Includes the following: The Great War and Its Historiography by Dennis Showalter; What's in a Name?: The Development of Strategies of Attrition on the Western Front, 1914-1918 by Robert T. Foley; The Battle of the Marne: Myths and Reality of Germany's 'Fateful Battle' by Annika Mombauer; The Final Logic of Sacrifice? Violence in German Prisoner of War Labor Companies in 1918 by Heather Jones; Internment Camps for German Civilians in Finistere, France (1914-1919) by Jean-Noel Grandhomme plus Book Reviews covering the following topics: Africa and The Middle East; The Americas; Asia and the Pacific; Europe; and General, Comparative and Historiographical topics.

The Historian, Volume 68, Number 4 (Winter 2006)

History

Americas

Phi Alpha Theta

The Hanging of Ang¨¦lique : Canada, Slavery and the Burning of Montreal

Biographies & Memoirs

Cooper, Afua

Historical

HarperCollins Publishers Canada, Limited

On January 26, 1976, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau embarked on his historic three-day visit to Havana, becoming the first leader of a NATO country to visit Cuba since the crippling 1960 American economic embargo. The trip was widely denounced, especially for its timing, as Castro had recently sent Cuban soldiers to fight a civil war in Angola. As the Americans watched warily, Trudeau, accompanied by his wife, Margaret, and baby Michel, was greeted in Havana by 250,000 cheering Cubans and a 30- foot poster of himself. “Long live Prime Minister Fidel Castro!” Trudeau would famously shout at the love-in. Margaret would declare Castro “the sexiest man alive.”
In this fascinating first-ever portrait of an unusual relationship between two enigmatic world leaders, author and historian Robert Wright brings to life three critical days when Canadian politics played on the international stage. Wright describes how, long before he was prime minister, Trudeau had attempted to canoe to Cuba, and how Castro visited Montreal as a young revolutionary, later welcoming FLQ terrorists to his tiny island. In a revealing look at their personalities and political ideologies, Wright shows how the two leaders, despite their official positions as allies of rival empires, had determinedly refused to exist merely as handmaidens to the United States. This fact, he asserts, is what brought them to power, and what drew them to each other.
Wright draws on extensive insight from political commentators and historians as many interviewees talk candidly for the first time. A book that will tap into our continuing fascination with Pierre Trudeau and our interest in the future political course of Cuba, Three Nights in Havana is an intimate and insightful portrait of two controversial and often misunderstood figures and their place in history.
Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro became friends despite their differences. They agreed to disagree; the same is true of Canada and Cuba. And it all began on a tiny coral key off Cuba’s southern shore in 1976, with the cheer heard round the world: “ Viva el primer ministro Fidel Castro!”―fromThree Nights in Havana

Three Nights In Havana

Wright, Robert

HarperCollins, Publishers-

In 1703, a war party of French soldiers and Abenaki warriorsraided the village of seven-year-old Puritan girl EstherWheelwright, taking thirty-nine captives and killing a handfulof men, women and children. That Esther managed to survivethe 200-mile journey by foot through swamps and forests to aJesuit mission in New France is astonishing. That she was adopted,quite happily, into a family of her Abenaki captors, isequally amazing. But for the Wheelwright family, who waitedyears before they had word that Esther had even survived theraid, this was a tragedy.
When Esther’s release from her Abenaki family was finallynegotiated through a French Jesuit who took her to the city ofQuebec, it was too late. At the age of fourteen, Esther brokeher parents’ hearts by refusing to go home; they never saw heragain. Instead, she remained in Quebec, the capital of NewFrance, where, against all odds, she rose through the ranks tobecome Mother Superiorand a pivotal figure after the siegeof Quebec in 1759.
Written by Esther’s descendant, Julie Wheelwright, Estheris a spiritual and an emotional journey of survival, and of thehuman capacity for transformation.

