Book excerpt: For more than half a century, the field of Canadian Studies has attracted North American scholars of the highest caliber to examine Canada: its distinctive social makeup, its fascinating colonial and postcolonial history, its intriguing literature, its political structure, and its changing place in the world. Scholars, Missionaries, and Counter-Imperialists: The American Review of Canadian Studies, 1971–2021 traces the birth and growth of that field by reproducing 15 exemplary articles published in the pages of that journal from its establishment until the present day. For five decades, the American Review of Canadian Studies (ARCS) acted as a bellwether for the field, revealing its strengths, projecting new directions and inquiries, and reflecting the changing topics and methods that scholars used to study Canada. This book captures the history of that field in one robust volume. Carefully selected by the co-editors of ARCS, the chapters in this edited volume are prefaced by an introductory essay that assesses the accomplishments of the field and brief chapter introductions that place them into context.