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Here is a second humorous look back at the follies, foibles and fads of the twentieth century. Canada's pre-eminent popular historian lampoons the monarchy, the movies, and everything in between. Berton even ventures a look beyond to the upcoming century, when in 2021, Chicago and New York launch the first 22-lane highways: designed for a speed limit of 100 mph, traffic is so congested the limit has to be readjusted--to 15 mph. Following the amazing success of "A Farewell to the Twentieth Century," Pierre Berton knows just what will tickle the funny bones of his fans.

Narrates the events which preceded the gold rush of 1897, the growth and decline of Dawson, and the fates of some of the thousands who left their homes in search of fortune.

Scores of nineteenth-century expeditions battled savage cold, relentless ice and winter darkness in pursuit of two great prizes: the quest for the elusive Passage linking the Atlantic and the Pacific and the international race to reach the North Pole. Pierre Berton's #1 best-selling book brings to life the great explorers: the pious and ambitious Edward Parry, the flawed hero John Franklin, ruthless Robert Peary and the cool Norwegian Roald Amundsen. He also credits the Inuit, whose tracking and hunting skills saved the lives of the adventurers and their men countless times. These quests are peopled with remarkable figures full of passion and eccentricity. They include Charles Hall, an obscure printer who abandoned family and business to head to a frozen world of which he knew nothing; John Ross, whose naval career ended when he spotted a range of mountains that didn't exist; Frederick Cook, who faked reaching the North Pole; and Jane Franklin, who forced an expensive search for her missing husband upon a reluctant British government. Pierre Berton, who won his first Governor General's award for The Mysterious North, here again gives us an important and fascinating history that reads like a novel as he examines the historic events of the golden age of Arctic exploration.

Featuring some of Canada’s best known and most admired historians, this collection will appeal to Pierre Berton fans and history lovers everywhere. For the Love of History features the contributions of outstanding writers who have won recognition for the creative and colourful ways in which they have popularized Canadian history. Including a foreword by Pierre Berton, this book chronicles a diverse and lively range of historical episodes, from an account of early fur-traders and the story of the intriguing life of Isabel Mackenzie King to a dramatic look at the FLQ Crisis. Drawing on the contributors’ skills as acclaimed and inventive storytellers, this book pays lasting tribute to the unrivalled legacy of Pierre Berton.

One chill Easter dawn in 1917, a blizzard blowing in their faces, the four divisions of the Canadian Corps in France went over the top of a muddy scarp knows as Vimy Ridge. Within hours, they held in their grasp what had eluded both British and French armies in over two years of fighting: they had seized the best-defended German bastion on the Western Front. How could an army of civilians from a nation with no military tradition secure the first enduring victory in thirty-two months of warfare with only 10,000 casualties, when the French had lost 150,000 men in their unsuccessful attempt? Pierre Berton's haunting and lucid narrative shows how, unfettered by military rules, civilians used daring and common sense to overcome obstacles that had eluded the professionals. Drawing on unpublished personal accounts and interviews, Berton brings home what it was like for the young men, some no more than sixteen years old, who clawed their way up the sodden, shell-torn slopes in a struggle they innocently believed would make war obsolete. He tells of the soldiers who endured horrific conditions to secure this great victory, painting a vivid picture of trench warfare. In his account of this great battle, Pierre Berton brilliantly illuminated the moment of tragedy and greatness that marked Canada's emergence as a nation.

In this compendium of the absurd, Pierre Berton looks back on some of the fads, follies, and fancies of his century--a period his grandchildren are already calling the Olden Days. In close to fifty essays, fables, and pseudo-documents, Berton covers a variety of twentieth-century customs, from modern funeral practices to Hollywood's immutable rules for movie car chases. He covers everything from TV talk shows that feature nutty female clairvoyants to James Bond's appalling lack of political correctness. He looks into the future and faces up to the problem supersonic airliners will soon have trying to show full-length movies on shorter flights. (His solution: show the opeinging scenes in the airport limousine.) And he has not neglected what he considers the most absurd phenomenon of the twentieth century--the Cold War. This is not a tome to be pored over in the study. It belongs on the bedside table or perhaps in the bathroom. It is ideal fodder for the beach or poolside and an essential alternative for those who find their view of the movie blocked by the flight attendants trying to serve them fish or chicken.

