Desperate Glory: The Story of WWI.

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Part of the Stories of Canada history series, Desperate Glory provides young readers with an excellent introduction to the causes, major events, and outcomes of the First World War, the conflict erroneously dubbed the War to End All Wars. Wilson’s highly readable text is of two types. In the principal text, which occupies about two-thirds of each page, Wilson provides the main historical information related to the Great War, while the remaining text, which is in italics, offers miscellaneous bits of interesting information connected to the main text. For example, when Wilson describes the German use of poison gas at Ypres on April 22, 1915, the italicized text describes one Canadian soldier’s fatal gas experience while the page’s photograph is of a hospitalized Canadian soldier. Although Wilson essentially uses a chronological approach to his subject matter and principally focuses on the ground war on the Western Front, he interjects other related content, such as war poetry, the naval battle at Jutland, the changing roles for women at home and at war, and the introduction of new weapons, like airplanes, tanks, and submarines. Where appropriate, Wilson focuses on Canadian contributions to the conflict, and he indicates how Canada’s participation in this war led to nation building. Every pair of facing pages contains two to six black and white captioned photographs of the people, places, or things connected to the pages’ texts. Distributed through the book are eight maps, while Desperate Glory concludes with a timeline of World War I, the author’s sources list, a webography, and an index. Highly recommended.