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Robbe-Grillet, Alain

(Encyclopedia)Robbe-Grillet, Alain älăNˈ rôb-grēyāˈ [key], 1922–2008, French novelist and filmmaker, b. Brest. Robbe-Grillet is considered the originator of the French nouveau roman [new novel], in which c...

Pershing, John Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Pershing, John Joseph pûrˈshĭng [key], 1860–1948, American army officer and commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, b. Linn co., Mo. After graduating (1886) from We...

propeller

(Encyclopedia)propeller, device consisting of a hub with one or more blades that propels a craft to which it is attached by rotating its blades in a fluid such as air or water. In the latter part of the 1830s the S...

fur trade

(Encyclopedia)fur trade, in American history. Trade in animal skins and pelts had gone on since antiquity, but reached its height in the wilderness of North America from the 17th to the early 19th cent. The demand ...

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...

Almodóvar, Pedro

(Encyclopedia)Almodóvar, Pedro pāˈᵺrō älmōᵺōˈbär [key], 1951–, Spanish film director. Almodóvar began making short films using an inexpensive Super 8 camera in the early 1970s, graduated to longer 1...

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

(Encyclopedia)Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), sometimes called Campbellites, a Protestant religious body founded early in the 19th cent. in the United States. Its primary thesis is that the Bible alone shou...

Mazzini, Giuseppe

(Encyclopedia)Mazzini, Giuseppe jo͞ozĕpˈpā mät-sēˈnē [key], 1805–72, Italian patriot and revolutionist, an outstanding figure of the Risorgimento. His youth was spent in literary and philosophical studies...

Acheson, Dean Gooderham

(Encyclopedia)Acheson, Dean Gooderham ăchˈĭsən [key], 1893–1971, U.S. secretary of state (1949–53), b. Middletown, Conn., grad. Yale, Harvard Law School. He was (1919–21) private secretary to Louis Brande...

Oates, Joyce Carol

(Encyclopedia)Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938–, American author, b. Lockport, N.Y., B.A. Syracuse Univ., 1960, M.A. Univ. of Wisconsin, 1961. She taught English at the Univ. of Detroit and the Univ. of Windsor, Ontario,...