A Look at Non-fiction: The World Wars

One of my absolutely favourite thing to read is non-fiction set in or around the World Wars. I especially enjoy if it about the women involved, but I will read both. Since I have decided to read a bit of non-fiction to shake my current reading up a lot, I went through a few blogs and received a few recommendations. I thought for something different today I would showcase the books relating to these subjects I have actually reviewed on my blog.

War Brides: The stories of the women who left everything behind to follow the men they loved by Melynda Jarratt

For thousands of young British girls, the influx of Canadian soldiers conscripted to Britain during the Second World War meant throngs of handsome young men. The result was over 48,000 marriages to Canadian soldiers alone, and a mass emigration of British women to North America and around the world in the 1940's.

For many brides, the decision to leave their family and ome to move to a country thousands of miles away with a man they hardly knew brought forth ensuing happiness. For others, the outcome was much different, and the darker side of the story reveals the infidelity, domestic violence, poverty, alcoholism and divorce that many lived through.

War Brides draws on original archival documents, personal correspondence, and key first hand accounts to tell the amazing story of the War Brides in their own words-and shows the love, passion, tragedy and spirit of adventure of thousand of British women.

I read this back in 2009. My review was not very detailed, but war brides have always really interested me. Growing up there was a woman my mother was very close to, and still is, who I always thought of as another grandparent. She was a war bride from England. Her husband died when I was young, but she is still around and speaking with her British accent. I can actually clearly predict that she is the reason I was so interested in War Brides stories. She would talk about it once in a while, but not like the people in this book. I thought all the different experiences that these women went through upon reaching Canada were fascinating. The book was well worth the read!

Also in 2009 I finally read Maus: A Survivor's Tale. I was still new to reading graphic novels regularly, but Art Spiegelman did an amazing job telling about the Holocaust. The books are very worth the read!

My review of the first book can be found here and the second volume here.

In 2008 I had read another graphic memoir about the Holocaust. I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors by Bernice Eisenstein.

In this truly innovative memoir, Bernice Eisenstein combines her skills as a writer and illustrator to recount her early childhood in the 1950s. Drawing on the memories of her parents-both Holocaust survivors-and the fragmented stories of other family members lost in the war, she explores the impact of their legacy on her own life. Through her vivid prose and stunning illustrations, Eisenstein crafts a tale that is emotionally rich and visually arresting.

I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors harkens back to Art Spiegelman's Maus but breaks new ground in combining graphic novel and memoir. Mixing sadness with bittersweet humor, Eisenstein describes her experiences growing up in the wake of the World War II. But more than a book about the Holocaust and its far-reaching shadow, this moving, searingly honest testament speaks to the universality of memory and loss.

Anyone who sees this book will be deeply affected by its beautiful, highly evocative writing and its brilliantly original, haunting artwork.

This book was very affecting and was slightly different in nature to Maus. You can read my review of it here.

One series that I love is the Extraordinary Canadians series released by Penguin Books. I was buying them as they came out, but I have fallen behind on reading them, so I stalled on buying them. I will have to remedy that at some point! I have reviewed the book on Lord Beaverbank and Nellie McClung.

The only other book I have actually reviewed that pertains to this topic is Baptism of Fire by Nathan M. Greenfield.

Nathan M. Greenfield's talent for combining rich (and often overlooked) historical data with first-person accounts made his book The Battle of the St. Lawrence both a critical and popular success. Now he turns his formidable storytelling skill to one of the defining battles of the First World War and a seminal event in the building of our country. The Second Battle of Ypres pitted the highly trained German soldiers - armed with the first weapon of mass destruction, chlorine gas - against the 1st Canadian Division, which had been in the trenches for just over a week. Yet it was the Canadians who ultimately triumphed, stopping the German advance that followed history's first poison-gas attacks. In Baptism of Fire, Greenfield revisits the battlefields and war rooms of history, deconstructing military motives and unearthing scores of unpublished interviews, giving voice to the men who faced what one officer called a "filthy, loathsome pestilence" that turned copper buttons green and seared the Canadians' lungs. He describes how surprise turned to terror as the infantry saw the first clouds of chlorine gas rolling towards them; how, at first, the German soldiers had joked that their mysterious silver cylinders, spied across the enemy line, were a new kind of German beer keg. Recreating how the Canadians immediately filled the 12-kilometre-long hole in the Allied lines after the initial gas attack, Greenfield takes readers into the unimaginable horror of shell fire that turned men into "pink mist" and obliterated trenches, leaving the survivors to defend a position of death. And he explains how the untried Canadians, with their defective Ross rifles, breathing through urine-soaked handkerchiefs, successfully made one of the most important stands of the war - perhaps even staving off an ultimate German victory. With alacrity and a great respect for the men in the trenches, Greenfield adds a new dimension to, and explodes a few myths behind, the Battle of Ypres. Within his pages are the words of the Canadian - and German - soldiers themselves, many of whom have never been heard before. Their accounts make this a gripping read for anyone seeking to understand our historical or military past.

This book was very interesting. It is subtitled 'The Second Battle of Ypres and the Forging of Canada, April 1915'. You can read my review of it here.

I was actually surprised by how short this list is! I am sure there are more that I didn't actually review. I will just have to read and review more this year to add to the list!

What is your favourite type of non-fiction? If you read the same topic as mentioned in this post, what are books that you recommend?