Reviews for Retracing the past

The average rating for Retracing the past based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-25 00:00:00 Bart Collins This was the textbook for my Canadian Studies Class: A Comparison of Canadian and the American Cultures. My professor chose Grabb and Curtis's book because their proposed thesis which seeks to explain why Canada and the US are so similar, The Deep Structures Thesis, is interesting from a cultural perspective and because they include a dissection of other theories, Lipset's Origins Thesis and Hartz's Fragment Thesis, that were instrumental to their idea and our topic. I have to agree, although some of the other hypothesis introduced in the class, like Careless's Metropolitan Thesis and Turner's Frontier Thesis, I found much more interesting. In any case, Regions Apart is an easy read that provides numerous statistics and culture points to prove the authors' belief that there are, and have only ever been, three regions in North America (and of course like all their predecessors Mexico does not exist in the scope of this premise): English Canada-Northern, Quebec, and the Southern United States. Of course, certain historical events have occurred and so forth so English Canada and the Northern US are a bit different now, which changes the three regions into four. I can't say that I agree entirely with this, or with their Deep Structures argument, because there are too many glaring holes but I don't think they are completely out in left field. I recommend this for anyone who wonders what makes Canada and the United States different (if they are at all different). Overall, a good and informative read. Side note: on page 261 there is a reference about Canada's "new" Prime Minister Paul Martin that made me giggle.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-06-10 00:00:00 John Locallo This book is basically a collection of articles dated up to 1877. Not very interesting, unless you're extremely interested in the personal sides of some stories you may have heard about developing people back then.