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"This book offers documentation for the first time of how corporations have captured Canadian government agencies set up to protect the public. Eighteen authors, experts in their fields, describe how federal agencies do their job to regulate industries -- oil, nuclear, pharmaceuticals, construction, international mining, finance and more. In virtually every case, they find that the agency has set aside the public interest to favour corporate interests. They also find that government legislation, policies limiting regulations, ongoing working relationships with "stakeholders" that often take place in secret, lobbying, financing of regulatory agencies by regulated industries, and job movement between industry and government all combine to produce these captive regulatory agencies. The result is that government continuously and often disastrously fails to protect the public interest. The results are a degraded environment, increased inequality in society, loss of trust in government, and avoidable deaths. Editor Bruce Campbell concludes the book with a set of proposals that would restore the primacy of the public interest in the work of government agencies."

The liberators -- Railway makeover -- Oil-lobby power, railway-lobby power -- Pipeline on wheels -- A crew of one -- Harper and Harrison -- Eve of destruction -- Apocalypse -- Aftermath -- The investigation that lost heart -- Still spilling -- The civil lawsuits -- The trial of Tom Harding -- The four tragedies of Lac Mégantic -- Plus ça change.

What was the moral horizon of ordinary SA men? What did they think, what did they believe, and what were their ideals? These are hard questions to answer even when they concern people still alive and events still going on. To pose them some eighty years after the fact is to admit that no answer can be definitive. Yet a fresh look at some well-known contemporary sources can at least allow some tentative, suggestive answers. They demonstrate, above all, an emphasis on frenetic activism, combined with a sense of personal suffering and sacrifice. They stress key National Socialist values, such as antisemitism, criticism of the bourgeoisie, and a commitment to an idealized national community, orVolksgemeinschaft. And yet, they also reflect, to a certain extent, pre-Nazi middle-class values. Beyond this, they show men trying desperately to rewrite themselves as ideal SA men and Nazis.

Seeking a general theory of fascism is a bit like the attempt to gather all of modern physics into a single unified field theory. It is a necessary exercise that can stimulate reflection, even in failure. Michael Mann, a historical sociologist at UCLA, provides an intriguing survey and theory of European fascism. While he does not really break significant new ground, he does raise questions that will eventually advance the state of our knowledge.