The idea of war between the U.S. and Canada may seem funny nowadays, but in the 18th and 19th centuries most American leaders assumed their northern neighbor would be absorbed by the U.S. in time. Problem: Every U.S. incursion into Canada was beaten back, and the notion that most Canadians wanted to be “liberated” was as naïve as Donald Rumsfeld’s ideas about Iraq. In his entertaining chronicle, Kevin Lippert explores the dark side of U.S.-Canadian relations with humor while keeping close to the facts. There are several wrong dates (how could a Civil War veterans organization have been formed in 1858 when the war began in 1861?), but the structure holds. As late as the 1930s, the U.S. military had a plan on the books for invading Canada. And in 2014, a Republican senator claimed the Pentagon had a contingency for everything, including “an invasion of Canada.” How serious was he?
