Pierre Berton, Geoff Pevere argues in his foreword to Worth Repeating: A Literary Resurrection 1948-1994, “made us pay attention to him. With every media means possible, he held this country by the strings of its parka hood” and “made it impossible to think about Canada without thinking of him.” And he’s right of course. Since the 1950s, Berton – the journalist, broadcaster, and historian – has been an important, respected, and even beloved cultural presence. As Canadian as Gretzky and beer, he’s won all the major national awards for his every endeavour – and if nothing else this new collection reminds us that he’s deserved them.

Yet the subtitle to Worth Repeating – “a literary resurrection” – is completely fitting, and, sadly, essential: because of Berton’s profile we may have forgotten that he’s first and foremost a very good writer, perhaps even a great one. The excerpts, columns, addresses, articles, and other occasional pieces (there’s even a poem and part of a play) culled from almost 50 years of writing illustrate the clarity of Berton’s thought, self-scrutiny, and prose.

Worth Repeating is not just a “greatest hits” package; in fact, many of Berton’s most famous works are not represented at all. Instead, it’s a carefully crafted selection from incredibly disparate material that shows a writer engaging with the world around him. The remarkable currency of Berton’s spiritual, political, and cultural criticism is evident in pieces as diverse as “The Car as a Cultural Driving Force” (from the late 1980s) and “Is The Press Too Sensational?” (from 1960). These articles remind us that he’s been both an astute amateur sociologist and a keen, almost clairvoyant, critic of media monopolies. It’s “The Real War in Korea,” written in 1951, however, that perfectly demonstrates why this book is so vital and haunting. When Berton writes, “Our soldiers…have been taught how to fight and they fight well.They have not been taught how to act and they act badly,” he might as well have been commenting about the whole Somalia debacle. Worth repeating? Definitely.