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Showing 1 - 20 of 9501 items
By David L Hammer. 1985
By J. L Granatstein. 1993
Granatstein's study of life at the top during the Second World War centres on the most senior ranks in the…
Canadian Army. Men like Andrew McNaughton, Harold Crerar, Thomas Burns and Guy Simonds had not only to win military campaigns, but also command the sympathies of bureaucrats and powerful politicians. None, however, forgot they were fighting a war, and that their decisions directly affected the lives of Canadian soldiers. 1993.By John Vaillant. 2005
In 1997, when a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an Alaskan island north of the Canadian border,…
they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. The author braids together the strands of this mystery and brings to life the historical collision of Europeans and the Haida and the harrowing world of logging. Canada Reads 2012. Winner of the 2005 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction. Bestseller. 2005.By Jim Murphy. 1995
An account of the conflagration that levelled much of Chicago in 1871. Chronicles events from the fire's outbreak and rapid…
spread to its extinguishment by rain, as reported by survivors and in documents of the period. Examines the origins, circumstances, and official failures that contributed to the disaster. Grades 5-8. A 1996 Newbery Honor Book. c1995.By Edmund White. 2001
Novelist, critic, and biographer White, who moved to Paris in 1983, describes his wanderings through the city's arrondissements, including districts…
congenial to writers, African-Americans, Jews, artists, gays and lesbians, and royalists. A flâneur is someone who strolls about a city with no specific purpose, yet is attuned to its history and character. Bestseller. 2001.By Simon Winchester. 2001
Award-winning journalist and author Simon Winchester takes readers on a personal tour of the Balkans. Combining history and interviews with…
the people who live there, Winchester offers a fascinating glimpse into the complex issues at work in this chaotic region. 2001.By Yadi Sharifirad. 2010
Sharifirad was shot down in the Iraqi-Iranian war in the early 1990s, saved by a group of local Kurds, and…
eventually returned to Iran where he became a national hero. The Ayatollah sent him to Pakistan as military attaché, but when he returned to Teheran, he was accused of being a CIA spy and was imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured. Upon his release, despite constant surveillance, he resolved to smuggle his family out of the country. Some descriptions of sex and violence, some strong language. 2010.By G. W. L Nicholson. 2006
When the First World War began, Newfoundland had been without any kind of military organisation for more than half a…
century, so public-spirited citizens immediately formed themselves into a Patriotic Association, and within sixty days had recruited, partially equipped and dispatched 537 officers and men overseas. Nicholson details the harrowing experiences of the Newfoundland Regiment at Gallipoli, Beaumont Hamel, the Third Battle of Ypres and Cambrai, for which they were granted the title "Royal" - the only army unit to receive such a distinction during World War I. Some descriptions of violence. 2006.By John Keegan. 1998
The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unparalleled ferocity which extended far beyond its European epicentre,…
it broke the century of relative peace and prosperity which we associate with the Victorian era and unleashed the demons of the twentieth century - pestilence, military destruction and mass death - and also the ideas which continue to shape our world today - modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, and radical ideas about economics and society. Includes violence. 1998.By David Attenborough. 1987
A history of the Mediterranean world from the dramatic creation of the sea when the Atlantic flooded across the barrier…
of land connecting Morocco and Gibraltar and plunged over a cliff 50 times the height of Niagara. The transformation of man in this rich region from hunter-gather to a settled form of existence was the beginning of civilisation and so began the process that was to transform the whole area. 1987.In the winter trenches and flak-filled skies of World War I, soldiers and pilots alike might avoid death, only to…
find themselves imprisoned in Germany's archipelago of POW camps, often in abominable conditions. The most infamous was Holzminden, a land-locked Alcatraz of sorts that housed the most troublesome, escape-prone prisoners. Its commandant was a boorish, hate-filled tyrant named Karl Niemeyer who swore that none should ever leave. Desperate to break out of "Hellminden" and return to the fight, a group of Allied prisoners led by ace pilot (and former Army sapper) David Gray hatch an elaborate escape plan. Their plot demands a risky feat of engineering as well as a bevy of disguises, forged documents, fake walls, and steely resolve. Once beyond the watch towers and round-the-clock patrols, Gray and almost a dozen of his half-starved fellow prisoners must then make a heroic 150 mile dash through enemy-occupied territory towards free Holland. Drawing on never-before-seen memoirs and letters, Bascomb brings this narrative to cinematic life, amid the twilight of the British Empire and the darkest, most savage hours of the fight against Germany. At turns tragic, funny, inspirational, and nail-biting suspenseful, this is the little-known story of the biggest POW breakout of the Great War. 2018.By C. J Chivers. 2018
