In this brilliant and thoroughly engaging work Ian McKay sets out to revamp the history of Canadian socialism. Drawing on models of left politics in Marx and Gramsci, he outlines a fresh agenda for exploration of the Canadian left.

In rejecting the usual paths of sectarian or sentimental histories, McKay draws on contemporary cultural theory to argue for an inventive strategy of “reconnaissance.” This important, groundbreaking work combines the highest standards of scholarship, and a broad knowledge of current debates in the field. Rebels, Reds, Radicals is the introduction to McKay’s definitive multi-volume work on the history of Canadian socialism (volume one, Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People’s Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920 is now available).

IAN McKAY is a Halifax historian. He has an M.A. in history from the University of Warrick in England, and a PhD from Dalhousie University. He is the author of the seminal study The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentienth-Century Nova Scotia (1994).

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