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History and Current Events November 2020
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1945 : The Year That Made Modern Canada
by Ken Cuthbertson
It was a watershed year for Canada and the world. 1945 set Canada on a bold course into the future. A huge sense of relief marked the end of hostilities. Yet there was also fear and uncertainty about the perilous new world that was unfolding in the wake of the American decision to use the atomic bomb to bring the war in the Pacific to a dramatic halt. On the eve of WWII, the Dominion of Canada was a sleepy backwater still struggling to escape the despair of the Great Depression. But the war changed everything. After six long years of conflict, sacrifice and soul-searching, the country emerged onto the world stage as a modern, confident and truly independent nation no longer under the colonial sway of Great Britain. Ken Cuthbertson has written a highly readable narrative that commemorates the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of WWII and chronicles the events and personalities of a critical year that reshaped Canada. 1945: The Year That Made Modern Canada showcases the stories of people--some celebrated, some ordinary--who left their mark on the nation and helped create the Canada of today. The author profiles an eclectic group of Canadians, including eccentric prime minister Mackenzie King, iconic hockey superstar Rocket Richard, business tycoon E. P. Taylor, Soviet defector Igor Gouzenko, the bandits of the Polka Dot Gang, crusading MP Agnes Macphail, and authors Gabrielle Roy and Hugh MacLennan, among many others. The book also covers topics like the Halifax riots, war brides, the birth of Canada's beloved social safety net, and the remarkable events that sparked the Cold War. 1945 is the unforgettable story of our nation at the moment of its modern birth.
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War : how conflict shaped us
by Margaret MacMillan
"War, the instinct to fight, is inherent in human nature; peace is the aberration in history. War has shaped humanity, its institutions, its states, its values and ideas. Our very language, our public spaces, our private memories, some of our greatest cultural treasures reflect the glory and the misery of war. War is an uncomfortable and challenging subject not least because it brings out the most vile and the noblest aspects of humanity. Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has shaped humanhistory and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight. The book considers such much-debated and controversial issues as when war first started; whether human nature dooms us to fight each other; why war has been described as the most organized of all human activities and how it has forced us to become still more organized; how warriors are made and why are they almost always men; and how we try to control war. Drawing on lessons from a sweep of history, from classical history to modern warfare, and from all parts of the globe, MacMillan reveals the many faces of war--the way it shapes our past, our future, our views of the world, and our very conception of ourselves"
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The folly and the glory : America, Russia, and political warfare, 1945-2020
by Tim Weiner
"With vivid storytelling and access to insider accounts, Weiner sets out to trace the roots of Russian-American political warfare--conflict waged without weapons--over the last seven decades to understand how a president landed in the White House with the help of an expansive, covert Russian campaign. Russia's modern revival of Soviet-era intelligence operations constitutes one of the most significant threats to democracy in the United States and around the world, and yet the US has not engaged its own political warfare methods in defense, even as our own justice department has concluded unequivocally that Russia influenced the 2016 election. To get to the heart of what's at stake and find potential solutions, Weiner examines long-running twentieth century CIA operations, political machinations by the Soviet KGB around the world, the erosion of American political warfare after the Cold War, and why twenty-first century Russia has returned to the practice while the US has not. Weiner takes us behind closed doors and into the deliberation rooms of past and present Russian and American intelligence operations that directly led to-and help illuminate-the current administration and the future of American democracy"--.
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Field Notes from a Pandemic : A Journey Through a World Suspended
by Ethan Lou
Visiting Beijing in January to see his dying grandfather, Canadian journalist Ethan Lou unknowingly walks into a state under siege. In his journey out of China and into other hot zones in Asia and Europe, he finds himself witnessing the very earliest stages of a virus that will forever change the world as we know it.
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Missing from the Village : the story of serial killer Bruce McArthur, the search for justice, and the system that failed Toronto's queer community
by Justin Ling
The tragic and resonant story of the disappearance of eight men--the victims of serial killer Bruce McArthur--from Toronto's queer community. In 2013, the Toronto Police Service announced that the disappearances of three men--Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Majeed Kayhan--from Toronto's gay village were, perhaps, linked. When the leads ran dry, the investigation was shut down, on paper classified as "open but suspended." By 2015, investigative journalist Justin Ling had begun to retrace investigators' steps, convinced there was evidence of a serial killer. Meanwhile, more men would go missing, and police would continue to deny that there was a threat to the community. On January 18, 2018, Bruce McArthur, a landscaper, would be arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder.
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The Expendables : How the Middle Class Got Screwed by Globalization
by Jeff Rubin
Union membership has collapsed. Full-time employment is beginning to look like a quaint idea from the distant past. If it seems that the middle class is in retreat around the developed world, it is. Former CIBC World Markets Chief Economist Jeff Rubin argues that all this was foreseeable back when Canada, the United States and Mexico first started talking free trade. Labour argued then that manufacturing jobs would move to Mexico. Free-trade advocates disagreed. Today, Canadian and American factories sit idle. More steel is used to make bottlecaps than cars. Meanwhile, Mexico has become one of the world's biggest automotive exporters. And it's not just NAFTA. Cheap oil, low interest rates, global deregulation and tax policies that benefit the rich all have the same effect: the erosion of the middle class. Growing global inequality is a problem of our own making, Rubin argues. And solving it won't be easy if we draw on the same ideas about capital and labour, right and left, that led us to this cliff. Articulating a vision that dovetails with the ideas of both Naomi Klein and Donald Trump, The Expendables is an exhilaratingly fresh perspective that is at once humane and irascible, fearless and rigorous, and most importantly, timely. GDP is growing, the stock market is up and unemployment is down, but the surprise of the book is that even the good news is good for only one percent of us.
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