The CBC Massey Lectures, Canada's preeminent public lecture series, are for many of us a highly anticipated annual feast of ideas. However, some of the finest lectures, by some of the greatest minds of modern times, have been lost for many years -- unavailable to the public in any form.

This is the second volume of recovered lectures, a follow-on to The Lost Massey Lectures, and features: Nobel Peace Prize recipient Willy Brandt on the dangerous inequities between developing and industrialized nations in Dangers and Options: The Matter of World Survival; George Grant on the worsening predicament of the West through an examination of the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche in Time as History; Claude Levi-Strauss on the nature and role of myth in human history in Myth and Meaning; Frank Underhill on the deficiencies of the Canadian constitution in The Image of Confederation; and Barbara Ward, in the very first Massey Lecture, on the origin and predicament of underdeveloped countries in The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations.

More Lost Massey Lectures includes an introduction by Bernie Lucht, who has been the executive producer of CBC Radio's Ideas and the Massey Lectures since 1984.

Barbara Ward (1914-81), in later life Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth, was a British economist and writer concerned with the economic and ideological background of contemporary world politics. After studying economics at Oxford University, she became a writer and editor at The Economist. She was an early advocate of sustainable development and was an influential advisor to policy-makers in the U.K., the U.S., the Vatican, the UN, and the World Bank. She wrote numerous articles and books on the worldwide threat of poverty among less-developed countries and the importance of conservation. Her prolific written contributions to the development debate include The International Share-Out, Defence of the West, Policy for the West, Faith and Freedom, Interplay of East and West, The Planet under Pressure, Nationalism and Ideology, Spaceship Earth, and Progress for a Small Planet (1979).

Barbara Ward's profile page

Frank Underhill (1885-1971) was a Canadian historian, social critic, and political thinker. He studied at the University of Toronto and Oxford University. He taught at the University of Saskatchewan from 1914 to 1927, and from 1927 to 1995 he was a professor of History at the University of Toronto. He played a notable part in the political life of Canada as a founder of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and as a prominent member of the League for Social Reconstruction. His publications include In Search of Canadian Liberalism, a volume of essays for which he received the Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction in 1961. In 1967, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Frank Underhill's profile page

George Grant (1918-88) has been acknowledged as Canada's leading political philosopher. He taught religion and philosophy at McMaster University and Dalhousie University. His books include Philosophy in the Mass Age, Lament for a Nation, English-Speaking Justice, Technology and Justice and Technology and Empire.

George Grant's profile page

Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) was a French social anthropologist who became a leading scholar in the structural approach to social anthropology. Levi-Strauss was awarded the Wenner-Gren Foundation's Viking Fund Medal in 1966 and the Erasmus Prize in 1975. He was awarded several honorary doctorate degrees from prestigious institutions such as Oxford, Yale, Harvard, and Columbia. His books included A World on the Wane, Structural Anthropology, The Savage Mind, Anthropologu and Myth, and Look, Listen, Read.

Claude Lévi-Strauss' profile page

Willy Brandt (1913-92) was a German statesman, leader of the German Social Democratic Party from 1964 to 1987, and chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1969 to 1974. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1971 for his efforts to achieve reconciliation between West Germany and the countries of the Soviet Bloc. His books include My Path to Berlin: An Autobiography, The Politics of Peace in Europe, Encounters and Insights 1960-75, Left and Free: My Path 1930-50, Organized Lunacy, and Memories.

Willy Brandt's profile page

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) was a Canadian-born American economist, public servant, and writer. Born in Iona Station, Ontario, he earned a B.Sc. degree (1931) from the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph and M.Sc (1933) and a Ph.D. degree (1934) from the University of California, Berkeley, and later studied in England at Cambridge University. He became a U.S. citizen in 1937 and would serve in Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. He was also Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he taught for many years, a U.S. ambassador to India (1963-63), and the author of many books of economics, including American Capitalism, The Great Crash, 1929, The Affluent Society, The New Industrial State, and Economics and the Public Purpose, as well as hundreds of essays, a memoir, and a number of novels. He was awarded numerous honorary degrees, twice received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1946 and 2000, and was made an officer of the Order of Canada in 1997.

Bernie Lucht's profile page