This is the story of George McCullagh who was one of Canada's most influential media moguls. And I'd never heard of him. He bought The Globe and The Mail and Empire and merged them into the Globe and Mail when he was 31 years old. A high school dropout, had already made millions on the stock market. It was just the beginning of the meteoric rise of a man widely expected to one day be prime minister of Canada. But the charismatic McCullagh had a dark side. Dogged by the bipolar disorder that destroyed his political ambitions and eventually killed him, he was all but written out of history

Mark Bourrie has given us an well written book that makes Canadian history come alive. The writing put me right in the time and place of the story. I learned a lot about Canada that I had been unaware of: fascist sensibilities, CBC as both regulator and broadcaster, Ontario politics, and that a Canadian is credited with shooting down the Red Baron. In today's multi-media/social media world, it is astonishing to reflect on the power of a newspaper editor.

The promotion for the book highlights Mr. McCullagh's mental health issues, but these are not really explored in any depth. There is a lot about what Mr. McCullagh did and who he knew; it took a long time to get to who he was as a person. I would have liked more about his personal life, but maybe there was no information for Mr. Bourrie to draw on. ( )