Sexual sizzle, media hype, and the madness of crowds – Trudeaumania might be dismissed as Canada’s crazy sixties’ moment, were it not that there was method in the mania.
Prelude: Kiss Power!
Introduction: Sex and the Body Politic
1 The Sixties, Modified
2 Constructing the Peaceable Kingdom: Nationalism and Canadian Identity
3 Celebrating the Simunation: The Centennial and Expo 67
4 “A Liberal to Watch”: Pre-Mania Pierre
5 Coy Wonder: How to Win a Leadership Race without Even Running
6 Pop Goes the Image: A Mod Candidate for a Mod Canada
7 Reel to Real I: The Liberal Leadership Campaign
8 The Just Society, Participatory Democracy, and Other Platformities
9 Reel to Real II: The Federal Election Campaign
10 Split Electorate: The Political Work of Mod
Conclusion: After the Love-In – The Lingering Effects of Peak Nationalism
Notes
Index
Paul Litt is a professor in the Department of History and the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. His research explores the intersection of culture, nationalism, and the mass media in twentieth-century Canada. He is the author of several books, including The Muses, the Masses and the Massey Commission and Elusive Destiny: The Political Vocation of John Napier Turner.
This well-written and well-researched book is the best on the
Trudeau phenomenon. Summing Up: Essential.
*CHOICE, April 2017*
[A]s Paul Litt ably shows in this magnificent study of a pivotal
moment, the original Trudeaumania was much more than throngs of
adoring fans, a celebrity politician, and an election victory …
This book looks beyond the psychedelic colours and trippy slogans
of the 1968 campaign into a much larger and more profound set of
cultural and ideational shifts that were occurring in Canada in the
late 1960s. Doing so through the lens of the Trudeau moment – for
which there seems to be a certain nostalgia today – gives shape and
structure to what might have been, in less able hands, a somewhat
inchoate inventory of cultural crises. Paul Litt has performed a
bit of magic here, giving shape and substance to the smoke and
mirrors of an ephemeral 1960s culture.
*Canadian Journal of History*
Unlike other literature that examines the controversial leader,
Trudeaumania probes beyond Trudeau’s identity, investigating his
public image within the context of the 1960s … This account of
Trudeaumania is the best study of the phenomenon to date. …
Trudeaumania is a must-read for scholars interested in the sixties,
counterculture and protest movements, Canadian nationalism, as well
as federal politics and Pierre Trudeau.
*American Review of Canadian Studies*
By showing that Trudeau’s first election was not the overwhelming
mandate that those still under the Trudeaumania spell might recall,
Litt provides a solid antidote to rose-colored views of Canada’s
’60s and one of its most iconic leaders.
*Publishers Weekly, October 1, 2016*
Litt’s Trudeaumania is about sex, sizzle and popular culture. Sex,
he writes, had become the central obsession of a pop culture, which
'exploited its power to titillate and sensationalize. Trudeaumania
derived much of its sizzle from the sex-obsessiveness and sexism of
the time.' It was the time of sexual liberation, Beatlemania and
Andy Warhol … both Trudeaumania books are well researched and well
written. If you’re more interested in the cultural phenomenon that
was Trudeaumania, that’s what Litt offers.
*Winnipeg Free Press, November 1, 2016*
…it is Paul Litt’s book, simply titled Trudeaumania, that fully
embraces the idea of Trudeau as the saviour Canadians had been
hankering for in the wake of upheavals catalyzed by separatism and
the’60s. Unquestionably, he arrived on the scene at a propitious
time.
*The Toronto Star, November 20, 2016*
Nearly a generation after his death, Liberals still speak of the
age of Trudeau. The facts are even better than the myth.
*Blacklock's Reporter*
Litt's advantage in this battle of competing interpretations is
that his perspective is able to accommodate many factors, rather
than emphasizing just one as Wright does … Trudeau's brilliance was
that he could master the lecture hall and the TV screen.
Appreciating such multiple talents fits more easily into Litt’s
account of him than Wright's.
*Joint review of "Trudeaumania" by Paul Litt and "Trudeaumania" by
Robert Wright, Canada's History*
We may be living through Trudeaumania 2.0 right now, but there are
still opportunities to dig deeper into what the first version was
all about.
*The Hill Times, August 8, 2016*
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