A powerful portrait of the personal consequences of war as seen through the innocent eyes of children, from a Nobel Prize-winning writer. Nobel Prize-winning writer Svetlana Alexievich delves into the traumatic memories of children who were separated from their parents during World War II--most of them never to be reunited--in this this young adult adaptation of her acclaimed nonfiction masterpiece (The Guardian), Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of WWII. The personal narratives told by those who were children during WWII and survived harrowing experiences, are astounding. So many children were separated from their loved ones in the midst of the terror and chaos. As a result, some grew up in orphanages or were raised by grandparents or extended family; others were taken in and cared for by strangers who risked punishment for such acts. Still others lived on their own or became underage soldiers. Forthright and riveting, these bravely told oral histories of survival reveal the heart-rending details of life during wartime while reminding us that resilience is possible, no matter the circumstances.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese fighter planes appeared from the clouds above Pearl Harbor and fundamentally changed the course of history; with this one surprise attack, the previously isolationist America was irrevocably thrown into the fray and World War II had begun in earnest. This definitive history reveals each of the major battles that America would fight in the ensuing struggle against Imperial Japan, from the naval clashes at Midway and Coral Sea to the desperate, bloody fighting on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Each chapter reveals both the horrors of the battle and the Allies' grim yet heroic determination to wrest victory from what often seemed to be certain defeat, offering a valuable guide to the long road to victory in the Pacific. It is the definitive guide to a unique conflict in history, documenting the rise of naval aviation, spectacular amphibious operations, co-ordinated suicide tactics, and the birth of the atomic age.

A dramatic and thrilling portrait of a long-forgotten true adventure and astounding seafaring achievement. In The Raftsmen, author and documentary filmmaker Ryan Barnett takes readers on an astonishing maritime adventure set in the aftermath of World War II. For four French expatriates who escaped the clutches of the Nazi regime to find asylum in Canada, adventure was to be the antidote to depression brought on by the cruelty of war. In 1956, armed with nothing but the flannel on their backs, a small stock of food, and some crude navigation and communication equipment, the quartet set sail from Halifax. Their goal: to become the first crew to cross the Atlantic by raft. Fashioned from telephone poles and built entirely by hand, the raft they called L'Egare II would be their home for 88 harrowing days as they crossed the North Atlantic from Canada to Britain. And they made it! In The Raftsmen, Barnett and comic illustrator Dmitry Bondarenko explore the adventure-fueled men aboard the L'Egare II, and the complex emotional undercurrents that led to their daredevil voyage. Original archival photography and film stills taken by the crew aboard the raft, along with news reports and contemporary interviews with still-living members and other key players, round out the re-telling of this amazing journey. Sixty years after they set sail, the epic story of the raftsmen's historic Atlantic crossing is brought to life for the first time.

A breathtaking mix of observation, prose, natural history, and art We tend to look at landscape in relation to what it can do for us. Does it move us with its beauty? Can we make a living from it? But what if we examined a landscape on its own terms, freed from our expectations and assumptions? This is what celebrated writer Helen Humphreys sets out to do in this beautiful, groundbreaking examination of place. For more than a decade Humphreys has owned a small waterside property on a section of the Napanee River in Ontario. In the watchful way of writers, she has studied her little piece of the river through the seasons and the years, cataloguing its ebb and flows, the plants and creatures that live in and round it, the signs of human usage at its banks and on its bottom. The result is The River, a gorgeous and moving meditation that uses fiction, non-fiction, natural history, archival maps and images, and full-colour original photographs to get at the truth. In doing this, Humphreys has created a work of startling originality that is sure to become a new Canadian classic.