Diplomatic Autobiographers and the Burden of History, 1928–84 / Robert Bothwell and Norman Hillmer2 That Bouncy Man: Americans and Lester B. Pearson / Galen Roger Perras and Asa McKercher3 The Lumberjack Wars 1943–44: Canadian-American Relations at the Border and the Lives of Ordinary People / Angelika Sauer4 Competing Biographies: How James Gladstone Became Canada's First Indigenous Senator / P. Whitney Lackenbauer5 Prime Minister Lester Pearson: A Leadership Biography / Stephen Azzi6 Scandal and the Decentring of Canadian Biography: The Case of Gerda Munsinger / P.E. Bryden7 Herb Gray and the founding of the Foreign Investment Review Agency / Jennifer Levin Bonder8 The Fine Balance Intended: Allan J. MacEachen and Canadian Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1974–84 / Greg Donaghy9 A Journey Without Maps: John Hadwen in India 1979–83 / Ryan TouheyConclusion: The Academic as Activist / John MilloyContributors; Index

"Readers of People, Politics, and Purpose will likely be academics — the book surely won't make any holiday bestsellers list — but it is an entertaining and informative collection of portraits in Canadian leadership. In this way, it would be of interest to even non-specialists."- Daniel Woolf (Literary Review of Canada)