No book can give everything on a subject, but this book on the history of the NDP in a series of essays, comes pretty close. In every case of what are the most important questions currently facing the NDP this volume will ground you in the history and debate that is the most necessary to know.

What is not in the book? Well there are a few things that bear mentioning that perhaps it was not particularly fit to draw attention to in this book as they would have expanded the focus away from the party itself. These are that social democrats of Canada were never part of the Second International and its failure to prevent World War One in any formal sense. It never had to redeem or justify itself as a national party which has been the making and breaking of European Social Democratic parties.

Also social democracy, social reform and even socialism itself found a home in some of the Liberal and Conservative's most successful policies since those ideas were formulated over a hundred years ago. Why should that matter? Well it makes the failure to gain power by the NDP less tragic. It didn't need to gain power for Social Democracy to be part of the bed rock of Canadian economics and politics. As the book does point out, and everyone in Canada knows, the NDP has helped create some of the most important institutions that define Canada.

As the book points out the party development was a mixture of groups across a country that was and is very diverse. The book does not point out a way forward, but it does deal with some of its most contentious and still relevant contradictions. Why did it not have strong roots in Quebec? Why did it fail to advance in the 2017 election? what is the legacy of the Waffle? These and many more questions are answered but the answer for the way forward for the NDP is not.

It is the job of the reader to take this very important book and build that success. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Canadian politics.