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One of the bloodiest battles of the war in the Pacific. Operation Detachment, the invasion of Iwo Jima, on February 19, 1945, was the first campaign on Japanese soil, and it resulted in some of the fiercest fighting of the Pacific campaign. United States Marines supported by the U.S. Navy and Air Force fought the Japanese both over and underground on the island of volcanic ash, in a battle which was immortalized by the raising of the Stars and Stripes above Mount Suribachi.

The first major encounter between the British Army and Zulu Kingdom, and one of Britain’s greatest military disasters. On January 22, 1879, a 20,000-strong Zulu army attacked 1,700 British and colonial forces. The engagement saw primitive weapons of spears and shields clashing with the latest military technology. However, despite being poorly equipped, the numerically superior Zulu force crushed the British troops, killing 1,300 men, while only losing 1,000 of their own warriors.

2017 Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award — Shortlisted Paul Chiasson reveals the possibility that early Chinese settlers landed in Cape Breton long before Europeans. From the very beginning of the European Age of Discovery, Cape Breton was considered unusual. The history of the area even includes early references to the island having once been the land of the Chinese.

In this new and revised edition, Knowles explores new materials relating to multiculturalism and immigration. Immigrants and immigration have always been central to Canadians’ perception of themselves as a country and a society. In this crisply written history, Valerie Knowles describes the different kinds of immigrants who have settled in Canada, and the immigration policies that have helped define the character of Canadian immigrants over the centuries. Key policymakers and shapers of public opinion figure prominently in this colourful story, as does the role played by racism.

An examination of the SOE, its accomplishments, and the Canadian connection to the organization. During the Second World War, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to conduct acts of sabotage and subversion, and raise secret armies of partisans in German-occupied Europe. With the directive to “set Europe ablaze,” the SOE undertook a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the Nazi Gestapo. An agent’s failure could result in indescribable torture, dispatch to a concentration camp, and, often, a death sentence.

A look back on the brief and spectacular history of Canada’s Great Western Railway. This book chronicles the genesis and all-too-brief existence of one of Canada’s greatest early railways, the Great Western Railway of Canada (1853–1882), a major precursor to the Canadian National Rail system. Today, the Great Western Railway of Canada is a little-known historic line, overlooked even by many railway aficionados. But it was truly a railway ahead of its time.

An extraordinary, newly discovered account from an ordinary Canadian on the ground in the crucial battles of the First World War. What was it like to be a field gunner in the Great War? Drawing on the unpublished letters and diary of field gunner Lt. Bert Sargent and his fellow soldiers, Thunder in the Skies takes the reader from enlistment in late 1914, through training camp, to the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, the Hundred Days Offensive, and home again with peace.

A history of Russian-American relations from 1776 to 1917, when these two states, mostly antagonists since, were warm friends. A compelling account of Russian-American relations from the American Revolution of 1776 to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. Long before the Cold War, there was a seemingly unlikely connection between the two countries — one a champion of liberty and progress; the other an absolute monarchy and defender of tradition.

The story of steamboating in the Canadian West comes to life in the voices of those aboard the vessels of the waterways of the Prairies. Their captains were seafaring skippers who had migrated inland. Their pilots were indigenous people who could read the shoals, sandbars, and currents of Prairie waterways. Their operators were businessmen hoping to reap the benefits of commercial enterprise along the shores and banks of Canada’s inland lakes and rivers. Their passengers were fur traders, adventure-seekers, and immigrants opening up the West.

How a few women fought to board planes, then fly them, and finally to break through earth’s atmosphere into space. The story of how women in Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia, struggled to win a place in the world of air travel, first as passengers, then as flight attendants and pilots, and, finally, as astronauts. Anecdotes, sometimes humourous and always amazing, trace these women’s challenges and successes, their slow march over 100 years from scandal to acceptance, whether in Second World War skies, in hostile northern bush country, and even beyond Earth’s atmosphere.