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Anthropocene

(Encyclopedia)Anthropocene Epoch, an unofficial term used by scientists to describe a period of time—up to the present—in which humanity has impacted the planet on a global scale. The phrase was fir...

muckrakers

(Encyclopedia)muckrakers, name applied to American journalists, novelists, and critics who in the first decade of the 20th cent. attempted to expose the abuses of business and the corruption in politics. The term d...

Frost, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Frost, Robert, 1874–1963, American poet, b. San Francisco. Perhaps the most popular and beloved of 20th-century American poets, Frost wrote of the character, people, and landscape of New England in ...

Huxley, Aldous Leonard

(Encyclopedia)Huxley, Aldous Leonard, 1894–1963, English author; grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, brother of Sir Julian Huxley, and half-brother of Sir Andrew Huxley. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he traveled wide...

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...

Plath, Sylvia

(Encyclopedia)Plath, Sylvia, 1932–63, American poet, b. Boston. Educated at Smith College and Cambridge, Plath published poems even as a child and won many academic and literary awards. Her first volume of poetry...

Verdi, Giuseppe

(Encyclopedia)Verdi, Giuseppe vârˈdē, Ital. jo͞ozĕpˈpā vĕrˈdē [key], 1813–1901, foremost Italian composer of opera, b. Le Roncole. Verdi, the son of an innkeeper, showed a precocious talent for the orga...

Kean, Edmund

(Encyclopedia)Kean, Edmund, 1787?–1833, English actor. Kean's acting expressed the ideal of the romantic temperament. A small man with a wild spirit and a gruff voice, he was lauded for his facial mobility; accor...

N. Scott Momaday

(Encyclopedia)N. Scott Momaday (Navarre Scott Momaday), 1934–2024, American writer whose works are reflective of his Kiowa culture, b. Lawton, Okla., B.A. Univ. of ...

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...