Esther

Wheelwright, Julie

From the Giller Prize-winning author of The Bishop’s Man comes a bestselling classic childhood memoir, full of humour and heartache, set in Cape Breton Island
Linden MacIntyre remembers vividly the day construction started on the causeway. September 15, 1952, was the day that Change—always for the better and always from away—arrived to link his small Cape Breton village with the wide world of the mainland. With its grand promises of jobs and riches and progress, the building of the Canso Causeway also became a potent personal icon for MacIntyre, the road that would bring him closer to the father who was always away.
In a highly evocative memoir—at once a vibrant coming-of-age story, a portrait of a vanishing way of life and a luminous reflection on fathers and sons—MacIntyre fills his pages with vivid characters. From his grandmother, the Gaelic-speaking Peigeag, who, it was rumoured, had “special powers” that could both cure and curse, to Dan Rory, the father MacIntyre struggles to know and love, these are people who inhabit a time and a place that is on the brink of transformation. No one knows this more than MacIntyre, his narrative voice ringing true on every page, the voice of a young boy both mystified and captivated by the worlds he straddles.
Shot through with humour and humanity, Causeway is an extraordinary book, a memoir that sets a new standard for the genre.

Causeway

MacIntyre, Linden

When Nazi Germany’s Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated in 1945, its records revealed that two young Canadians, Ken Macalister and Frank Pickersgill, were among its countless victims. At 30 and 31 years of age, they had been agents of Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE ), an undercover unit established by Winston Churchill that used sabotage and subversion to bring down the Nazi regime from within. Jonathan F. Vance brings us the dramatic, untold story of two men who were the most unlikely of soldiers. Pickersgill, an up-andcoming journalist, and Macalister, one of the finest law students ever to attend the University of Toronto, were both living in France when the Nazis seized power. Pickersgill, arrested as an enemy alien, spent two years in prison before escaping to England. The men’s intelligence, resourcefulness and familiarity with French customs and language caught the attention of the SOE. Trained in special-operations techniques, from radio control to killing, they were paired together and parachuted into France―just as the underground network they were to join was cracked open by the Germans. Unlikely Soldiers is an extraordinary tale of unsung heroes, intrigue and tragic error. With access to the recently opened SOE archives, Vance draws new material into a fascinating narrative that will appeal to anyone interested in military history, the evolution of espionage, or simply the remarkable story of two heroic Canadians. 
Above the village of Châtillon-sur-Cher on the night of June 15/16, 1943, Frank and Ken sat in the fuselage of the Halifax and watched as the dispatcher hooked their parachutes to the static line. Seconds later, the red light blinked on, the dispatcher pulled the cover off the chute in the floor, and the two Canadians sat down. . . . Then the green light flashed . . . and Ken and Frank were gone. ―From Unlikely Soldiers

Unlikely Soldiers: how Two Canadians Fought The Secret War Against

Vance, Jonathan

The adventure-filled story of the legendary Hudson’s Bay Company is inextricably linked to the formation of a Canadian nation stretching from sea to sea to sea. In an absorbing and lively new book on The Bay, James Raffan explores the forces that moulded a man, a company and a country.
The histories of Sir George Simpson and the HBC in the golden years of the 19th century are in many ways one history, for Simpson’s professional acumen and personal ambitions propelled a failing business to a position of great wealth and political power. At its height, the HBC trading territory covered an astonishing one-twelfth of the world’s surface. Raffan captures the many contradictions of the larger-than-life man at its centre: a brilliant manager who kept an iron grip on his fur forts from east to west, ensuring British power across the land; a pompous dandy who was most at home in a voyageur-paddled canoe; a man ashamed of his illegitimate birth but who went on to sire 13 children with eight different women, only one of whom was his wife; a master businessman who laid the foundations for the single greatest business enterprise of its day. Emperor of the North is the vibrant tale of a man who shaped much more than a fur-trading company―he launched an empire of ideas that led to the creation of a country. Meticulously researched, highly readable and wonderfully illuminated by maps and archival photographs, Emperor of the North is a delight for history buffs, armchair adventurers and biography fans alike.

