Peter C. Newman’s poison pen has lodged itself in the viscera of the Canadian elite. In Mavericks, he has selected his most evocative writing about those Canadians who run against the grain on the grandest scale, including Conrad Black, Garth Drabinsky, the Eaton boys, Louis Riel, Robert Campeau and Peter Nygard. In the world of politics, he takes on Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, René Lévesque, Bill Vander Zalm and Lucien Bouchard. He also includes a vignette about John Diefenbaker from his book Renegade in Power, which Robert Fulford at Saturday Night said “transformed political books and to some extent political writing in this country.” Mavericks, together with its companion volume, Heroes, makes up the ultimate Newman, capturing his best and most provocative words during a career that spans more than fifty years.

In Heroes, Peter C. Newman gives us incisive analysis of dozens of Canadians, past and present, who have defined this country, drawing on fifty years of writing. He writes about iconic Canadians such as Terry Fox, Margaret Atwood and June Callwood. From the political ring, he discusses the legacies of Pierre Trudeau, Christina McCall and Lester B. Pearson, among others. And from the world of business, Newman includes some of the most active entrepreneurs on the planet, including Jimmy Pattison and Paul Desmarais. The grand literary master at the top of his game shares the inside stories of these pivotal characters whose lives and times set examples for all of us.