David Hackett Fischer rescues Samuel De Champlain from neglect—at least in American textbooks—in his latest offering, Champlain’s Dream: The Visionary Adventurer Who Made a New World in Canada (Simon and Schuster, 2008). Fischer brings to Champlain’s Dream the same combination of exhaustive research, personal familiarity with the sites about which he writes, and elegant prose that has won him so much praise in the past, including the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in history for Washington’s Crossing. Fischer, University and Warren Professor of History at Brandeis University, portrays Champlain as a complex character. The founder of Quebec and builder of New France, for instance, was also an important figure for French humanism. Senior Editor Donald A. Yerxa interviewed Fischer on December 4, 2008.