Please note: Numerous
subscription ebook titles will become unavailable as EBSCO’s digital rights to those titles expire,
but new titles will be added.
It is always best to search their database for their current titles.
Sample search:
canada (subject) AND "world war 1" OR "world war i" OR "world war, 1914-1918" OR wwi (no field selected)
This list was updated May 2016.
Battle for Vimy
Ridge, 1917 / Sheldon, Jack; Cave, Nigel. 2007. (This unlimited user and part of our WCI Permanent eBOOK Collection -- not a subscription)
In a new departure in the Battleground Europe series, this book is a guide to both sides of a major battle – in this case to the Canadian Corps operations against 1st Bavarian Reserve Corps at Vimy
from 9 – 12 April 1917, which formed part of the opening of the British offensive, known as the Battle of Arras. Historically, the capture of Vimy Ridge was an event far more significant than its
undoubted military importance alone. Here for the first time all four divisions of the Canadian Corps were deployed in line together in one offensive; and although the Corps went to fight even
greater battles, Vimy marked a key point in the emergence of Canada as a fully sovereign nation. Although the Canadian side of the story has been well chronicled by a number of writers, until
now there has been little concerning the defense during this great battle. Now, the accounts of the German soldiers and their commanders are combined with those of the Canadians and British
deployed on the other side of No Man's Land – and not simply those who fought above ground, but tunnelers also.
Beyond the Battlefield : Women Artists of the Two World Wars
/ Speck, Catherine. 2014. (This is single user only and part of our WCI Permanent eBOOK Collection -- not a subscription)
World Wars I and II changed the globe on a scale never seen before or since, and from these terrible conflicts came an abundance of photographs, drawings, and other artworks attempting to make sense
of the turbulent era. In this generously illustrated book, Catherine Speck provides a fascinating account of women artists during wartime in America, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and
their visual responses to war, both at the front lines and on the home front. In addition to following high-profile artists such as American photographer Lee Miller, Speck recounts the experiences
of nurses, voluntary aides, and ambulance drivers who found the time to create astonishing artworks in the midst of war zones. She also describes the feelings of disempowerment revealed in the work
done by women distant from the conflict. As Speck shows, women artists created highly charged emotional responses to the threats, sufferings, and horrors of war—the constant fear of attack, the sorrow
of innocent lives destroyed, the mass murders of people in concentration camps, and the unimaginable aftermath of the atomic bombs. The first book to explore female creativity during these periods,
Beyond the Battlefield delivers an insightful and meditative examination of this art that will appeal to readers of art history, war history, and cultural studies.
Passchendaele, 1917
/ / McNab, Chris. 2014. (This is single user only and part of our WCI Permanent eBOOK Collection -- not a subscription)
The Battle of Passchendaele is perhaps one of the most iconic of the First World War, coming to symbolise the mud and blood of the battlefield like no other. Fought for over 3 months under some of
the worst conditions of the war, fighting became bogged down in a quagmire that made it almost impossible for any gains to be made. In this Battle Story, Chris McNab seeks to lift the battle out of
its controversy and explain what really happened and why. Complete with detailed maps and photographs, as well as fascinating facts and profiles of the leaders, this is the best introduction to this
legendary battle.
Canada's Great War, 1914-1918 : How Canada Helped Save the British Empire and Became a North American Nation
/ Tennyson, Brian Douglas. Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2014. (This is single user only and part of our WCI Permanent eBOOK Collection -- not a subscription)
Canada's Great War, 1914-1918: How Canada Helped Save the British Empire and Became a North American Nation
describes the major role that Canada played in helping the British Empire win the greatest war in history—and, somewhat surprisingly, resulted in Canada's closer integration not with the British Empire but with its continental neighbor, the United States. When Britain declared war against Germany and Austria-Hungary in August 1914, Canada was automatically committed as well because of its status as a Dominion in the British Empire. Despite not having a say in the matter, most Canadians enthusiastically embraced the war effort in order to defend the Empire and its values. In Canada's Great War, 1914-1918, historian Brian Douglas Tennyson argues that Canada's participation in the war
weakened its relationship with Britain by stimulating a greater sense of Canadian identity, while at the same time bringing it much closer to the United States, especially after the latter entered the war. Their wartime cooperation strengthened their relationship, which had been delicate and often strained in the nineteenth century. This was reflected in the greater integration of their economies and the greater acceptance in Canada of American cultural products such as books, magazines, radio broadcasting and movies, and was symbolized by
the astonishing American response to the Halifax explosion in December 1917. By the end of the war, Canadians were emerging as a North American people, no longer fearing close ties to the United States, even as they maintained their ties to the British Commonwealth. Canada's Great War, 1914-1918 will interest not only Canadians unaware of how greatly their nation's participation in the First World War reshaped its relationship with Britain and the United States, but also Americans unacquainted with the magnitude of Canada's involvement in
the war and how that contribution drew the two nations closer together.
Our Glory and Our Grief : Torontonians and the Great War.
