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Showing 1 - 20 of 62486 items
By Ted Barris. 2014
On the night of March 24, 1944, eighty airmen crawled through a 400-foot-long tunnel, code-named "Harry," and dashed from Stalag…
Luft III, the infamous WWII German POW camp. It became known as The Great Escape. The breakout had taken a year to plan, involved 2,000 POWs, and prompted a massive manhunt across occupied Europe. All but three escapees were recaptured, and on Hitler’s orders, fifty were murdered. The author recounts this battle of wits and determination through the voices of those involved, assembles original interviews, memoirs, letters and diaries to reconstruct the Great Escape’s untold story. Bestseller. 2014.By David Dilks. 2005
Winston Churchill's connection with Canada ("the Great Dominion", as he called it) spanned more than half a century: at Winnipeg…
he heard the news of Queen Victoria's death, in Ottawa in the dark days of 1941 he proclaimed his confidence in victory, and in 1952 had to concede that the result of victory had been far less satisfying than he had wished. No other Commonwealth country sparked such detailed knowledge or lifelong interest. 2005.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 Pierre Berton. 1990
Berton describes the follies and tragedies of the decade-long Depression and criticizes the political leaders who failed to take the…
bold steps necessary to deal with unemployment, drought and despair. He portrays the ordinary people who struggled to survive, and denounces the wealthy businessmen who stretched the laws and took advantage of their employees. Bestseller 1990. Nominated for the 1993 Torgi Award.By Byron Farwell. 1977
A definitive history of the great conflict that raged from 1899 to 1902 between the British Empire, at its peak…
of power and arrogance, and a tiny nation, stubbornly fighting to maintain its independence. 1977.By David Cruise, Alison Griffiths. 1996
Amidst public outcry, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald created the North West Mounted Police to bring law and order to…
one of the most dangerous places in North America -- the Canadian West. Using original sources, the authors portray the first Mounties, some three hundred untrained young men, who were sent west to drive out whiskey smugglers and outlaws, and pacify the Indians. Some strong language. c1996.By Paul Brickhill. 2000
The Great Escape tells how more than six hundred men in a German prisoner of war camp worked together to…
achieve an extraordinary break-out. Every night for a year they dug tunnels, and those who weren't digging forged passports, drew maps, faked weapons and tailored German uniforms and civilian clothes to wear once they had escaped. All of this was conducted under the very noses of their prison guards. When the right night came, the actual escape itself was timed to the split second - but of course, not everything went according to plan... 2000.By Jack Beeching. 1982
By Carol Off. 2004
In 1993, Canadian peacekeepers in Croatia were plunged into the most significant fighting Canada had seen since the Korean War.…
In September 1993, in a tiny corner of Croatia known as Medak Pocket, a unit of Canadian peacekeepers planted themselves between besieged Serbs and the advancing Croat army, driving them from the area under United Nations protection. The soldiers should have returned home as heroes, but instead, they arrived under a cloud of suspicion and silence. Descriptions of violence and some strong language. 2004.Although Canada is a young nation, its Catholic Church boasts a thousand-year history. The author, a Bishop, presents this history…
through vignettes of women and men whose presence, vision, daring, determination, compassion, and action planted the Canadian Church from sea to sea. He also provides a look at the Church today. 2002.By Mark Bourrie. 2011
The Canadian government censored the news during World War II for two main reasons: to keep military and economic secrets…
out of enemy hands and to prevent civilian morale from breaking down. But in those tumultuous times - with Nazi spies landing on our shores by raft, U-boat attacks in the St. Lawrence, army mutinies in British Columbia and Ontario, and pro-Hitler propaganda in the mainstream Quebec press - censors had a hard time keeping news events contained. Now, with freshly unsealed World War II press-censor files, many of the undocumented events that occurred in wartime Canada are finally revealed. c2011.In the early morning hours of August 6, 2011, a United States Army CH-47D Chinook helicopter, call sign "Extortion 17,"…
sped alone into eastern Afghanistan's deadly Tangi Valley. Shot out of the sky by a rocket propelled grenade, everyone onboard died instantly, the single greatest loss of life in the history of the Navy SEALs. Ed Darack provides a detailed account of the dramatic, deadly final moments of the Chinook, followed by the swift response to those who caused the tragedy, as well as the enduring legacies of those lost. 2017.By Gary Hart. 2004
Hart, a former senator and presidential candidate, fears that containment of communism has been supplanted by a blatant strategy of…
empire as the basis of American foreign policy. He rejects what he regards as the unilateral efforts by the current administration to promote geopolitical interests. As an alternative, Hart proposes a foreign policy designed to advance the "fourth power" - that is, the power of core American values, including representative government and individual liberty. 2004.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 Cleophas Belvin. 2006
Recounts the history of the Quebec part of the Labrador coast. Describes the arrival of the Aboriginals and the activities…
of the Breton and Basque fishermen, and the French- and English-speaking merchants from Quebec City who controlled the region for more than one hundred and fifty years. Chronicles the early pioneers and their descendants and how they dealt with the precariousness of the fisheries, and explores the role of the Anglican and Catholic missionaries. 2006.By Ken Small, Mark Rogerson. 1993
The night of 27 April 1944: Exercise Tiger, a rehearsal for the D-Day landings, is held off Slapton Beach in…
Devon. As the mock assault is under way, 946 American servicemen die. Under wartime restrictions the story is concealed and in time forgotten, until local hotelier Ken Small finds American bullets and money while beachcombing and decides to find the truth. 1993.By Hala Jaber. 2009
Jaber, a Lebanese-British foreign correspondent, describes covering the Gulf War and her personal engagement with an Iraqi family caught in…
the crossfire. Reporting on the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Jaber took up the cause of hospitalized children wounded in the bombing, and helped start a fund to provide them with better medical attention and supplies. In particular, she learned the extraordinary story of two orphans and decided to adopt them. Some descriptions of violence. 2009.By Joan Frances Casey, Lynn I Wilson. 1991
In 1981, therapist Lynn Wilson diagnosed Joan Casey as having a multiple personality disorder. Joan's story, interspersed with the therapist's…
notes, describes the abuse she suffered as a child as well as Lynn Wilson's unorthodox 4-year treatment of the disorder. Violence and explicit descriptions of sex. c1991.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.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.