Think Big

Praise

“Policy wonks will remember Manning’s memoirs for his parting insights on some of the issues that will dominate the Canadian agenda for the coming decade – medicare, the environment, or the future of western Canadian aspirations. Political junkies will parse Manning’s memoirs for his words on Day and for his impressions of Harper, as guarded as they may be. But Chretien should worry that it is the chapter Manning devotes to Liberal ethics over the course of his tenure that historians come to make their own.”
–Red Deer Advocate


“Political power escaped Preston Manning; political influence never did from the day he and others formed the Reform Party of Canada”
–Jeffrey Simpson, Globe and Mail:


“Manning…is one of a kind….Many Canadians have never taken him seriously. Others were with him from the start of the Reform experiment. And a few of us grew to realize, only in the last few years of his career, the magnitude of his talent and his commitment to all of this country. Think Big will appeal at least to the latter two groups, and may even give the first occasion to reconsider.”

“…disarmingly frank.…And in one devastating chapter, he sums up the ethical failures of the Liberal government more powerfully than any single précis I’ve yet read.”
–National Post


“Faith, ethics, morality –these are his themes, and he returns to them time and again as he relives past glories, settles scores and muses about the future.”

“The overarching theme of the book, as the title suggests, is thinking big. For Manning, the Alliance represented one aspect of this idea. His dream was to move beyond the Reform party’s regional base and build a political tent large enough to accommodate social and fiscal conservatives, small-d democrats and reform-oriented federalists from across the country. He never achieved that goal. He did, however, send a signal to traditional party brokers in Ontario and Quebec that the West was capable of producing a formidable party, one that may yet achieve those objectives. The effort to create the Canadian Alliance was an important step along that road.”
– Vancouver Sun


“Manning is speaking blunt truths. His party should listen.”
–Regina Leader-Post


“The literary voice is familiar, authentic, un-massaged; you sense there is an inner struggle to write from the heart without completely sacrificing a certain emotional distance he’s come to call friend. It’s the very mirror of his life in politics.”

“The loss of his political voice, taken for granted for so long, spoken on behalf of so many, was clearly the biggest defeat of all. He no longer feels so constrained.”
–Edmonton Journal


“His early years are recounted mainly to indicate he always thought big, which is not untrue, and nicely focuses the whole book. Description of the ideas and emotions that spawned the Reform Party is quick and effective.…His accounts of political campaigns are well-paced.…His dogged though fruitless efforts to learn French are wittily rendered.”
–Calgary Herald