Strangers In Arms

Why do soldiers fight? What keeps them going? What compels them to face death when their long-time comrades have fallen around them? Strangers in Arms addresses these questions in a groundbreaking study of the behaviour, morale, and motivations of Canadian infantrymen on the front lines of the Second World War. Canada’s army has long faced intense criticism for its combat performance during the war, and Canada’s official history has presented Canadian soldiers as deficient, inexperienced, and unprepared in comparison with their enemies. Questioning entrenched views, Robert Engen explores a trove of contemporaneous documents to create a remarkable new portrait of Canadians at war. Rather than the popular "band of brothers" image of soldier cohesion in battle, he finds staggering casualty rates and personnel turmoil that left Canadian infantrymen often working with and fighting beside men they hardly knew. Yet these strangers in arms continued to fight - effectively and in good spirits - against a tenacious and deadly enemy, triumphing in the face of heartrending loss and sacrifice. Challenging old narratives about the Canadian soldier and supported by cutting-edge empirical and qualitative research, Strangers in Arms crafts a new understanding of what happens at the sharp end of battle.

The tango is easily the most iconic dance of the last century, its images as familiar as an old friend. But are they the whole story? Peeling back the poster propaganda that has always characterized the tango publicly, this intimate study shows the invisible heart of the dance and the culture that raised it. Drawing on direct experience and conversations with dancers, it reveals much about the role of the tango in Argentinean culture. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

The story of what it was like to grow up Jewish in Nazi Germany, to escape danger and fear, and also to leave family and friends, on the British Kindertransport scheme. Among the voices we hear are those of two of the organisers, an English foster mother, and 13 surviving children.

Lara's had been an arranged marriage to a man who was cold and mostly absent, so when word reached Lady Hawksworth that her husband was lost at sea, she happily gave up her title and position and proceeded to lead an exemplary life as a volunteer at the community orphanage. But suddenly - after a over a year - Lara receives word that her husband is alive and on his way home. While Lara couldn't deny that the handsome man who appeared before her resembled her husband in every way, and knew things that only he could know, the "new" Hunter was attentive and loving in ways he never had been before. Was it possible that her rake of a husband had reformed - or was Lara being seduced by a cunning stranger?

Orphaned at birth and shuttled between foster homes, CIA agent Merrick Grayslake has made a practice of not letting anyone get close to him. But he finds that his emotions are at risk when he is introduced to Alexandra Cole. It has been all work and not enough play for Alex. And what little social life she's had has been on hold for a year while she completes her graduate degree. But her ordinary everyday life changes from the moment she meets Merrick Grayslake.

Anxious to esacpe her impending wedding to a much-despised fiance, Lysette Kersaint seeks refuge with Maximilien Vallerand, a dangerous and powerful rake for whom the innocent beauty represents his ultimate tool for revenge.

“It makes no sense. You would be strangers / if not for this.” In Strangers, Rob Taylor makes new the epiphany poem: the short lyric ending with a moment of recognition or arrival. In his hands, the form becomes not simply a revelation in words but, in Wallace Stevens' phrase, “a revelation in words by means of the words.” The epiphany here is not only the poet’s. It’s ours. A book about the songlines of memory and language and the ways in which they connect us to other human beings, to read Strangers is to become part of the lineages (literary, artistic, familial) that it braids together—to become, as Richard Outram puts it, an “unspoken / Stranger no longer.”