In the spirit of his father, Alexandre Trudeau revisits China to put a ground-breaking journey into a fresh, contemporary context. In 1960, Pierre Trudeau and Jacques Hébert, a labour lawyer and a journalist from Montréal, travelled to China in the midst of the Great Leap Forward. In 1968, when Two Innocents in Red China, Trudeau and Hébert's sardonic look at a third world country's first steps into the rest world, was released in English, Trudeau had become prime minister of Canada. "It seemed to us imperative that the citizens of our democracy should know more about China," Trudeau wrote in the foreword. Four decades later, China's emergence as an economic and military heavyweight beckoned Trudeau's journalist son Alexandre to retrace his father's footsteps and add additional material to the book. The result is a thought-provoking new perspective on the Canadian classic that helped open China to the world.

In the spirit of his father, Alexandre Trudeau revisits China to put a ground-breaking journey into a fresh, contemporary context. In 1960, Pierre Trudeau and Jacques Hébert, a labour lawyer and a journalist from Montréal, travelled to China in the midst of the Great Leap Forward. In 1968, when Two Innocents in Red China, Trudeau and Hébert’s sardonic look at a third world country’s first steps into the rest world, was released in English, Trudeau had become prime minister of Canada. “It seemed to us imperative that the citizens of our democracy should know more about China,” Trudeau wrote in the foreword. Four decades later, China’s emergence as an economic and military heavyweight beckoned Trudeau’s journalist son Alexandre to retrace his father’s footsteps and add additional material to the book. The result is a thought-provoking new perspective on the Canadian classic that helped open China to the world.

To this day, China remains an enigma. Ancient, complex and fast moving, it defies easy understanding. Ever since he was a boy, Alexandre Trudeau has been fascinated by this great county. Recounting his experiences in the China of recent years, Trudeau visits artists and migrant workers, townspeople and rural farmers. Often accompanied by a young Chinese journalist, Vivien, he explores realities caught in time between the China of our memories and the thrust of progress. The China he seeks out lurks in hints and shadows. It flickers dimly amidst all the glare and noise. The people he encounters along the way give up but small secrets yet each revelation comes as a surprise that jolts us from our preconceived ideas and forces us to challenge our most secure notions. Barbarian Lost, Trudeau’s first book, is an insightful and witty account of the dynamic changes going on right now in China, as well as a look back into the deeper history of this highly codified society. On the ground with the women and men who make China tick., Trudeau shines new light on the country as only a traveller with his storytelling abilities could.

Dirk de Vos’s journey, which has taken him across continents, within dynamic cultures, and into direct experience within divergent ideologies, originated in the land of apartheid, South Africa, and ended in the far north of another continent. Cobblestones follows the path of this personal journey while embarking on a journey of political discovery as well. With understanding, rooted in his childhood in apartheid South Africa, and spanning work experience in law, multinational business, government, and academics, de Vos is uniquely positioned to comprehend the origins and nature of transformative and manipulative political processes, especially as they bear on the growing importance and problématique of the interplay between human rights and multiculturalism. A central argument that emerges in this intricate mix of personal experience and sociopolitical analysis echoes Gene Veith’s view of political postmodernism as rejecting of individual identity. This results in a collectivist mentality in which individual claims are lost in the demands of the group. de Vos expands on such an idea, demonstrating its origins, addressing the results of social experiments driven by such beliefs, and analyzing the influence of groupism on recent politics in Europe, Africa, and North America. Cobblestones is certain to evoke important, expansive thought and discussion among readers and students alike.

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) has had an intriguing relationship with China that is not as widely known as it should be. Although he never visited the country, he played a significant role in speaking for the Chinese people both at home and abroad. After his death, his Chinese adventures did not come to an end, for his body of works continued to travel through China in translation throughout the twentieth century. Were Twain alive today, he would be elated to know that he is widely studied and admired there, and that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn alone has gone through no less than ninety different Chinese translations, traversing China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Looking at Twain in various Chinese contexts—his response to events involving the American Chinese community and to the Chinese across the Pacific, his posthumous journey through translation, and China's reception of the author and his work, Mark Twain in China points to the repercussions of Twain in a global theater. It highlights the cultural specificity of concepts such as "race," "nation," and "empire," and helps us rethink their alternative legacies in countries with dramatically different racial and cultural dynamics from the United States.

In October 2015, Canadians elected a prime minister who promised to rehabilitate Canada's reputation globally. Justin Trudeau, "the free world's best hope" according to Rolling Stone Magazine, cultivated his image as a staunch advocate for a generous, liberal international order: maintaining peace, helping migrants and refugees, seeking dialogue and enhancing relations with other countries, and reengagement with the UN. Foreign affairs expert Jocelyn Coulon had a front row seat as a key Liberal party advisor during the election and early days of the Trudeau government. Coulon describes the ambitious policy proposals of candidate Trudeau. He analyses some key actions of Trudeau the prime minister. What he sees is more of the same approach that came from the ten years of Harper government. Coulon focuses on the Trudeau campaign to win a UN Security Council seat in 2020 — a campaign he sees as doomed to failure. He describes how an election commitment to re-engage Canadian forces in peacekeeping yielded a carefully-developed plan to send troops to Africa — which Trudeau and his closest advisors killed at the last minute. In other areas, like relations with China, the United States and Russia, looking good in the media triumphs over careful policy making to advance Canadian interests. Readers interested in Justin Trudeau's approach to international affairs will find this a timely, engaging, and revealing book.

Pierre Trudeau and most of his contemporaries at home and abroad are now dead. This book offers reflections on Canadian foreign, trade, and defence policies from interviews conducted more than three decades ago with key policy makers, diplomats, and military officers in the Trudeau government and of that era. The interviews are informative and revealingly frank. There is much on the enormous difficulties in dealing with the United States, Europe, NATO, the Soviet Union, and Communist China in an era dominated by the Cold War. There are also personal insights into Trudeau himself – a man of great “esprit,” who initially seemed destined to change Canadian policy in a dramatic fashion. Over time, however, this was not to be, and his government policies reverted towards the norm. A unique resource, Trudeau’s World adds immeasurably to our understanding of the Trudeau era. It also has much to tell us about Canada and the world from 1968 to 1984.