Reasoning Otherwise is the first volume of Ian McKay's three-part history of the left in Canada. Using the strategy of "reconnaissance" first outlined in Rebels, Reds, Radicals, McKay examines the people and events that led to the rise of the left in Canada from 1890 to the Winnipeg General Strike. Armed with a new mixture of evolutionary theory and revolutionary politics, Canadian men and women who wanted to live otherwise transformed struggles around class, religion, gender, and race as they called for a great people's enlightenment and anticipated an entirely new politics for the future.