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Below you will find many commentaries of Michael's reviews
of a select number of books. You will always find his
perspective an interesting read. Not only is he insightful
and entertaining, he is also a best selling author of
twelve books in his own right.
Michael is also a columnist with several Canadian newspapers.
Read a few of Michael's sample columns.
You can also book Michael for a public
speaking session at your event.
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IN THE NEWS
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July 14, 2010
- Michael Coren is host of the nightly Michael Coren
Show on CTS television. He has also just been made
the show's producer. The station is on basic cable
in Ontario and Alberta and much of the rest of Canada
and available on satellite and digital throughout
the country.
Michael is a weekly columnist, published every Saturday,
with the Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and
Winnipeg Sun and The London Free Press and in more
than a dozen other daily and weekly newspapers across
Canada. He is also a columnist for Women's Post,
The Catholic Register, The Landowner and The Interim.
He is the best-selling author of twelve books, including
biographies of GK Chesterton, HG Wells, Arthur Conan
Doyle, JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. He has contributed
to the Dictionary of National Biography and several
other anthologies. He is published in many countries
and in more than a dozen languages. He has received
several honorary doctorates and awards for his writing
and broadcasting. In 2005 he won The Ed Murrow Award
for Radio Broadcasting, in 2006 The RTNDA Radio
Broadcasting Award, in 2007 the Communicator Award
in Hollywood and in 2008 the Omni Award for his
television show.
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Michael's books have been translated into Polish, French,
Japanese, Norwegian, Swedish, Czech, German,
Turkish and other languages.
The Man Who Created Narnia. The
Story Of C.S. Lewis
"Strong and moving narrative, this book is as exciting
to look at as it is informative to read."
Canadian Author Magazine
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"Coren has written a book for all readers. He brings
Lewis to life in a study which should send adults as
well as children scurrying to bookshelves."
London Free Press
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"Impressive biographical work. It would be too
much to ask a jury these days to short-list an unapologetic
account of a dead white man's spiritual journey as a
Christian."
Globe and Mail
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"An excellent biography, extremely impressive and
well-written."
The Arts Tonight, CBC
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"A fascinating literary biography. Children of
all ages will be rewarded if they explore this book.
Coren writes at a challenging and grown-up enough level
to create a kind of bridge for young readers to the
stimulating world of adult biography."
Arlene Pearly Rae, Toronto Star
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"This luminous volume works because Coren makes
Lewis believable and he writes clearly, evocatively
and never condescendingly.
John Fraser, Toronto Star
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"Michael Coren's work is a verbal and visual delight."
Faith Today
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"A fine biography written with the skill of a story-teller.
Riveting in its insightful, well researched text, the
author has imbued his narrative with a gentle intimacy
while maintaining an objective look at one of the world's
most beloved authors. He is to be commended for bringing
his skills as a biographer and as a superb story-teller
to this subjet."
Ottawa Citizen
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"Serious and thoughtful. Immensely readable. On
every page Coren evinces a profound respect for readers
and for his subject. A first-rate biography for children."
Kirkus Reviews
Arthur Conan Doyle
"This trustworthy and reliable study ... Many a reader
will be grateful to him."
Literary Review
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"This excellent new study by Michael Coren ... sober
accuracy, sympathy and stylishness."
Daily Mail
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"Coren writes with no little charm."
Humphrey Carpenter, Sunday Times
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"Michael Coren has solved two of the three problems,
and has raised a fascinating quandary for the third. This
is an impressive score in a difficult case."
Globe and Mail
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"Highly readable and swiftly paced."
Toronto Star
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"A moving portrait ... clear and informative."
Macleans
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"His account is both polished and interesting."
London Free Press
The Invisible Man: The Life And
Liberties of H.G. Wells
"This excellently written book does the service of
exposing such tremendous flaws in a man who gave entertainment
and stimulation."
Sunday Express
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"He was one of the greatest story-tellers of all
time and one of the most challenging of modern thinkers.
The furore stirred by Coren's able book will serve to
re-establish those facts."
Sunday Times
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"An elegantly written biography ... constantly interesting.
It succeeds in conveying the energy which suffused Wells."
The Times (Peter Ackroyd)
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"Coren writes with verve. He is never less than brisk
and readable; and his quarrel with Wells gives the book
undeniable momentum .... The questions Coren raises have
been played down for too long, and they deserve the high
place he gives them on the agenda."
The Sunday Telegraph
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"A punchy and stimulating book ... Coren is perfectly
right."
The Financial Times
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"This is revision with a vengeance, but Coren presents
his case with fairness and restraint. The evidence against
Wells, however, is fully laid out, and should be a matter
of chagrin to previous biographers."
The New Yorker
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"Adept and fair. The evidence is incontrovertible,
and future commentators on Wells will have to take account
of what Coren has found."
