Tim Cook

The Battle and the Legend

Vimy

75 Years of Forgetting, Remembering, and Remaking Canada's Second World War

Fight for History

Tim Cook, Canada's foremost military historian, offers a surprising portrayal of how soldiers found solace, distraction and entertainment to escape the horrors of the trenches during the Great War. There have been thousands of books on the Great War, and hundreds on Canada's part in the conflict, but most of these have focused on commanders, battles, strategy, and tactics. Less attention has been paid to the daily lives of the combatants, how they coped with and endured the unimaginable conditions of what was then modern industrial warfare: the rain of shells, bullets, and chemical agents. The Secret History of Soldiers examines how those who managed to survive the horrific conditions of trench warfare on the Western Front found solace, relief, distraction and even entertainment. Over the years, both writers and historians have overlooked this aspect of soldiers' lives, as there are no official histories or records. These tales come from the soldiers themselves, captured in letters, diaries, memoirs, and oral accounts. The recollections and artifacts of more than five hundred soldiers form the basis of this book; they include such rare resources as trench art, postcards, and even songsheets. Each piece of history is a reminder that these battles were fought by living, breathing human beings who, when they weren't engaged in battle, needed escapist activities to counter the daily horrors of trench life. It is those eyewitnesses to the bloodshed and carnage who act as guides to the Great War. The world they introduce readers to isn't limited to the harrowing struggle to another day. Cook catalogues the violence of war, but also the gallows humour the soldiers employed to get through it. The Great War was a devastating event, but another layer of life that included songs, skits, art, and even newspapers existed on and behind the battle lines. With his trademark narrative abilities, Cook has created another landmark history of Canadian military life.

How Canadians Survived the Great War

The Secret History of Soldiers

The Sensational Wars Of Sam Hughes And General Arthur Currie

The Madman and the Butcher

Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting The Great War 1917-1918 Volume Two

The definitive account of Canadians fighting in the Second World War.

The Necessary War: Canadians fighting the Second World War, 1939-1943

J. L. Granatstein

With compelling insight, Canada 1919 examines the concerns of Canadians in the year following the Great War: the treatment of veterans, including nurses and Indigenous soldiers; the rising farm lobby; the role of labour; the place of children; the influenza pandemic; the country's international standing; and commemoration of the fallen. Even as the military stumbled through massive demobilization and the government struggled to hang on to power, a new Canadian nationalism was forged. This fresh perspective on the concerns of the time exposes the ways in which war shaped Canada - and the ways it did not.

A Nation Shaped by War

Canada 1919

Based on newly uncovered sources, The Madman and the Butcher is a powerful double biography of Sam Hughes and Arthur Currie and the story of one of the most shocking and highly publicized libel trials in Canadian history. Sir Arthur Currie achieved international fame as Canadian Corps commander during the Great War. He was recognized as a brilliant general, morally brave, and with a keen eye for solving the challenges of trench warfare. But wars were not won without lives lost. Who was to blame for Canada's 60,000 dead? Sir Sam Hughes, Canada's war minister during the first two and a half years of the conflict, was erratic, outspoken, and regarded by many as insane. Yet he was an expert on the war. He attacked Currie's reputation in the war's aftermath, accusing him of being a butcher, a callous murderer of his own men. Set against the backdrop of Canadians fighting in the Great War, this engaging narrative explores questions of Canada's role in the war, the need to place blame for the terrible blood loss, the nation's discomfort with heroes, and the very public war of reputations that raged on after the guns fell silent.

The Sensational Wars of Sam Hughes and General Arthur Currie

The first comprehensive history of Canadians in WWI in forty years, and already hailed as the definitive work on Canadians in the Great War, At the Sharp End covers the harrowing early battles of 1914—16. Tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands, died before the generals and soldiers found a way to break the terrible stalemate of the front. Based on eyewitness accounts detailed in the letters of ordinary soldiers, Cook describes the horrible struggle, first to survive in battle, and then to drive the Germans back. At the Sharp End provides both an intimate look at the Canadian men in the trenches and an authoritative account of the slow evolution in tactics, weapons, and advancement. Featuring never-before-published photographs, letters, diaries, and maps, this recounting of the Great War through the soldiers' eyes is moving, engaging, and thoroughly engrossing.