Almost 2.5 million Americans have served in Afghanistan or Iraq since September 11, 2001. C.J. Chivers has reported from both…
fronts from the beginning, walking side by side with combatants for more than a dozen years. He describes the experience of war today as it is endured by those most at risk-the camaraderie and profound sense of purpose, alongside courage, frustration, and moral confusion mixed with technical precision. In these remote places where the reason for their presence is sometimes not clear, these young men kill or are killed, facing palpable and often constant threat of ambush or hidden bombs. They repeatedly return, rushing toward danger, often to rescue the wounded in wars that escalate around them as the Pentagon changes doctrines and plans. Weaving a history of the war through troops' experiences, the characters in The Fighters climb into an F-14 cockpit for the opening strikes after the attacks of 9/11, hunt for Osama bin Laden along the Pakistani border, chase insurgent rocket teams with helicopters alongside American bases, face snipers in a hostile city in Anbar Province in Iraq, and engage in deadly counterguerilla warfare in the soaring mountains of the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. Some suffer terribly. All are changed. They return home, uncertain of their place in the world and what their wars have achieved. 2018.By Taras Grescoe. 2003
Taras Grescoe plunges into the ruts where the tourists are thickest, starting at the tip of Spain's Land's End and…
finishing, nine months later, on the soldier-patrolled beaches of China's End of the Earth. Along the way, he crosses the entire Eurasian landmass, experiencing all sorts of travel such as all-inclusive resorts, pilgrimages, and bus tours. Some descriptions of sex and violence, some strong language. 2003.By Michael Harris. 2014
Only one generation in history (ours) will experience life both with and without the internet. For everyone who follows us,…
online life will simply be the air they breathe. Today, we revel in ubiquitous information and constant connection, rarely stopping to consider the implications for our logged-on lives. The author chronicles this massive shift, exploring what we've gained and lost in the bargain. He argues that our greatest loss has been that of absence itself -- of silence, wonder and solitude. Winner of the 2014 Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction. 2014.By Leslie Jamison. 2014
A collection of essays explores empathy, using topics ranging from street violence and incarceration to reality television and literary sentimentality…
to ask questions about people's understanding of and relationships with others. Winner of the Gray Wolf Press Nonfiction Prize. 2014. The empathy exams -- Devil's bait -- La frontera -- Morphology of the hit -- Pain tours (I) : La plata perdida ; Sublime, revised ; Indigenous to the hood -- The immortal horizon -- In defense of saccharin(e) -- Fog count -- Pain tours (II) : Ex-votos ; Servicio supercompleto ; The broken heart of James Agee -- Lost boys -- Grand unified theory of female pain -- Judge's afterword / A conversation with Leslie Jamison. Uniform title: Essays.By Sean Rossiter. 2002
From the dawn of aviation, Canada has produced intrepid pilots of renown. Learning their craft in some of the most…
difficult conditions anywhere, many of these flyers became expert pilots, navigators and mechanics. These great Canadians pilots were among the highest-scoring Allied aces of both world wars. 2002.By Otto Dietrich. 2010
When Otto Dietrich was invited in 1933 to become Adolf Hitler's press chief, he accepted with the simple uncritical conviction…
that Adolf Hitler was a great man, dedicated to promoting peace and welfare for the German people. At the end of the war, imprisoned and disillusioned, Otto Dietrich sat down to write what he had seen and heard in twelve years of the closest association with Hitler. c2010. Uniform title: 12 Jahre mit Hitler.By Lesley Poling-Kempes. 1989
From the 1880s to the 1950s, the Harvey Girls went west to work in Fred Harvey's restaurants along the Santa…
Fe railway. At a time when there were "no ladies west of Dodge City and no women west of Albuquerque," they came as waitresses, but many stayed and settled, founding the struggling cattle and mining towns that dotted the region. Interviews, historical research, and photographs help re-create the Harvey Girl experience. The accounts are personal, but laced with the history the women lived: the dust bowl, the depression, and anecdotes about some of the many famous people who ate at the restaurants--Teddy Roosevelt, Shirley Temple, Bob Hope, to name a few. Winner of the 1991 New Mexico PressWomen's ZIA award. 1989.By Rodney Barker. 1985
Japanese women who underwent surgery in the U.S. to repair the ravages caused by the atomic blast became known as…
the "Hiroshima maidens". The author documents the medical, humanitarian and diplomatic undertaking that brought them to the States. 1985.By Peter Levi. 1981
Greece as seen through the eyes of a sensitive traveller - English classicist, archaeologist, and former Jesuit priest, whose poetic…
observations about the land and its people are interspersed with personal narrative. c1981.