Andrew Potter

“A totally real, genuine, authentic book about why you shouldn’t believe any of those words. And it’s genuinely good.” — Gregg Easterbrook, author of Sonic Boom Exploring a number of trends in our popular culture—from Sarah Palin to Antiques Roadshow, organic food to the indignation over James Frey’s memoir—Andrew Potter follows his successful Nation of Rebels with a new book that argues that our pursuit of the authentic is fraught with irony and self-defeat. Readers of The Paradox of Choice or Bowling Alone will find many enlightening insights in The Authenticity Hoax, which is, in the words of Tom de Zengotita (Mediated), “the kind of criticism that changes minds.”

How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves

The Authenticity Hoax

Joseph Heath

In this wide-ranging and perceptive work of cultural criticism, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter shatter the most important myth that dominates much of radical political, economic, and cultural thinking. The idea of a counterculture -- a world outside of the consumer-dominated world that encompasses us -- pervades everything from the antiglobalization movement to feminism and environmentalism. And the idea that mocking or simply hoping the "system" will collapse, the authors argue, is not only counterproductive but has helped to create the very consumer society radicals oppose. In a lively blend of pop culture, history, and philosophical analysis, Heath and Potter offer a startlingly clear picture of what a concern for social justice might look like without the confusion of the counterculture obsession with being different.

Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture

Nation of Rebels

With the popularity of Michael Moore, Adbusters magazineand Naomi Klein's No Logo, it's hard to ignore the growing tide ofresistance to our corporatecontrolled world. But do these vocal opponents of thestatus quo offer us a real political alternative? In this lively blend of pop culture, history and philosophicalanalysis, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter argue that this counterculturalopposition to "the system" has not only been unproductive but hashelped to create the very consumer society that radicals oppose. Thisthought-provoking book will enrage and entertain today's counterculturalrebels and their opponents on the political right.

Why the Culture Can't be Jammed

The Rebel Sell

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What if David Bowie really was holding the fabric of the universe together? The death of David Bowie in January 2016 was a bad start to a year that got a lot worse: war in Syria, the Zika virus, terrorist attacks in Brussels and Nice, the Brexit vote—and the election of Donald Trump. The end-of-year wraps declared 2016 “the worst ... ever.” Four even more troubling years later, the question of our apocalypse had devolved into a tired social media cliché. But when COVID-19 hit, journalist and professor of public policy Andrew Potter started to wonder: what if The End isn’t one big event, but a long series of smaller ones? In On Decline, Potter surveys the current problems and likely future of Western civilization (spoiler: it’s not great). Economic stagnation and the slowing of scientific innovation. Falling birth rates and environmental degradation. The devastating effects of cultural nostalgia and the havoc wreaked by social media on public discourse. Most acutely, the various failures of Western governments in their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. If the legacy of the Enlightenment and its virtues—reason, logic, science, evidence—has run its course, how and why has it happened? And where do we go from here?

Stagnation, Nostalgia, and Why Every Year is the Worst One Ever

On Decline

One of Canada's hippest, smartest cultural critics takes on the West's defining value. We live in a world increasingly dominated by the fake, the prepackaged, the artificial: fast food, scripted reality TV shows, Facebook "friends," and fraudulent memoirs. But people everywhere are demanding the exact opposite, heralding "authenticity" as the cure for isolated individualism and shallow consumerism. Restaurants promote the authenticity of their cuisine, while condo developers promote authentic loft living and book reviewers regularly praise the authenticity of a new writer's voice. International bestselling author Andrew Potter brilliantly unpacks our modern obsession with authenticity. In this perceptive and thought-provoking blend of pop culture, history, and philosophy, he finds that far from serving as a refuge from modern living, the search for authenticity often creates the very problems it's meant to solve.

Carolyn Hughes Tuohy

Peter John Loewen

Sophie Borwein

Canada's centennial anniversary in 1967 coincided with a period of transformative public policymaking. This period saw the establishment of the modern welfare state, as well as significant growth in the area of cultural diversity, including multiculturalism and bilingualism. Meanwhile, the rising commitment to the protection of individual and collective rights was captured in the project of a "just society." Tracing the past, present, and future of Canadian policymaking, Policy Transformation in Canada examines the country's current and most critical challenges: the renewal of the federation, managing diversity, Canada's relations with Indigenous peoples, the environment, intergenerational equity, global economic integration, and Canada's role in the world. Scrutinizing various public policy issues through the prism of Canada's sesquicentennial, the contributors consider the transformation of policy and present an accessible portrait of how the Canadian view of policymaking has been reshaped, and where it may be heading in the next fifty years.

Is the Past Prologue?

Policy Transformation in Canada

Daniel M. Weinstock

Canada has become the first G7 country to legalize cannabis, and the world is watching. The primary concern facing the Liberal government as it seeks to fulfill its 2015 campaign promise to “legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana” is whether it can be done without making the situation worse. As the Liberal platform pointed out, the current regime lets illegal cannabis fall into the hands of minors, pours large profits into organized crime, and traps many people in the criminal justice system for what is arguably a victimless crime. While the legalization of marijuana in Canada begins with a straightforward change of the criminal code, its ramifications go far beyond this. Legalization will have a serious impact on the country's international treaty commitments, interprovincial relations, taxation and regulatory regimes, and social and health policies. The essays in this book address these outcomes from three main perspectives: the decades-long political path to legalization; the assumptions that underwrite the new policy, in particular the desire to stamp out the black market; and how legalization in Canada looks in an international context. Bringing together analysis by policy makers and scholars, including the architect of marijuana legislation in Portugal – a trailblazing jurisdiction – High Time provides an urgent and necessary overview of Canada's Cannabis Act.

The Legalization and Regulation of Cannabis in Canada

High Time

George Grant

In his 1970 introduction to Lament for a Nation, Professor George Grant modestly expressed doubt whether his study had an enduring importance beyond the particular circumstances occasioning its appearance.

Stephen Mark Rainey

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