"Who knew it was possible to write an epic panorama of the welfare 
state?" writes Peter Baldwin in his review of my new book, Compassion: A 
Global History of Social Policy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

This is a book that traces social determinants of health and welfare 
throughout human history--but in only 300 pages. It is, as far as I 
know, the only book to pull together all of human history's efforts to 
care for the vulnerable,  providing a detailed global overview of 
welfare from 200,000 BCE to the present day. From India to Tanzania, 
Scandinavia to Vietnam, I analyse why different countries and regions 
have diverged in their ways of dealing with inequality and with what 
results for the health and welfare of their populations. The book 
focuses on the role of social struggles in producing (or failing to 
produce) greater equality and the role of gender, race and class in the 
development of social policy and understandings regarding social 
determinants of health.

I am the author of the most-used survey history of social policy in 
Canada, and while researching and writing that book, observed the lack 
of any comprehensive text on social policy and policy borrowings at a 
global level. Though I had a 40-year scholarly career, I began my adult 
life as a journalist and I think that Compassion is about as free from 
jargon and confusing language as a general history can be. Indeed I 
honed my writing skills as co-author of Canada's best-selling survey 
Canadian history textbooks (pre-Confederation and post-Confederation), 
now in their seventh editions.


This recently published review of Compassion in Canadian Dimension 
summarizes what the book is all about.

In solidarity,

Alvin Finkel,

Professor Emeritus, Athabasca University


https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/compassion-as-social-policy
<https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/compassion-as-social-policy>
	
Compassion as social policy -- Canadian Dimension 
<https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/compassion-as-social-policy>
Compassion: A Global History of Social Policy is the latest and most 
ambitious work of Canadian historian Alvin Finkel. It is an impressive 
book filled with rich detail and grounded in solid research. It is 
comprehensive and extremely well-organized and well-written. In 306 
pages Finkel appears to ...
canadiandimension.com


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