Emperor Of The North

Raffan, James

Phyllis Bruce Books

During the Great Famine of the 1840s, thousands of impoverished Irish immigrants, escaping from the potato crop failure, fled to Canada on what came to be known as “fever ships.” As the desperate arrivals landed at Quebec City or nearby Grosse Isle, families were often torn apart. Parents died of typhus and children were put up for adoption, while lucky survivors travelled on to other destinations. Many people made their way up the St. Lawrence to Montreal, where 6,000 more died in appalling conditions. Despite these terrible beginnings, a thriving Irish settlement called Griffintown was born and endured in Montreal for over a century. The Irish became known for their skill as navvies, building our canals and bridges, working long hours in factories, raising large, close-knit families. This riveting story captures their strong faith, their dislike of authority, their love of drink, song and a good fight, and their loyalty. Filled with personal recollections drawn from extensive author interviews, An Irish Heart recreates a community and a culture that has a place of distinction in our history. From D’Arcy McGee and Nellie McClung to the Montreal Shamrocks, Brian Mulroney and beyond, Irish Canadians have made their mark. 
The Irish call it the Harbour of Tears. From time beyond memory, countless thousands have sailed away from their beloved Ireland from the Cove of Cork, a rare natural harbour tucked into the wild, jagged cliffs of the southwest coast. . . . Never did Cork Harbour see more weeping and wailing than in Black ’47. In that single sad year, more than 10,000 men, women and children left from that port, among the year’s unprecedented exodus of more than a quarter of a million Irish to North America. ―From An Irish Heart

An Irish Heart; How a Small Immigrant Community Shaped Canada

Sharon Doyle Driedger

Finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction
National Bestseller
The events of the horrific Halifax explosion are well documented: on December 6, 1917, the French munitions ship Mont Blanc and the Belgian relief ship Imo collide in the Halifax harbour. Nearly 2,000 people are killed; over 9,000 more are injured. The story of one of the world’s worst non-natural disasters has been told before, but never like this.
In a sweeping narrative, Curse of the Narrows tells a tale of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation, retracing the steps of survivors through the wreckage of a city destroyed now one hundred years after the fatal explosion. Laura M. Mac Donald weaves apanoramic chronicle of the astonishing international response to the explosion,telling of the generous donations of money and medical specialists made by thecity of Boston, of how the number of horrific injuries to Halifax’s childreninspired startling developments in pediatric medicine, and exploring the disaster’s chilling link to the creation of the atomic bomb.
Filled with archival photos, defined by meticulous research and infused with a storyteller’s sensibility, Curse of the Narrows is a compelling and powerful book, ever timely one the one-hundredth anniversary of the Halifax explosion.

Curse of the Narrows ; The Halifax Explosion 1917

Mac Donald, Laura

No event in our history is more legendary than the Yukon Gold Rush of 1896. On August 16, when rich gold deposits were discovered in Bonanza Creek, 100,000 prospectors set off for the newly created Dawson City in search of instant wealth. Hungry miners hoped for the one big strike; others, for prosperity in this instant boom town; some, for the adventure of a lifetime. Charlotte Gray, one of our best writers of non-fiction, tells the story of the Gold Rush through the intimate lives of six extraordinary people: the saintly priest Father Judge; the feisty entrepreneur Belinda Mulrooney; the struggling writer Jack London; the imperious British journalist Flora Shaw; the legendary Sam Steele of the Mounties; and the prospector William Haskell. Brilliantly interweaving their stories, Gray creates a fascinating panorama of a frontier town where desperados, saloon keepers, gamblers, dance hall girls, churchmen and law-makers were thrown together in a volatile time.Beautifully illustrated with period photographs and documents of the Gold Rush, Gold Diggers is a colourful and entertaining journey into a world gone mad for gold.

Gold Diggers

Gray, Charlotte

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