The Scotsman
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"This is a book which moves in precisely the direction
that biography should be taking .. it is informed, it
is judgmental, it raises the axe of iconoclasm and drops
it fairly cleanly on the neck of its subject, severing
the head of reputation from the body of life and work.
Coren tells his story at a smart canter throughout, making
it lively, robust, entertaining. Other reputations are
in need of the cool reappraisal of a Michael Coren."
The Irish Independent
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"It marks with clarity and vigour the limitations
of this man of undeniable genius ... devastating."
The Toronto Star
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"Coren's book is a reproach to past biographers of
Wells and a cautionary lesson for future ones. It is a
courageous work and one to be reckoned with not only by
Wells scholars but by all those concerned with the direction
of biography."
Globe and Mail (Canada)
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"Vigorous narrative ...Coren is the first to have
thoroughly documented convincing proof of Wells' animus,
and caught a number of self-described experts with their
trousers down around their ankles, and the wails of anguish
from injured egos have been as audible as they are irrelevant."
Books In Canada
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"A wonderfully dramatic picture ... entertaining
and vigorously written, eminently readable."
Macleans
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"Delightful and well-chosen. Coren draws up an indictment
of Wells as an illiberal, hypocritical, anti-Semitic egoist;
as both researcher and writer he earns the boldness of
his conclusion. Careful and well-argued.
Saturday Night
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"Coren chronicles Wells' life fairly with insight
and panache ... the result is a book without a dull page."
London Free Press
Gilbert: The Man Who Was G.K.
Chesterton
"Of all the studies of GK I have read - a dozen or
more - this is the best, deepest and most nearly complete
... Coren will do nicely."
Bernard Levin, Sunday Times of London
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"Of the numerous 20th-century literary reputations
deserving serious re-evaluation none has been in more
dire need than that of G.K. Chesterton. Michael Coren's
excellent biography more than corrects this sorry situation,
placing Chesterton securely in the literary pantheon and
making it possible for a new generation of readers to
enjoy the wit, wisdom and erudition of a most delightful
mind ... the definitive work on Chesterton and one of
the finest literary biographies in years."
Paul William Roberts, The Toronto Star
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"The warmth and gratitude he feels towards Chesterton
inform everything he says about him, even when he is critical,
and this suits the subject so well the result is a most
enjoyable biography."
P.J. Kavanagh, The Independent, London
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"Michael Coren has now produced a biography of Chesterton
which is in many respects in his own finest traditions
... the book is a delight to read. A work of beauty ...
as such it should delight any reader, even if at the beginning
Chesterton means nothing to them. He will mean much by
the end."
Owen Dudley Edwards, The Glasgow Herald
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"A lucid and sensitive treatment of a writer of no
little complexity ... We need biographers like Michael
Coren to provide a portrait of the whole man, a portrait
that is accessible, sympathetic, and generously broad
in scope. Coren delivers handsomely."
Michael Higgins, Catholic New Times, Canada
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"He has written a noble book, and has greatly raised
the quality of Chesterton biography, above all at its
most intimate level. It is a book which reveals the joy
and grief, the hope and fear, the doubt and faith, within
the man who was G.K. Chesterton."
The Chesterton Review
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"Coren offers a judicious appraisal of this novelist
and essayist ... impressive scholarship and an enjoyable
biography."
Kirkus Reviews, USA
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"Gilbert is both an acute reading of the works and
an honest and stylish approach to the man ... Mr. Coren
achieves a perceptive, entertaining and instructive biography."
Kingston Whig-Standard
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"In Gilbert: The Man Who Was GK Chesterton, British
journalist Michael Coren exhibits the traits that one
admires most in his subject's own biographies, and helps
restore Chesterton's reputation as a literary genius and
defender of orthodoxy."
National Review, USA
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"Coren is a young British journalist who shows remarkably
mature judgement about Chesterton's literary achievements
and political views. Unlike many aficionados, he does
not find everything Chesterton wrote of equal value; he
briskly sifts the gold from the dross. But the greatest
strength of Coren's book is its portrait of the man, a
portrait that captures the spirit of Chesterton more fully,
more colorfully, and more judiciously than any previous
biography."
Crisis, USA
Setting it Right
"A thing of beauty. This is an absolutely essential
display of intellect and common sense. His wit and opinion
mark him the Concorde of columnists."
Toronto Sun
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"Coren's use of language is sophisticated and lucid
... skilful and sensitively written. It will enrage his
detractors and appeal to Coren's many fans."
Ottawa Citizen
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"Coren is, quite simply, one of the most delightful
prose stylists in Canadian journalism today. He has emerged
as such an artful master of the rhetorical skewer that
he merited a harumphing column from the Globe and Mail's
resident Dead White Guy, Robert Fulford. If there's justice
in the world, Fulford's toothless sniping will only increase
sales of Setting It Right, which belongs on the bookshelf
of every thinking Canadian regardless of political stripe."
Calgary Herald
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