Death So Noble


Book Description

Examines the ways in which Canadians remembered and celebrated their participation in WWI, viewing the war as a cultural and philosophical force as opposed to a political and military event. Looks at the country's mythical reconstruction of the war and recounts how the myth's proponents responded to conflicting visions of the war. Touches on the symbolism of the soldier, Canadian nationalism, and the idea of a just war, drawing on memoirs, newspaper reports, and popular culture. Includes bandw photos. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Death So Noble


Book Description

This book examines Canada's collective memory of the First World War through the 1920s and 1930s. It is a cultural history, considering art, music, and literature. Thematically organized into such subjects as the symbolism of the soldier, the implications of war memory for Canadian nationalism, and the idea of a just war, the book draws on military records, memoirs, war memorials, newspaper reports, fiction, popular songs, and films. It takes an unorthodox view of the Canadian war experience as a cultural and philosophical force rather than as a political and military event.




The Vimy Trap


Book Description

The story of the bloody 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge is, according to many of today’s tellings, a heroic founding moment for Canada. This noble, birth-of-a-nation narrative is regularly applied to the Great War in general. Yet this mythical tale is rather new. “Vimyism”— today’s official story of glorious, martial patriotism—contrasts sharply with the complex ways in which veterans, artists, clerics, and even politicians who had supported the war interpreted its meaning over the decades. Was the Great War a futile imperial debacle? A proud, nation-building milestone? Contending Great War memories have helped to shape how later wars were imagined. The Vimy Trap provides a powerful probe of commemoration cultures. This subtle, fast-paced work of public history—combining scholarly insight with sharp-eyed journalism, and based on primary sources and school textbooks, battlefield visits and war art—explains both how and why peace and war remain contested terrain in ever-changing landscapes of Canadian memory.




A Noble Death


Book Description

Pathbreaking study provides a stunning reappraisal of the early history of this controversial human freedom. A Noble Death challenges the often unquestioning attitudes we have toward suicide and traces the evolution of these attitudes from the time of Socrates to the present day. Droge and Tabor reveal the extraordinary fact that early Christians and Jews did not absolutely condemn suicide, but instead focused on whether or not it was committed for noble reasons. In.




The Noble Hustle


Book Description

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys • “Whitehead proves a brilliant sociologist of the poker world.” —The Boston Globe In 2011, Grantland magazine gave bestselling novelist Colson Whitehead $10,000 to play at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. It was the assignment of a lifetime, except for one hitch—he’d never played in a casino tournament before. With just six weeks to train, our humble narrator took the Greyhound to Atlantic City to learn the ways of high-stakes Texas Hold’em. Poker culture, he discovered, is marked by joy, heartbreak, and grizzled veterans playing against teenage hotshots weaned on Internet gambling. Not to mention the not-to-be overlooked issue of coordinating Port Authority bus schedules with your kid’s drop-off and pickup at school. Finally arriving in Vegas for the multimillion-dollar tournament, Whitehead brilliantly details his progress, both literal and existential, through the event’s antes and turns, through its gritty moments of calculation, hope, and spectacle. Entertaining, ironic, and strangely profound, this epic search for meaning at the World Series of Poker is a sure bet. Look for Colson Whitehead’s bestselling new novel, Harlem Shuffle!




One Beat at a Time


Book Description




Living with War


Book Description

In Living with War, Robert Teigrob examines how war is experienced and remembered on both sides of the 49th parallel.




In the Province of History


Book Description

How a region sells - and misrepresents - its past




The Death and Life of the Great Lakes


Book Description

New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award "Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.




Canada and the Great War


Book Description

The topics covered are wide-ranging and eclectic, and include, among others, studies of the Battle of Amiens, the Halifax explosion, Charlie Chaplin and wartime propaganda in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, Newfoundland's contribution to the war effort, the leadership capabilities of Brigadier General Griesbach, and the wartime poetry of John McRae. Contributors include Major John Armstrong (ret.), author many articles on military history and an administrative specialist in the Canadian Forces for thirty-two years, including stints as an instructor in history at the Royal Military College; Laura Brandon, curator of war art at the Canadian War Museum and co-author of Canvas of War: Painting and the Canadian Experience, 1914-1918; Patrick Brennan, associate professor of history at the University of Calgary; Tim Cook, archivist at the National Archives of Canada; Owen Cooke, independent researcher and former chief archivist at the Directorate of History, Canadian Department of National Defence; Andrew Horrall, archivist in charge of military records at the National Archives of Canada; John Hurst, retired administrator from the University of Guelph and head of the Ontario Branch of the WFA ; Jeff Keshen, associate professor of history at the University of Ottawa; David Parsons, Lt. Colonel with the Canadian Forces in Korea and chair of the Newfoundland Branch of the WFA; Roger Sarty, director of Historical Research and Exhibit Development at the Canadian War Museum; Christopher J. Terry, director, Canada Science and Technology Museums and chair of the Aviation Museum Group of the International Association of Transportation Museums; and Sidney F. Wise, professor emeritus in history and former dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Carleton University.