The late Greg Donaghy was the director of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto. His publications include Grit: The Life and Politics of Paul Martin Sr and Tolerant Allies: Canada and the United States, 1963–1968. P. Whitney Lackenbauer is a professor and Canada Research Chair in the Study of the Canadian North at Trent University. Among his more than fifty books are The Canadian Rangers: A Living History; Breaking Through? Understanding Sovereignty and Security in the Circumpolar Arctic; and China's Arctic Ambitions and What They Mean for Canada.Contributors: Stephen Azzi, Jennifer Levin Bonder, Robert Bothwell, P.E. Bryden, Norman Hillmer, Galen Roger Perras, Asa McKercher, John Milloy, Angelika Sauer, Ryan Touhey.

"Readers of People, Politics, and Purpose will likely be academics — the book surely won't make any holiday bestsellers list — but it is an entertaining and informative collection of portraits in Canadian leadership. In this way, it would be of interest to even non-specialists."- Daniel Woolf (Literary Review of Canada)

• Introduction / P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Greg Donaghy1 Canada's Diplomatic Autobiographers and the Burden of History, 1928–84 / Robert Bothwell and Norman Hillmer2 That Bouncy Man: Americans and Lester B. Pearson / Galen Roger Perras and Asa McKercher3 The Lumberjack Wars 1943–44: Canadian-American Relations at the Border and the Lives of Ordinary People / Angelika Sauer4 Competing Biographies: How James Gladstone Became Canada's First Indigenous Senator / P. Whitney Lackenbauer5 Prime Minister Lester Pearson: A Leadership Biography / Stephen Azzi6 Scandal and the Decentring of Canadian Biography: The Case of Gerda Munsinger / P.E. Bryden7 Herb Gray and the founding of the Foreign Investment Review Agency / Jennifer Levin Bonder8 The Fine Balance Intended: Allan J. MacEachen and Canadian Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1974–84 / Greg Donaghy9 A Journey Without Maps: John Hadwen in India 1979–83 / Ryan TouheyConclusion: The Academic as Activist / John MilloyContributors; Index