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Michael Adams (author)




Education:
1968 - BA in Political Science from Queen's University
1970 - MA in Sociology from the University Of Toronto

In 1970 he co-founded Environics , an international group of companies that track social tends and how they can effect business and public policy.

Since 1997 he has written a series of books exploring social trends in Canada and the United States:

  • ''Sex in the Snow: Canadian Social Values at the End of the Millennium'' (1997).


  • ''Better Happy Than Rich?: Canadians, Money, and the Meaning of Life'' (2000). Looks at how Canadian attitudes have shifted over the years. These two books now read as a prequel to his next book.


  • ''Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values'' (2003). His most controversial book so far, argues that Americans and Canadians and are developing their own identities as opposed to becoming more similar.


  • ''American Backlash: The Untold story of Social Change in the United States'' (2005), which says that the famed Red/Blue divide is not what to watch, instead he points to the gap between those engaged in politics and those who have "dropped-out," that will really determine where American society will evolve to.


Of his books, Fire and Ice has received the most attention in Canada. For Fire and Ice, Adams interviewed 14,000 Americans and Canadians and reached the conclusion that, "fundamental values, motivations, and mindsets where changing."

The book is considered controversial in some circles, usually by those with a vested interest in
Continentalism . Since its publication in 2003, a number of surveys have been done to try and disprove the thesis.

A key point often overlooked in critiques of the book, is that Adams makes the distinction between older Canadians and younger Canadians. Older Canadians, he argues, through a shared 20th century history (Great Depression, WW2, Cold War, etc.) do have similar "values" with their American counter-parts, however, the current generations don't have this same connection, owning to a number of social and historical factors, and, therefore, seem to be evolving in different directions.

In 2004 Fire and Ice won the Donner Prize , a Canadian award for public-policy literature.


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