Book Parade

Well illustrated book on history of silent movies

Chicago singularly honored nurses, our "Angels of Mercy," for a decade (1949-1958). Father Clarence M. Brissette O.S.M., director of the Sorrowful Mother Novena, originated both Chicago's "Nurses Day" and Chicago's Nurse Parade in 1949. The purpose of the parade was twofold: to give the nurses a "day of glory" and to also encourage others to join this undermanned, noble, and caring profession. The first Chicago Nurse Parade (1949) had two floats, four bands, and included many nurses marching in capes. The 10-year anniversary parade (1958) had 4,000 marching uniformed nurses, over 30 bands, and over 100 decorated floats representing nearly all Chicagoland hospitals and schools of nursing. In 1958, over 100,000 spectators lined Jackson Boulevard to honor nurses in what would be the final parade.

Tom Stoppard's dramatisation for BBC TV of Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford will bring new readers to the novel as well as giving Stoppard's audience much that is original to his inventive version of a masterwork of modernist English literature. This is the story of Christopher Tietjens, the 'last Tory', his beautiful, disconcerting wife Sylvia, and the virginal young suffragette Valentine Wannop who completes this triangle of love among the English upper class before and during the Great War.

The core of the book revolves around the shifting nature of Ontario’s political landscape. In many ways this is a story of successive governments, ambitious politicians, diligent bureaucrats, and endless library reports straddling the decades. Their aim appears to have been making even better a system that, despite weaknesses, was clearly the best in Canada. Three distinctive trends emerged in Ontario librarianship after the 1930s: first, a growing sense of professionalism in librarianship; second, an enhanced sense of belonging to a pan-Canadian library movement that in 1946 would result in the formation of the Canadian Library Association; and third, a heightened awareness of the competing demands of high culture and popular culture. Public libraries became an important vehicle for promoting community, albeit with competing visions of “space and place,” as Canada generally and Ontario specifically experienced post-World War II immigration and the baby boom. As libraries approached the 21st century, the concerns of digital formats and the all-encompassing Internet intertwined to alter the book-centric "bricks and mortar" world of libraries. Nonetheless, public libraries were well placed to survive this new threat, just as they had with the challenges of radio, television, and telecommunication challenges in the 20th century.

"Expanded Edition includes pandemics, plagues, and global panics."