Featuring some of Canada’s best known and most admired historians, this collection will appeal to Pierre Berton fans and history lovers everywhere. For the Love of History features the contributions of outstanding writers who have won recognition for the creative and colourful ways in which they have popularized Canadian history. Including a foreword by Pierre Berton, this book chronicles a diverse and lively range of historical episodes, from an account of early fur-traders and the story of the intriguing life of Isabel Mackenzie King to a dramatic look at the FLQ Crisis. Drawing on the contributors’ skills as acclaimed and inventive storytellers, this book pays lasting tribute to the unrivalled legacy of Pierre Berton.

"Between 1907 and 1975, Hollywood movie-makers made 575 movies specifically set (although not usually filmed) in Canada. That statistic will startle those Canadians who have been told that foreign audiences won't sit still for a film about their country. As Pierre Berton points out in this explosive, tragic, and often funny book, the opposite is true. Movies about Canada have been making money in international markets for half a century. But the Canada that has been shown to the world is very different from the real Canada; and the Canadian image - now firmly fixed in the minds of three generations of moviegoers - is a caricature of the real thing. If Canadians have no sense of their own identity, it is partly because American movie-makers have distorted and blurred that identity. And if foreigners think of this country as a land of snow swept forests and mountains, devoid of larger cities and peopled by happy-go-lucky French-Canadians, wicked half-breeds, wild trappers and loggers, savage Indians and, above all, grim-jawed Mounties - that's because Hollywood has pictured us that way. Berton, who has examined the plot of almost every movie made about this country, finds that the Hollywood image of Canada and its people have been consistent since the first one-reel silent firms were made in 1907. The prairies are rarely shown almost every movie is an outdoor film set in the wilderness- the only city mentioned with any regularity is Montreal. The "Great Woods" begin at the border and stretch on the Artic Circle. The Canadian frontier is seen by Hollywood as an extension of the American frontier-lawless and violent, peopled by gunslingers, and studded with gambling halls and saloons. The Mountie is treated as an American frontier marshal in a red coat. The Klondike and the Yukon Territory are totally confused with Alaska. Our great historical adventures, when they are dealt with at all-the building of the Canadian Pacific, for example, and the Riel Rebellion- are distorted to the point where they are unrecognizable. Cecil B DeMille's production pf North West Mounted Police was hailed by international critics- including Canadians- as the most authentic pictures ever made about the Mounties; but, as Berton shows in fascinating detail, DeMille turned history topsy-turvy and managed to give the impression that the Mounties themselves had okayed the firm. Berton's research, which has taken him from London to Hollywood, and which makes use of hitherto unpublished material from the files of the RCMP and the Public Archives of Canada, reveals in detail the successful efforts of the Hollywood lobby to quash a quota system for films in post-war Canada- a system that might have given us a native -born movie industry. The book is studded with illuminating discoveries: a plea from Rudolph Friml's office to Pierre Elliot Trudeau begging him not to destroy " the beautiful legend of Rose Marie' (The author points out there are four legends , all totally different ); an RCMP commissioner's wistful telegram to Hollywood; "Mounted police would appreciate being left alone;" the Yukon River steamboat sequence slipped into a movie about the Dionne Quintuplets: the trails and tribulations of an ex-Mountie acting as technical adviser in Hollywood. These are some of the surprises in a book which is not only an exciting, revelatory narrative of more than sixty years of exploitation but also a work of careful scholarship"-Publisher

Over 1.5 million Canadians were on relief, one in five was a public dependant, and 70,000 young men travelled like hoboes. Ordinary citizens were rioting in the streets, but their demonstrations met with indifference, and dissidents were jailed. Canada emerged from the Great Depression a different nation. The most searing decade in Canada's history began with the stock market crash of 1929 and ended with the Second World War. With formidable story-telling powers, Berton reconstructs its engrossing events vividly: the Regina Riot, the Great Birth Control Trial, the black blizzards of the dust bowl and the rise of Social Credit. The extraordinary cast of characters includes Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who praised Hitler and Mussolini but thought Winston Churchill "one of the most dangerous men I have ever known"; Maurice Duplessis, who padlocked the homes of private citizens for their political opinions; and Tim Buck, the Communist leader who narrowly escaped murder in Kingston Penitentiary. In this #1 best-selling book, Berton proves that Canada's political leaders failed to take the bold steps necessary to deal with the mass unemployment, drought and despair. A child of the era, he writes passionately of people starving in the midst of plenty.