During WWII, as Canada struggled to provide its allies with food, nutritionists warned that malnutrition could derail the war effort. Posters admonished women and children to “Eat Right, Feel Right” because “Canada Needs You Strong” while cookbooks helped housewives become “housoldiers” through food rationing, menu substitutions, and household production. Food Will Win the War explores the symbolic and material transformations that food and eating underwent during the war and the profound social, political, and cultural changes that took place in the 1940s. Through official food guides and policies, the state took unprecedented steps into the kitchens of the nation, transforming the way women cooked, what their families ate, and how people thought about food. Canadians, in turn, rallied around food and nutrition to articulate new visions of citizenship for their postwar future.

Meatless Mondays, Wheatless Wednesdays, vegetable gardens and chickens in every empty lot. When the United States entered World War I, Minnesotans responded to appeals for personal sacrifice and changed the way they cooked and ate in order to conserve food for the boys "over there." Baking with corn and rye, eating simple meals based on locally grown food, consuming fewer calories, and wasting nothing in the kitchen became civic acts. High-energy foods and calories unconsumed on the American home front could help the food-starved, war-torn American Allies eat another day and fight another battle. Food historian Rae Katherine Eighmey engages readers with wide research and recipes drawn from rarely viewed letters, diaries, recipe books, newspaper accounts, government pamphlets, and public service fliers. She brings alive the unknown but unparalleled efforts to win the war made by ordinary "Citizen Soldiers"--farmers and city dwellers, lumberjacks and homemakers--who rolled up their sleeves to apply "can-do" ingenuity coupled with "must-do" drive. Their remarkable efforts transformed everyday life and set the stage for the United States' postwar economic and political ascendance. Rae Katherine Eighmey is a food historian who has written several historical recipe books and coauthored Potluck Paradise: Favorite Fare from Church and Community Cookbooks. An avid foodie, she tested all the recipes in this book for modern kitchens.

Twenty-second century historians will note that a new World War began on 9/11/2001. In reality, it began much earlier. Competing value systems and the lust for natural resources will precipitate an inevitable clash of civilizations. Currently, we face elusive foes-foes who play by other rules-and in fact, we are already engaged in brutal, truly asymmetric conflict with varied forms of fighting; terrorism is but an isolated part. The increasing number of polymorphic hostilities requires revolutionary and unconventional responses. Special operations are the norm. Nanoscale, biological, and digital technologies have transformed how we fight future wars. Tactical lasers that zap pinpoint targets at twenty kilometers are being developed, as is the millimeter-wave Active Denial System that causes intense pain to those exposed. The "Mother of all Bombs" has been dropped, as have thermobaric weapons that destroy caves and bunkers. Robots roam the battlefield while exotic sensors catalogue nearly every facet of our lives. Paralyzing electrical shock weapons are in the hands of police. Even phasers on stun are closer than you think. Winning the War details the technologies and concepts necessary to ultimately determine the outcome of this global conflict. Via realistic scenarios from recovering tourists kidnapped by terrorists, to bringing down drug cartels in the Amazon, and even preventing Armageddon in the Middle East, Winning the War provides an insider's view into how these futuristic weapons will be used and into the complexities of modern warfare. Bold and controversial measures are prescribed, including the essential nature of absolute domination of space. Winning the War makes clear that drastic and innovative actions will be necessary to ensure our national survival.

The women who kept the farms going while the soldiers were Over There

Food was a critical front in the Cold War battle for Asia. “Where Communism goes, hunger follows” was the slogan of American nation builders who fanned out into the countryside to divert rivers, remodel villages, and introduce tractors, chemicals, and genes to multiply the crops consumed by millions. This “green revolution” has been credited with averting Malthusian famines, saving billions of lives, and jump-starting Asia’s economic revival. Bono and Bill Gates hail it as a model for revitalizing Africa’s economy. But this tale of science triumphant conceals a half century of political struggle from the Afghan highlands to the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta, a campaign to transform rural societies by changing the way people eat and grow food. The ambition to lead Asia into an age of plenty grew alongside development theories that targeted hunger as a root cause of war. Scientific agriculture was an instrument for molding peasants into citizens with modern attitudes, loyalties, and reproductive habits. But food policies were as contested then as they are today. While Kennedy and Johnson envisioned Kansas-style agribusiness guarded by strategic hamlets, Indira Gandhi, Marcos, and Suharto inscribed their own visions of progress onto the land. Out of this campaign, the costliest and most sustained effort for development ever undertaken, emerged the struggles for resources and identity that define the region today. As Obama revives the lost arts of Keynesianism and counter-insurgency, the history of these colossal projects reveals bitter and important lessons for today’s missions to feed a hungry world.

An analytical investigation into Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s decision-making process during every stage of World War II. When Winston Churchill accepted the position of Prime Minister in May 1940, he insisted in also becoming Minister of Defence. This, though, meant that he alone would be responsible for the success or failure of Britain’s war effort. It also meant that he would be faced with many monumental challenges and utterly crucial decisions upon which the fate of Britain and the free world rested. With the limited resources available to the UK, Churchill had to pinpoint where his country’s priorities lay. He had to respond to the collapse of France, decide if Britain should adopt a defensive or offensive strategy, choose if Egypt and the war in North Africa should take precedence over Singapore and the UK’s empire in the East, determine how much support to give the Soviet Union, and how much power to give the United States in controlling the direction of the war. In this insightful investigation into Churchill’s conduct during the Second World War, Allen Packwood, BA, MPhil (Cantab), FRHistS, the Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, enables the reader to share the agonies and uncertainties faced by Churchill at each crucial stage of the war. How Churchill responded to each challenge is analyzed in great detail and the conclusions Packwood draws are as uncompromising as those made by Britain’s wartime leader as he negotiated his country through its darkest days.