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Sean Silcoff, award-winning business writer with The Globe and Mail, will be visiting the University of New Brunswick's Fredericton and Saint John campuses in August to launch his book, which was co-authored by Jacquie McNish, a senior writer with The Globe and Mail titled, Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of BlackBerry.

During his 17-year career, he has covered just about every area of business, from agriculture to the credit crisis; toys to airplane manufacturing. He led the paper’s coverage of the rise and fall of BlackBerry and many of the other major business stories of the decade, including the takeover battle for telecom giant BCE Inc.; the contentious merger between brewers Molson and Coors; and the near-death struggles of plane and train manufacturer Bombardier Inc.

He has won a National Newspaper Award, an Aerospace Journalist of the Year Award and the Edward Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists. He lives in the Gatineau Hills near Ottawa with his wife and three children. Sean will be discussing his new book, Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Blackberry.

Losing the Signal is the riveting, never-before-told story of one of the most spectacular technological upsets of the 21st century. Unlike Enron, which was undone by its executives' illegal activities, or Lehman Brothers, which collapsed as part of a larger global banking crisis, BlackBerry’s rise and fall is a modern-day tale of the unrelenting speed of success and failure. It is a thrilling account of how two mismatched CEOs outsmarted more-powerful competitors with a combination of innovation and sharp-elbowed tactics; and how, once on top of the world, they lost their way.

Register online to attend the Saint John event on August 13 at 7 p.m. or the Fredericton event on August 14 at 1:30 p.m. to get an inside look at the meteoric rise and precipitous fall of one of Canada's most iconic brands.