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Big Men Fear Me
- The Fast Life and Quick Death of Canada’s Most Powerful Media Mogul
- Narrated by: Tom Lute
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
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Big Men Fear Me
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Summary
The remarkable true story of the rise and fall of one of North America's most influential media moguls.
When George McCullagh bought The Globe and The Mail and Empire and merged them into the Globe and Mail, the charismatic 31-year-old high school dropout had already made millions on the stock market. It was just the beginning of the meteoric rise of a man widely expected to one day be prime minister of Canada. But the charismatic McCullagh had a dark side. Dogged by the bipolar disorder that destroyed his political ambitions and eventually killed him, he was all but written out of history. It was a loss so significant that journalist Robert Fulford has called McCullagh’s biography "one of the great unwritten books in Canadian history"—until now.
In Big Men Fear Me, award-winning historian Mark Bourrie tells the remarkable story of McCullagh’s inspirational rise and devastating fall, and with it sheds new light on the resurgence of populist politics, challenges to collective action, and attacks on the free press that characterize our own tumultuous era.
Critic reviews
“Bourrie’s book positively sings ... [it] is thoroughly researched and the prose is clean and engaging ... McCullagh deserves to be known ... He made The Globe the dominant voice in English Canadian journalism. Bourrie’s biography does him full justice.”—Globe and Mail
“There are many threads to untangle here and Bourrie—journalist, academic, and lawyer—unpicks them all. Spanning the first half of 20th-century Ontario, [George] McCullagh’s life and times become an engrossing tale of ambition, politics and bipolar illness—it’s like little else we’re likely to read this year ... It was a tumultuous life, and Bourrie tells it with wit and humour.”—Toronto Star
“This is a joy of a biography ... Bourrie, a historian whose last book brought explorer Pierre Radisson to life, has done right by McCullagh, and not just with the marvellous title. Canada doesn’t like tall poppies. It didn’t end well. But what a ride it was.”—Heather Mallick, Toronto Star