Regions Apart provides an invaluable social, cultural, and political comparison of the two countries that share the world's longest undefended border--Canada and the United States. General readers and students alike will find this book an insightful analysis of how and why Americans and Canadians differ, not only from each other but from region to region within each country.

Recognizing the inevitability of the comparison, the authors explore the myths about the historical development of the two nations and provide their own thought-provoking interpretation. They argue that the original American colonies and English Canada were very similar societies and that the differences that emerged as the countries developed resulted not simply because of the rupture caused by the American Revolution, but because of internal divisions in each country--between English and French Canada and between the American North and South--that set the two nations on different paths.