Canadians Fighting the Great War 1914-1916

At the Sharp End Volume One

‘From Fromelles to the final advance — war as it was lived, in the words of the men who faced it.’ One battalion. Three years of war. Ordinary men under relentless pressure. ‘I was eighteen when I was first sent into battle at Fromelles… War is both the silliest and cruellest activity that a man can get mixed up in. It breaks my heart even now to think of it.’ — Walter Herbert ‘Bert’ Bishop, 55th Battalion In 1915, news from Gallipoli stirred tens of thousands of young Australians to enlist. They trained for a campaign that ended before they reached it. Their war would be fought elsewhere — in the shattered fields, sodden trenches, and ruined villages of France and Belgium. Hold the Line tells the story of one of those units: the 55th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force. Raised from volunteers and shaped in the camps of Egypt, the battalion was sent into the grinding, industrial warfare of the Western Front — a war of mud, machine guns, and relentless attrition. Drawing on letters, diaries, and firsthand testimony, Tim Cook traces the battalion’s journey from the disaster at Fromelles through the hard fighting at Polygon Wood, Péronne, and Bellicourt. These are not distant battle reports, but the voices of the men themselves — young soldiers struggling to endure fear, exhaustion, loss, and the daily uncertainty of survival. By the Armistice in 1918, more than 500 of the 3,000 men who served with the 55th Battalion were dead, and another 1,000 wounded. Those who lived through the war carried it with them for the rest of their lives. Though centred on a single battalion, Hold the Line captures the shared experience of Australian soldiers on the Western Front. It is war as it was lived — close, exhausting, and unforgiving — and a lasting tribute to the men who endured it. ‘A vivid and unflinching account of Australians at war on the Western Front.’ ‘War as it was lived — close, exhausting, and unforgiving.’ ‘A powerful battalion history grounded in firsthand testimony.

A Battalion Tested in the Bloodiest Battles of the Western Front

Hold the Line

*FINALIST FOR THE 2023 OTTAWA BOOK AWARD* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 TEMPLER MEDAL FOR BEST BOOK* From Canada’s top war historian, a definitive medical history of the Great War, illuminating how the carnage of modern battle gave birth to revolutionary life-saving innovations. It brings to light shocking revelations of the ways the brutality of combat and the necessity of agonizing battlefield decisions led to unimaginable strain for men and women of medicine who fought to save the lives of soldiers. Medical care in almost all armies during the Great War, and especially in the Canadian medical services, was sophisticated and constantly evolving. Vastly more wounded soldiers were saved than lost. Doctors and surgeons prevented disease from decimating armies, confronted ghastly wounds from chemical weap-ons, remade shattered bodies, and struggled to ease soldiers’ battle-haunted minds. After the war, the hard lessons learned by doctors and nurses were brought back to Canada. A new Department of Health created guidelines in the aftermath of the 1918–1919 influ-enza pandemic, which had killed 55,000 Canadians and millions around the world. In a grim irony, the fight to improve civilian health was furthered by the most destructive war up to that point in human history. But medical advances were not the only thing brought back from Europe: Lifesavers and Body Snatchers exposes the disturbing story of the harvesting of human body parts in medical units behind the lines. Tim Cook has spent over a decade investigating the history of Canadian medical doctors removing the body parts of slain soldiers and transporting their brains, lungs, bones, and other organs to the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) in London, England. Almost 800 individual body parts were removed from the dead and sent to London, where they were stored, treated, and presented in exhibition galleries. After being exhibited there, the body parts were displayed in Canada. This uncovered history has never been told before and is part of the hidden legacy of the medical war. Based on deep archival research and unpublished letters of soldiers and medical personnel, Lifesavers and Body Snatchers is a powerful narrative, told in Cook’s literary style, which reveals how the medical services supported the soldiers at the front and forged a profound legacy in shaping Canadian public health in the decades that followed.

Medical Care and the Struggle for Survival in the Great War

Lifesavers and Body Snatchers

Shock Troops follows the Canadian fighting forces during the titanic battles of Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, Passchendaele, and the Hundred Days campaign. Through the eyes of the soldiers who fought and died in the trenches on the Western Front, and based on newly uncovered Canadian, British, and German archival sources, Cook builds on Volume I of his national bestseller, At the Sharp End. The Canadian fighting forces never lost a battle during the final 2 years of the war, and although they paid a terrible price in the killing fields of the Great War, they were indeed, as British Prime Minister David Lloyd George exclaimed, the shock troops of the Empire.

