MAKING THE NUMBERS DANCE:

FIRE AND ICE (David Frum, 11/09/03, National Review)

Canada and the United States are different – and becoming more so. That is the bold thesis of Fire and Ice, a new book by one of Canada’s best-known pollsters, Michael Adams of Environics Research. On a recent trip across Canada, I was asked so often about Adams’ work that I realized I was witnessing the birth of a new orthodoxy.

So I bought Fire and Ice at a bookstore in the Ottawa airport and read it carefully. I was so astonished by what I saw there that I sat down this past weekend and read it again. The second reading was even more disturbing than the first. The more carefully one studies it, the more apparent it becomes that this fall’s leading Canadian high-brow bestseller is an intellectual card-trick.

Mr. Adams's thesis is so unexceptional it's hard to believe he needed to jigger the numbers.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 10, 2003 6:30 PM