+ Noah Richler Globe and Mail

"A brilliant and timely argument about Canada's complex nature and our country's best future course. What a relief it is to read something so observant about Canada...Our politicians would do well to read this book."

+ Lesley Hughes Winnipeg Free Press

"He suggests a new and believable understanding of how Canada has come to be what it is. A Fair Country has the potential to change the way Canadians see themselves forever. It offers a romantic and heroic vision, and it's a stirring and unpretentious read."

+ Jon Midgley Calgary Herald

"A consequence of Saul's vision is that Western Canada assumes greater influence in the Canadian story."

+ Haroon Siddiqui Toronto Star

"Any Canadian reading the book, or learning about its content, will think of Canada differently."

+ Aparna Sanyal Montreal Gazette

"A Fair Country is that rare work of political thought that, by virtue of its daring, is both thrilling and sobering. One reads it with the even rarer sense that it had to be written."

+ MICHAEL ADAMS

"John Ralston Saul's A Fair Country is an intellectually engaging effort to reframe our view of the relationship between aboriginal peoples and Canadians who have arrived (or been born to migrants) over the past four centuries. Saul's reading of history suggests that a more respectful, even egalitarian relationship existed between aboriginal peoples and European newcomers during the first couple of centuries before the period of de facto cultural genocide from which we are now only haltingly emerging.

Being a pollster, I naturally surveyed the opinions of my First Nations, Métis and Inuit colleagues, and found unanimity among them that this book intrigued them, and did not, as I had feared, give unintentional offence with its provocative declaration that "We are a Métis civilization."

Aboriginal peoples are one of Canada's most rapidly growing demographic groups. Now at 1.2 million, they are close to the numbers estimated to have been here when Jacques Cartier first set foot on this land. An even larger number of us (1.8 million) claim aboriginal ancestry and both these numbers have been growing in recent censuses more rapidly than new births, suggesting that we are in fact witnessing a renaissance of aboriginal identity in this country - an emerging spirit that Saul is sensing. His book's quickly achieving bestseller status also suggests he is tapping into an inchoate sense among non-aboriginal Canadians that we should be rethinking the stereotypes we learned in the history books of our youth and that are reinforced every few months by the relentless bad-news stories in the media. Maybe - maybe - Saul has begun the dialogue that will create a powerful new national narrative (the Greeks called it mythos) to reframe this relationship from one of ignorance and racism to that of equality and respect."

+ JOSEPH BOYDEN

"The jacket drawing of John Ralston Saul's A Fair Country is both simple and wonderfully complex. To anyone who recognizes the Anishnabek world view of Turtle Island, the illustration is a perfect summation of Saul's thesis. Canada is, indeed, a Métis nation. Saul's carefully constructed and illuminating argument offers us a new way of viewing ourselves, an argument with roots that stretch back centuries before Confederation. Our ties to the aboriginal, Saul argues, are far stronger than our ties to the European.

Clearly, this makes some more than a touch uncomfortable, even angry, which will certainly lead to good debate. And isn't that the point of a great book? There's no denying Saul is one of our nation's most lucid, commanding and progressive thinkers.

It's the rare book that offers its readers epiphanies that are at once startling and obvious. These Aha! moments are to be cherished. A Fair Country will change the way we view ourselves as a nation."