Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

72 results found

Hersey, John Richard

(Encyclopedia)Hersey, John Richard hûrˈsē [key], 1914–93, American author, b. China, grad. Yale, 1936, where he later taught writing (1965–84); studied Cambridge. Reflecting his experiences as a war correspo...

Safdie, Moshe

(Encyclopedia)Safdie, Moshe mōshāˈ säfˈdē [key], 1938–, Israeli-Canadian architect, b. Haifa. He grew up in Israel, moved to Canada with his family at 15, studied architecture at McGill Univ. and with Louis...

Schindler, Oskar

(Encyclopedia)Schindler, Oskar, 1908–74, German industrialist who saved more than a thousand Jews during the Holocaust. A Catholic and a member of the National Socialist (Nazi) party, Schindler relocated (1939) t...

Sebald, W. G.

(Encyclopedia)Sebald, W. G. (Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald), 1944–2001, German novelist, grad. Freiburg Univ. (1965). Sebald's novels are dense, elegiac, and meditative. They mingle fiction with history and th...

Celan, Paul

(Encyclopedia)Celan, Paul äntˈshschwa;l [key], 1920–70, Romanian-French poet. Although he spent his early years in Romania and his later years in France, Celan wrote in German and is widely considered the great...

Keneally, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Keneally, Thomas kənēˈlē [key], 1935–, Australian novelist, b. Sydney. For a time a student of religion, and later of law, Keneally has ranged over a wide spectrum of subjects in his many novels...

Richter, Gerhard

(Encyclopedia)Richter, Gerhard gārˈhärt rĭkhˈtər [key], 1932–, German painter, b. Dresden, studied Academy of Fine Arts, Dresden (1951–56) and Düsseldorf (1961–63). Widely considered one of the foremos...

Ophüls, Max

(Encyclopedia)Ophüls, Max ôˈfüls [key], 1902–57, German-born French film director, b. Saarbrücken as Maximilian Oppenheimer. He started his career in the 1920s as an stage actor and director and began direct...

Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud

(Encyclopedia)Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud mämo͞odˈ ämädēnĕzhädˈ [key], 1956–, Iranian politician. From a humble background, he supported the Islamic revolution (1979) while working toward his civil engineering ...

Lanzmann, Claude

(Encyclopedia)Lanzmann, Claude, 1925–2018, French filmmaker and journalist, b. Paris. While his Jewish family was in hiding in rural France during World War II, Lanzmann joined the Resistance and fought the Nazis...

Browse by Subject