Jack: A Life With Writers

Jack is the intimate, extraordinary story of the gregarious, irascible trailblazer who propelled Canada into a cultural coming of age and changed the business and flavour of book publishing forever. Jack McClelland, credited with bringing Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler, Margaret Laurence, Leonard Cohen, Farley Mowat, and Pierre Berton, among others, to centre stage, became famous as the hard-drinking, chain-smoking publicity hound whose flamboyant stunts, calculated to bring attention to his books, made front-page news. Jack is a vivid window into the lives and habits of this country’s writers, and a tribute to the lasting effect of one man’s passionate championship of Canada’s literature.