Cigar-smoking rabble-rouser and Communist Bert Whyte was known bymany as a most charming storyteller.

Active for over forty years with the Communist Party of Canada, BertWhyte was a journalist, an underground party organizer and soldierduring the Second World War, and a press correspondent in Beijing andMoscow. But Whyte never let leftist ideology get in the way of a greatyarn. In Champagne and Meatballs we meet a cigar-smoking roguewho was at least as happy at a pool hall as at a political meeting. Hisstories of bumming across Canada in the 1930s, of combat andcamaraderie at the front lines in the Second World War, and ofsurviving as a dissident in troubled times make for compelling reading.