"Policy wonks will remember Manning's memoirs for his parting
insights on some of the issues that will dominate the Canadian
agenda for the coming decade - medicare, the environment, or the
future of western Canadian aspirations. Political junkies will
parse Manning's memoirs for his words on Day and for his
impressions of Harper, as guarded as they may be. But Chretien
should worry that it is the chapter Manning devotes to Liberal
ethics over the course of his tenure that historians come to make
their own."
-Red Deer Advocate
"Political power escaped Preston Manning; political influence never
did from the day he and others formed the Reform Party of
Canada"
-Jeffrey Simpson, Globe and Mail:
"Manning…is one of a kind….Many Canadians have never taken him
seriously. Others were with him from the start of the Reform
experiment. And a few of us grew to realize, only in the last few
years of his career, the magnitude of his talent and his commitment
to all of this country. Think Big will appeal at least to
the latter two groups, and may even give the first occasion to
reconsider."
"…disarmingly frank.…And in one devastating chapter, he sums up the
ethical failures of the Liberal government more powerfully than any
single précis I've yet read."
-National Post
"Faith, ethics, morality -these are his themes, and he returns to
them time and again as he relives past glories, settles scores and
muses about the future."
"The overarching theme of the book, as the title suggests, is
thinking big. For Manning, the Alliance represented one aspect of
this idea. His dream was to move beyond the Reform party's regional
base and build a political tent large enough to accommodate social
and fiscal conservatives, small-d democrats and reform-oriented
federalists from across the country. He never achieved that goal.
He did, however, send a signal to traditional party brokers in
Ontario and Quebec that the West was capable of producing a
formidable party, one that may yet achieve those objectives. The
effort to create the Canadian Alliance was an important step along
that road."
- Vancouver Sun
"Manning is speaking blunt truths. His party should
listen."
-Regina Leader-Post
"The literary voice is familiar, authentic, un-massaged; you
sense there is an inner struggle to write from the heart without
completely sacrificing a certain emotional distance he's come to
call friend. It's the very mirror of his life in politics."
"The loss of his political voice, taken for granted for so
long, spoken on behalf of so many, was clearly the biggest defeat
of all. He no longer feels so constrained."
-Edmonton Journal
"His early years are recounted mainly to indicate he always thought
big, which is not untrue, and nicely focuses the whole book.
Description of the ideas and emotions that spawned the Reform Party
is quick and effective.…His accounts of political campaigns are
well-paced.…His dogged though fruitless efforts to learn French are
wittily rendered."
-Calgary Herald
From the Hardcover edition.