Mark Salter

Champlain’s Dream, David Hackett Fischer’s biography of Samuel Champlain, offers a full, engaging portrait of the 17th Century explorer and founder of New France; godfather to three extant French-speaking cultures in North America: Quebecois, Métis, and Acadians (or Cajuns); and name-giver to many lovely places in northern New England and Canada’s Maritime Provinces. Champlain was a soldier who detested sectarian strife after serving bravely in battles between Catholics and Huguenots; a humanist who established closer relations between Europeans and Native Americans than did any other colonial leader in his time or any other; and a seafarer who made dozens of treacherous North Atlantic crossings without ever losing a ship. Adding to the book's many virtues, Fischer’s disdain for historians he terms, “apostles of political correctness,” will gladden the heart of anyone who stubbornly clings to the conviction that history still has room for leaders and heroes.