The Last Good War: An Illustrated History of Canada in the Second World War, 1939–1945

Tim Cook is the World War I historian at the Canadian War Museum. He is
the author of No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the
First World War and Clio’s Warriors: Canadian Historians and the
Writing of the World Wars.

J.L. Granatstein is Canada’s most prolific and recognized living
historian. In The Last Good War he looks at the complicated history of
Canada’s part in World War II, those six terrible years where
Canadians fought on land, in the air, on the oceans, and from the
factory floor. It may also be the most attractively presented book this
reviewer has ever read. Full-scale rare photographs entice and shock.
Selections from the Canadian War Museum’s art collection are
reproduced in colour. Easy-to-follow maps are interspersed to direct
readers through the various military campaigns.

Yet it is the stories of Canadians that offer the greatest impact.
Gut-wrenching fear mixed with selfless acts of bravery, a stoic resolve
to see it through to the end tempered by the agony of never seeing loved
ones again, remind readers that ordinary Canadians turned from home and
hearth to serve their country. The brutality of war is juxtaposed with
the Allied righteousness: in the war against Hitler and his minions,
Canadians did their part and willingly paid the price for victory. More
than 42,000 gave their lives, as Granatstein deftly reminds us, a
generation that fought and died for our freedom today. It was indeed a
good war, fought for the right reasons, and one that changed the destiny
of this country.

This book belongs in every Canadian home, school, and public library.