Finland's War of Choice: The Untidy Coalition of a Democracy and a Dictatorship in World War II

Book six in the Canadian Battle Series, Terrible Victory, is a gripping account of Canada's bloody liberation of western Holland, one of our finest, and most costly, military victories.

On September 4, 1944, Antwerp, Europe's largest port, fell to the Second British Army and it seemed the war would soon be won. But Antwerp was of little value unless the West Scheldt Estuary linking it to the North Sea was also in Allied hands. In his greatest blunder of the war, Field Marshal Montgomery turned his back on the port, leaving the First Canadian Army to fight its way up the long coastal flank.

By the time the Canadians and others serving with them reached the area, it had been transformed into a fortress manned by troops ordered to fight to the death. Crushing the Nazi defenders required all of the Canadians' courage, endurance and skill. The battle that raged until November was Canada's bloodiest of World War II, costing more than 6,000 casualties.

"This volume, and indeed the entire [Canadian Battle] series, can only cement Zuehlke's position as among our foremost chroniclers of Canada at war." -- Globe and Mail

"Zuehlke's signature achievement has been to offer Canadians that missing story. He writes brilliantly...With On to Victory, Zuehlke continues building a canon all his own." -- Quill & Quire

"This is good history, told well, and makes for powerful reading." -- Canada's History

The ninth book in the Canadian Battle Series, On to Victory is the little-told story of the tense final days of World War II, remembered in the Netherlands as "the sweetest of springs," which saw the country's liberation from German occupation. The Liberation Campaign, a series of fierce, desperate battles during the last three months of the war, was bittersweet. A nation's freedom was won and the war concluded, but these final hostilities cost Canada 6,298 casualties, including 1,482 dead. With his trademark "you are there" style that draws upon official records, veteran memories, and a keen understanding of the combat experience, Mark Zuehlke brings to life this concluding chapter in the story of Canada in World War II.

Published to coincide with the 65th anniversary of Canada's dramatic liberation of Holland. May 4, 2010, will mark the 65th anniversary of the end of the fighting for Canada's army and the conclusion of the Netherlands' liberation. Major events of remembrance, both here and in the Netherlands, will celebrate this milestone.

Please note that the maps available in the print edition do not appear in the ebook.

From "the great storyteller of modern Russian historians," (Financial Times) the definitive account of the forgotten war that shaped the modern age

The Charge of the Light Brigade, Florence Nightingale—these are the enduring icons of the Crimean War. Less well-known is that this savage war (1853-1856) killed almost a million soldiers and countless civilians; that it enmeshed four great empires—the British, French, Turkish, and Russian—in a battle over religion as well as territory; that it fixed the fault lines between Russia and the West; that it set in motion the conflicts that would dominate the century to come.

In this masterly history, Orlando Figes reconstructs the first full conflagration of modernity, a global industrialized struggle fought with unusual ferocity and incompetence. Drawing on untapped Russian and Ottoman as well as European sources, Figes vividly depicts the world at war, from the palaces of St. Petersburg to the holy sites of Jerusalem; from the young Tolstoy reporting in Sevastopol to Tsar Nicolas, haunted by dreams of religious salvation; from the ordinary soldiers and nurses on the battlefields to the women and children in towns under siege..