Ottawa’s very own Tim Cook, Chief Historian and Director of Research at the Canadian War Museum, has released a new and acclaimed work of nonfiction. The Good Allies: How Canada and the United States Fought Together to Defeat Fascism During the Second World War hit shelves on September 17 and tells the unheard story of World War II’s Canada-US alliance.
Canadians with a general understanding of history are likely to think of WWII as a battle between the Axis and Allied powers, but Cook’s The Good Allies offers readers a further glimpse into the fraught negotiations that took place between two allied forces: the US and Canada. Cook brings down the curtain on the tension that teemed between Canada and the US, both nations striving to navigate their mutual suspicion and rivalry for the greater good of the world.
Cook spotlights WWII-era Canadian-American debates over economic policy, military power, industrial might, and national sovereignty, each tense topic in the shadow of a rapidly expanding fascist regime. Cook tracks the progression of these debates from barriers in protecting North American coasts from U-boat attacks to debates where the fate of the free world hung in the balance. Cook, in his trademark style, details the back-room deals and desperate trade-offs that Canadians and Americans agreed to while North America was under fire.
The Good Allies also discloses the secret communications of the fierce allied leaders, laying bare the courage of King, Roosevelt, and Churchill as they forged the agreements that brought Canada and the US from distrustful neighbours to triumphant allies.
Tim Cook, Canada’s most prominent war historian, has won multiple awards for his books about Canadian military history. Cook has four Ottawa Book Awards, two C.P. Stacey Awards, and two J.W. Dafoe Prizes under his belt for his writings and commentaries on world wars from a distinctly Canadian perspective. For his contributions to Canadian history, Cook was awarded the Governor General’s Award for Popularizing History (The Pierre Berton Award) and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. The Good Allies is his thirteenth book about Canadian war history.
If you want to hear the riveting true tale of how Canada and the US united in mutual sacrifice and victory for the free world like you’ve never heard it before, make sure you treat yourself to a copy of Tim Cook’s The Good Allies, now available in bookstores and on Kindle.
