Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865) was one of pre-confederation Canada's best-known authors. His popular 'Sam Slick the Clockmaker' character was a household name not only in his home country, but also in England and the United States. Born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, Haliburton was not only a writer, but also a lawyer, judge, politician, and historian. He gained fame for his writing in 1836 with The Clockmaker: or, the Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville for a Halifax newspaper. It became a hit in England and was followed by six sequels. Although Haliburton tried to put Sam Slick aside and work in other genres, he found himself invariably returning to the character in his later books. This commitment to Slick resulted in a curious effacement of Haliburton's own personal gentlemanly identity, which he spent the second half of his life affirming by fostering links with socially well connected family in England. In the public imagination, however, he remained linked with Sam Slick. Based on over ten years of archival research, Richard A. Davies's scholarly biography of Haliburton is the first since 1924. It is an engaging examination of a controversial and contradictory Canadian writer and significant figure in the history of pre-confederation Nova Scotia.

Prior to the publication of The Sense of Power most studies of the Canadian movement for imperial unity focused on commercial policy and military and naval cooperation. This influential book demonstrated that the movement – which held that Canada could only become a great nation within the British Empire – was significantly influenced by its leading advocates' belief in nationalism. Carl Berger explores the emotional appeal and intellectual context of this belief, arguing that these advocates' support of imperial unity can be grasped only in terms of their commitment to certain conservative values and in relation to their conception of Canada. The Sense of Power was commended by the Toronto Star when it was first published as “entertaining as well as brilliant,” and in 2011 Ramsay Cook noted that “few first books, or for that matter few books, have made as marked an impact on the interpretation of a major theme in Canadian history.” This second edition brings to life the work's incisive analysis and its important contribution to Canadian intellectual history.