Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Brautigan, Richard

(Encyclopedia)Brautigan, Richard brôˈtəgăn [key], 1935–84, American novelist and poet, b. Tacoma, Wash. He was a counterculture hero of the 1960s and 70s, and his work is an indictment of America's cultural e...

Buffalo Bill

(Encyclopedia)Buffalo Bill, 1846–1917, American plainsman, scout, and showman, b. near Davenport, Iowa. His real name was William Frederick Cody. His family moved (1854) to Kansas, and after the death of his fath...

Thurmond, Strom

(Encyclopedia)Thurmond, Strom (James Strom Thurmond) thûrˈmənd [key], 1902–2003, U.S. senator from South Carolina (1954–2003), b. Edgefield, S.C. He read law while teaching school (1923–29) and was admitte...

Third World

(Encyclopedia)Third World, the technologically less advanced, or developing, nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, generally characterized as poor, having economies distorted by their dependence on the export...

balance of power

(Encyclopedia)balance of power, system of international relations in which nations seek to maintain an approximate equilibrium of power among many rivals, thus preventing the preponderance of any one state. Crucial...

Sand Creek

(Encyclopedia)Sand Creek, Colorado, site of a massacre (1864) of Cheyenne by Col. John M. Chivington and his Colorado Volunteers. The Cheyennes, led by Black Kettle, had offered to make peace and, at the suggestion...

Howlin' Wolf

(Encyclopedia)Howlin' Wolf, 1910–76, African-American blues singer and composer, b. White Station, Miss., as Chester Arthur Burnett. Exposed to blues performers from childhood, he sang locally and organized his f...

humanism

(Encyclopedia)humanism, philosophical and literary movement in which man and his capabilities are the central concern. The term was originally restricted to a point of view prevalent among thinkers in the Renaissan...

Horney, Karen

(Encyclopedia)Horney, Karen, 1885–1952, American psychiatrist, b. Germany, M.D. Univ. of Berlin, 1913. She married Oscar Horney in 1909. Prior to her arrival (1932) in the United States, she was secretary of the ...

Gris, Juan

(Encyclopedia)Gris, Juan hwän grēs [key], 1887–1927, Spanish cubist painter, whose original name was José Victoriano González. After studying in Madrid he settled in Paris in 1906, where he held his first exh...