Shock Troops

Winner of the 2016 Ottawa Book Award The magisterial second volume of Tim Cook's definitive account of Canadians fighting in the Second World War. Historian Tim Cook displays his trademark storytelling ability in the second volume of his masterful account of Canadians in World War II. Cook combines an extraordinary grasp of military strategy with a deep empathy for the soldiers on the ground, at sea and in the air. Whether it's a minute-by-minute account of a gruelling artillery battle, vicious infighting among generals, the scene inside a medical unit, or the small details of a soldier's daily life, Cook creates a compelling narrative. He recounts in mesmerizing detail how the Canadian forces figured in the Allied bombing of Germany, the D-Day landing at Juno beach, the taking of Caen, and the drive south. Featuring dozens of black-and-white photographs and moving excerpts from letters and diaries of servicemen, Fight to the Finish is a memorable account of Canadians who fought abroad and of the home front that was changed forever.

Canadians in the Second World War, 1944-1945

Fight to the Finish

Historians of the First World War have often dismissed the important role of poison gas in the battles of the Western Front. Tim Cook shows that the serious threat of gas did not disappear with the introduction of gas masks. By 1918, gas shells were used by all armies to deluge the battlefield, and those not instructed with a sound anti-gas doctrine left themselves exposed to this new chemical plague.This book provides a challenging re-examination of the function of gas warfare in the First World War, including its important role in delivering victory in the campaign of 1918 and its curious postwar legacy.

The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the First World War

No Place to Run

Michael Seltz Kristensen

Management of the airway is an important and challenging aspect of many clinicians' work and is a source of complications and litigation. The new edition of this popular book remains a clear, practical and highly-illustrated guide to all necessary aspects of airway management. The book has been updated throughout, to cover all changes to best practice and clinical management and provides extensive coverage of the key skills and knowledge required to manage airways in a wide variety of patients and clinical settings. The best of the previous editions has been preserved, whilst new chapters on videolaryngoscopy, awake tracheal intubation, lung separation, airway ultrasonography, airway management in an epidemic and many more have been added. This is an essential text for anyone who manages the airway including trainees and specialists in anaesthesia, emergency medicine, intensive care medicine, prehospital medicine as well as nurses and other healthcare professionals.

Core Topics in Airway Management

The Philbrook Museum of Art

Artist File]

Michael Kristensen

A cutting edge and highly-illustrated guide to airway management for anaesthetists, intensivists, and emergency medicine physicians.

Clio's Warriors examines how the Canadian world war experience has been constructed and reconstructed over time. Tim Cook elucidates the role of historians in codifying the sacrifice and struggle of a generation as he discusses historical memory and writing, the creation of archives, and the war of reputations that followed each of the world wars on the battlefield. Only recently have military historians pushed the discipline to explore the impact of war on society. In analyzing where the practice of academic military history has come from and where it needs to go, Clio's Warriors plays a vital role in the ongoing challenge of writing critical history.

Canadian Historians and the Writing of the World Wars

Clio's Warriors

Benjamin Brooks

This unique guide is an essential exploring companion for every resident or visitor to South Carolina's spectacular mountains. Packed with stunning photographs and easy-to-follow directions, it will take you to 31 waterfalls nestled in the rugged terrain of Greenville Pickens and Oconee counties. A smash success since its first printing, this third edition includes updated information and more brand new waterfalls to take you even further off the beaten path! Book jacket.

The Waterfalls of South Carolina

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A masterful telling of the way World War Two has been remembered, forgotten, and remade by Canada over seventy-five years. The Second World War shaped modern Canada. It led to the country's emergence as a middle power on the world stage; the rise of the welfare state; industrialization, urbanization, and population growth. After the war, Canada increasingly turned toward the United States in matters of trade, security, and popular culture, which then sparked a desire to strengthen Canadian nationalism from the threat of American hegemony. The Fight for History examines how Canadians framed and reframed the war experience over time. Just as the importance of the battle of Vimy Ridge to Canadians rose, fell, and rose again over a 100-year period, the meaning of Canada's Second World War followed a similar pattern. But the Second World War's relevance to Canada led to conflict between veterans and others in society--more so than in the previous war--as well as a more rapid diminishment of its significance. By the end of the 20th century, Canada's experiences in the war were largely framed as a series of disasters. Canadians seemed to want to talk only of the defeats at Hong Kong and Dieppe or the racially driven policy of the forced relocation of Japanese-Canadians. In the history books and media, there was little discussion of Canada's crucial role in the Battle of the Atlantic, the success of its armies in Italy and other parts of Europe, or the massive contribution of war materials made on the home front. No other victorious nation underwent this bizarre reframing of the war, remaking victories into defeats. The Fight for History is about the efforts to restore a more balanced portrait of Canada's contribution in the global conflict. This is the story of how Canada has talked about the war in the past, how we tried to bury it, and how it was restored. This is the history of a constellation of changing ideas, with many historical twists and turns, and a series of fascinating actors and events.

Tim Cook

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