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Booker Prize

(Encyclopedia)Booker Prize, an award of £50,000 (originally £5,000) for the best novel of the year published in English in Great Britain; prior to 2014, it was only given to a British, Irish, or Commonwealth writ...

rock music

(Encyclopedia)rock music, type of music originating in the United States in the mid-1950s and increasingly popular throughout much of the world. A turning point in rock music occurred in the mid-1970s in the ...

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

(Encyclopedia)Shelley, Percy Bysshe bĭsh [key], 1792–1822, English poet, b. Horsham, Sussex. He is ranked as one of the great English poets of the romantic period. Most of Shelley's poetry reveals his philos...

surveying

(Encyclopedia)surveying, method of determining accurately points and lines of direction (bearings) on the earth's surface and preparing from them maps or plans. Boundaries, areas, elevations, construction lines, an...

explosive

(Encyclopedia)explosive, substance that undergoes decomposition or combustion with great rapidity, evolving much heat and producing a large volume of gas. The reaction products fill a much greater volume than that ...

Jackson, Stonewall

(Encyclopedia)Jackson, Stonewall (Thomas Jonathan Jackson), 1824–63, Confederate general, b. Clarksburg, Va. (now W.Va.), grad. West Point, 1846. With the diversion in the Shenandoah Valley a complete success...

Virginia, state, United States

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Virginia, state of the S Middle-Atlantic United States. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean (E), North Carolina and Tennessee (S), Kentucky and West Virginia (W), and Maryland and the District...

Mississippi, state, United States

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Mississippi mĭsˌəsĭpˈē [key], one of the Deep South states of the United States. It is bordered by Alabama (E), the Gulf of Mexico (S), Arkansas and Louisiana, with most of that border fo...

Melville, Herman

(Encyclopedia)Melville, Herman, 1819–91, American author, b. New York City, considered one of the great American writers and a major figure in world literature. Like Moby-Dick, Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (18...

tap dance

(Encyclopedia)tap dance, theatrical dance form in which the dancer, wearing shoes with metal heel and toe taps, beats out complex, syncopated rhythms on the floor. After a slump in popularity in the 1960s, tap ...