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A new publication from McGill-Queen's University Press

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http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/why-dissent-matters

Why Dissent Matters

Because Some People See Things the Rest of Us Miss

William Kaplan

"A brave and powerful book."—Constance Backhouse, University of Ottawa

“Passionate and forceful.”—Margaret MacMillan, University of Oxford

Frances Kelsey was a quiet Canadian doctor and scientist who stood up to a huge pharmaceutical company wanting to market a new drug - thalidomide - and prevented an American tragedy. The nature writer Rachel Carson identified an emerging environmental disaster and pulled the fire alarm. Public protests, individual dissenters, judges, and juries can change the world - and they do.

A wide-ranging and provocative work on controversial subjects, Why Dissent Matters tells a story of dissent and dissenters - people who have been attacked, bullied, ostracized, jailed, and, sometimes when it is all over, celebrated. William Kaplan shows that dissent is noisy, messy, inconvenient, and almost always time-consuming, but that suppressing it is usually a mistake - it’s bad for the dissenter but worse for the rest of us. Drawing attention to the voices behind international protests such as Occupy Wall Street and Boycott, Divest, and Sanction, he contends that we don’t have to do what dissenters want, but we should listen to what they say.

Our problems are not going away. There will always be abuses of power to confront, wrongs to right, and new opportunities for dissenting voices to say, "Stop, listen to me." Why Dissent Matters may well lead to a different and more just future.

William Kaplan is a lawyer and author of many books, including A Secret Trial: Brian Mulroney and the Public Trust.

McGill-Queen's University Press | June 2017 | 376pp | 9780773550704 | HB | £24.99*

20% discount with this code: CSL17WDMWK**

*Price subject to change.

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