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Mailer, Norman

(Encyclopedia)Mailer, Norman (Norman Kingsley Mailer), 1923–2007, American writer, b. Long Branch, N.J., grad. Harvard, 1943. He grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., served in the army during World War II, and at the age o...

Bazille, Frédéric

(Encyclopedia)Bazille, Frédéric, 1841–70, early French impressionist painter. He abandoned medical school to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he met and became friends with Monet, Renoir, and oth...

Bacon, Francis, English painter

(Encyclopedia)Bacon, Francis, 1910–92, English painter, b. Dublin. A self-taught artist, Bacon rejected abstraction in painting to explore a repertoire of strange, fractured, and often bizarre figurative images, ...

Brooklyn Bridge

(Encyclopedia)Brooklyn Bridge, vehicular suspension bridge, New York City, southernmost of the bridges across the East River, between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn; built 1869–83. The achievement of J. A. Roebling...

Peirce, Charles Sanders

(Encyclopedia)Peirce, Charles Sanders pûrs [key], 1839–1914, American philosopher and polymath, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1859; son of Benjamin Peirce. Except for occasional lectures he renounced the r...

Chomsky, Noam

(Encyclopedia)Chomsky, Noam nōm chŏmˈskē [key], 1928–, educator and linguist, b. Philadelphia. Chomsky, who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1955, developed a theory of transforma...

Miller, Arthur

(Encyclopedia)Miller, Arthur, 1915–2005, American dramatist, b. New York City, grad. Univ. of Michigan, 1938. One of America's most distinguished playwrights, he has been hailed as the finest realist of the 20th-...

Kazan, Elia

(Encyclopedia)Kazan, Elia ĭlīˈə, ēlˈyə kəzănˈ, –zänˈ [key], 1909–2003, American stage and film director, producer, writer, actor, b. Turkey, as Elia Kazanjoglous. Immigrating with his Greek family t...

reading, mental process

(Encyclopedia)reading, process of mentally interpreting written symbols. Facility in reading is an essential factor in educational progress, and instruction in this basic skill is a primary purpose of elementary ed...

Bonnie and Clyde

(Encyclopedia)Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie Parker, 1910–34, b. Rowena, Tex., and Clyde Barrow, 1909–34, b. Tellice, Tex., notorious American criminals during the Great Depression. Joining forces in 1932, they trave...