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Lasorda, Tommy

(Encyclopedia)Lasorda, Tommy, 1927-2021, American baseball pitcher and manager, b. Norristown, Pa., as Thomas Charles Lasorda. Lasorda first pitched for the farm tea...

Ryder, Albert Pinkham

(Encyclopedia)Ryder, Albert Pinkham, 1847–1917, American painter, b. New Bedford, Mass. In 1867 his family moved to New York City. There he studied with W. E. Marshall, the engraver, and at the National Academy o...

Sanger, Margaret Higgins

(Encyclopedia)Sanger, Margaret Higgins, 1879–1966, American leader in the birth control movement, b. Corning, N.Y. Personal experience and work as a public-health nurse, much of it on New York City's Lower East S...

Beecher, Henry Ward

(Encyclopedia)Beecher, Henry Ward, 1813–87, American Congregational preacher, orator, and lecturer, b. Litchfield, Conn.; son of Lyman Beecher and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe. He graduated from Amherst in 18...

Jay, Ricky

(Encyclopedia)Jay, Ricky, 1946–2018, American magician, actor, and writer, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., as Richard Jay Potash. The grandson of a fine amateur magician, Jay first performed at age four and as a teenager bega...

Styron, William

(Encyclopedia)Styron, William, 1925–2006, American novelist, b. Newport News, Va., grad. Duke, 1947. His fiction is often powerful, deeply felt, poetic, and elegiac. He became well known for his novel The Confess...

Basquiat, Jean-Michel

(Encyclopedia)Basquiat, Jean-Michel bäsˌkē-ätˈ [key], 1960–88, American painter, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. Born into a middle-class Haitian and Puerto Rican family, he was a 1980s art star whose rise and fall were r...

Yellen, Janet Louise

(Encyclopedia)Yellen, Janet Louise yĕlˈən [key], 1946–, U.S. economist and government official, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., B.A. Brown (1967), Ph.D. Yale (1971). Yellen taught economics (1971–76) at Harvard and subse...

Auster, Paul

(Encyclopedia)Auster, Paul ôˈstər [key], 1947–, American writer, b. Newark, N.J. After publishing four volumes of poetry, he wrote his first novel, Squeeze Play (1982). A compelling storyteller, Auster became ...