Miller, Ian Hugh Maclean. Toronto : University of Toronto Press. 2002.
The citizens of Toronto were thousands of miles behind the front-lines, shielded by the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. They were never shelled, they were not gassed, and they were never forced to rise from a trench and trust that fate would keep them safe as they walked across No Man's Land. Nevertheless, Torontonians experienced something called 'War.'
Our Glory and Our Grief offers a fresh look at the First World War's effect on Canada's second largest city. What happened in Toronto? What did citizens know about the front? How were the enormous sacrifices of the war rationalized? Why did Torontonians continue to support it?
Ian Miller challenges the conventional notion that Toronto's citizens were shielded from the grisly details and immense sacrifices of the war by censorship and propaganda. Miller's extensive research of newspaper and archival records results in a study of the war years from a number of historiographical perspectives - social, cultural, military, and labour - thus forming a narrative with far-reaching implications for the way the war years in Canada are understood. For example, Miller's discussion of women reveals that their lives were greatly altered by the war effort. They moved out of the private sphere of
house and home and into the public domain of munitions factories and recruiting parades. They campaigned to raise funds for the war and supported the enlistment of their husbands and sons - in fact encouraged, cajoled, and finally demanded that men be conscripted for overseas service. By 1918, what it meant to be a 'modern' woman had been transformed.
Contemporaries, argues Miller, knew far more about the nature of the Great War than has ever been acknowledged. The book's aim then, is not to explain the reactions of a public that was denied the opportunity to learn the reality of war. Rather, it is to try to understand why a population that was well informed about what awaited its young men in the trenches of Europe continued to mobilize its resources to achieve victory.
Shoestring Soldiers : The 1st Canadian Division at War, 1914-1915 / Iarocci, Andrew. 1992.
The Great War was a pivotal experience for twentieth-century Canada. Shoestring Soldiers is the first scholarly study since 1938 to focus exclusively on Canada's initial overseas experience from late 1914 to the end of 1915.In this exciting new work, Andrew Iarocci challenges the dominant view that the 1st Canadian Division was poorly prepared for war in 1914, and less than effective during battles in 1915.
He examines the first generations of men to serve overseas with the division: their training, leadership, morale, and combat operations from Salisbury Plain to the Ypres Salient, from the La Bassé Canal to Ploegsteert Wood. Iarocci contends that setbacks and high losses in battle were not so much the products of poor training and weak leadership as they were of inadequate material resources on the Western Front.
Shoestring Soldiers incorporates a wealth of research material from official documents, soldiers' letters and diaries, and the battlefields themselves, surveyed extensively by the author. It marks an important contribution to the growing body of literature on Canada in the First World War.
How the War Was Won : Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917-1918 / Travers, Timothy. 1992.
'How the War Was Won' describes the major role played by the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front in defeating the German army. In particular, the book explains the methods used in fighting the last year of the war, and raises questions as to whether mechanical warfare could have been more widely used.
Using a wide range of unpublished material from archives in both Britain and Canada, Travers explores the two themes of command and technology as the style of warfare changed from late 1917 through 1918. He describes in detail the British army's defense against the German 1918 spring offensives, analyzes command
problems during these offensives, and offers an overriding explanation for the March 1918 retreat. He also fully investigates the role of the tank from Cambrai to the end of the war, and concludes that, properly used, the tank could have made a greater contribution to victory. 'How the War Was Won' explodes many
myths and advances new and controversial arguments. It will be essential reading for military historians and strategists, and for those interested in the origins of mechanical warfare.
Altered Memories of the Great War : Divergent Narratives of Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Sheftall, Mark David. London : I.B.Tauris. 2009.
The experiences of World War I touched the lives of a generation but memories of this momentous experience vary enormously throughout the world. In Britain, there was a strong reaction against militarism but in the Dominion powers of Canada, Australia and New Zealand the response was very different. For these former colonial powers, the experience of war was largely accepted as a national rite of passage and their pride and respect for their soldiers' sacrifices found its focus in a powerful nationalist drive. How did a single, supposedly shared experience provoke such contrasting
reactions? What does it reveal about earlier, pre-existing ideas of national identity? And how did the memory of war influence later ideas of self-determination and nationhood? Altered Memories of the Great War is the first book to compare the distinctive collective narratives that emerged within Britain and the Dominions in response to World War I. Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand endured equally grim experiences on the battlefield and all
experienced major social upheaval as a result of the war. So why did Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders typically reject the more bitter representations of the war that so many people in Great Britain found compelling? During the inter-war years, men and women throughout the Empire struggled to come to terms with the huge losses of the Great War. Mark Sheftall explores how different communities re-imagined the experiences of war to form a collective memory which reflected the dominant opinion, although clearly not every individual conformed to the same views. This collective memory, he argues, can only be understood by exploring how new responses to the unprecedented experience of the conflict were shaped by long-standing conceptions of identity. Altered Memories of the Great
War powerfully illuminates the differences as well as the similarities between different memories of war and offers fascinating insights into what this reveals about developing concepts of national identity in the aftermath of World War I.