There was no Reichstag fire. No storming of the Bastille. No mutiny on the Aurora. Instead, the mediocre have seized power without firing a single shot. They rose to power on the tide of an economy where workers produce assembly-line meals without knowing how to cook at home, give customers instructions over the phone that they themselves don’t understand, or sell books and newspapers that they never read.

Canadian intellectual juggernaut Alain Deneault has taken on all kinds of evildoers: mining companies, tax-dodgers, and corporate criminals. Now he takes on the most menacing threat of all: the mediocre.

Alain Deneault
Alain Deneault was born in the Outaouais region of Quebec. His interests lie in nineteenth-century German and twentieth-century French philosophy, as well as the work of Georg Simmel. Deneault’s research and writing practices are diverse and often collaborative, focusing on how international financial and legal agreements increasingly foster the interests of “stateless” transnational corporations over those of nation states and the interests of their human communities.
Fred A. Reed
International journalist and award-winning literary translator Fred A. Reed is also a respected specialist on politics and religion in the Middle East. After several years as a librarian and trade union activist at the Montreal Gazette, Reed began reporting from Islamic Iran in 1984, visiting the Islamic Republic thirty times since then. He has also reported extensively on Middle Eastern affairs for La Presse, CBC Radio-Canada and Le Devoir. Reed is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Award for translation.
Robin Philpot
Montreal-based author and translator Robin Philpot attained degrees in history and literature from the University of Toronto, taught English and History in Africa, and returned to Canada to pursue a career in Quebec politics. He sparked public controversy with the on-line release of his book, Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies Hard.

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Born in Indiana, Catherine Browne grew up in Montreal. She has a degree in history from the Université de Provence. A professional translator since the 1980s, for the past fifteen years she has conducted guided tours designed to provide Montrealers with new ways of thinking about their city’s past and present. In Canada: A New Tax Haven (coming Spring 2015), she helped write the chapter on the history of Canadian banks in the Caribbean.

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