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Galbraith, John Kenneth

(Encyclopedia)Galbraith, John Kenneth gălˈbrāth [key], 1908–2006, American economist and public official, b. Ontario, Canada, grad. Univ. of Toronto (B.S., 1931), Univ. of California, Berkeley (M.S., 1933; Ph....

LaGuardia, Fiorello Henry

(Encyclopedia)LaGuardia, Fiorello Henry fēərĕlˈō, ləgwärˈdēə [key], 1882–1947, U.S. public official, congressman, and mayor of New York City (1934–45), b. New York City. He spent his early years in Ar...

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

(Encyclopedia)Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1807–82, American poet, b. Portland, Maine, grad. Bowdoin College, 1825. He wrote some of the most popular poems in American literature, in which he created a new body o...

William of Occam

(Encyclopedia)William of Occam or Ockham both: ŏkˈəm [key], c.1285–c.1349, English scholastic philosopher. A Franciscan, Occam studied and taught at Oxford from c.1310 until 1324, when he was summoned to the p...

Rothko, Mark

(Encyclopedia)Rothko, Mark rŏthˈkō [key], 1903–70, American painter, b. Dvinsk, Russia (now Daugavpils, Latvia), as Marcus Rotkovitch. His family immigrated to the United States in 1913. He was a student of Ma...

Baldwin, James

(Encyclopedia)Baldwin, James, 1924–87, American author, b. New York City. He spent an impoverished boyhood in Harlem, became a Pentecostal preacher at 14, and left the church three years later. He moved to Paris ...

Inquisition

(Encyclopedia)Inquisition ĭnˌkwĭzĭshˈən [key], tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church established for the investigation of heresy. The Spanish Inquisition was independent of the medieval Inquisition. It was...

Twain, Mark

(Encyclopedia)Twain, Mark, pseud. of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910, American author, b. Florida, Mo. As humorist, narrator, and social observer, Twain is unsurpassed in American literature. His novel The Ad...

New Deal

(Encyclopedia)New Deal, in U.S. history, term for the domestic reform program of the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; it was first used by Roosevelt in his speech accepting the Democratic party nominati...

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann

(Encyclopedia)Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann loŏtˈvĭkh yōˈzĕf yōˈhän vĭtˈgənshtīn [key], 1889–1951, Austrian philosopher, b. Vienna. The second phase of Wittgenstein's philosophy commenced with ...