Along with the beaver and the maple leaf, the Mountie is a symbol of Canadian identity. Now that the image has been sold to the Disney corporation, though, it seems to carry less authority as a patriotic emblem, and the mounties' famous boast - "we always get our man" - doesn't seem to have much to do with the real-life RCMP. The Mountie from Dime Novel to Disney puts you in the saddle with our mounted police, and is a well-researched account of their 150-year history, looking at both the good and the bad, and at an idea almost as storied as Canada itself.

Historian Michael Dawson digs deep into the written and pictorial record to reveal how the RCMP, since its inception, has constructed and zealously guarded its public image. Drawing on previously untapped sources, Dawson documents how consultants and entrepreneurs deliberately transformed and modernized the traditional symbolism of the Mountie. His trenchant analysis extends to the ironies of the recent licensing of the hallowed Mountie image to the ultimate dream-merchants--Disney.

Michael Dawson is a professor of history at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick.