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Simon, Neil

(Encyclopedia)Simon, Neil (Marvin Neil Simon), 1927–2018, American playwright, b. the Bronx, New York City. His plays, nearly all of them popular with audiences, if not always with critics, are comedies treating ...

Price, Vincent Leonard, Jr.

(Encyclopedia) Price, Vincent Leonard, Jr., 1911-93, American film actor, b. St. Louis, Mo., Yale Univ. (B.A., 1933). Price studied English and art in college and th...

biography

(Encyclopedia)biography, reconstruction in print or on film, of the lives of real men and women. Together with autobiography—an individual's interpretation of his own life—it shares a venerable tradition, meeti...

Dahl, Roald

(Encyclopedia)Dahl, Roald däl [key], 1916–90, British writer known for inventive, often macabre children's books and horror-tinged adult fiction. Dahl spurned a university education in favor of world travel, jo...

anti–Vietnam War movement

(Encyclopedia)anti–Vietnam War movement, domestic and international reaction (1965–73) in opposition to U.S. policy during the Vietnam War. During the four years following passage of the Tonkin Gulf resolution ...

Jones, Quincy

(Encyclopedia)Jones, Quincy (Quincy Delight Jones, Jr.), 1933–, African-American musician, composer, bandleader, and music executive, b. Chicago. Jones played trumpet and sang gospel growing up, and studied brief...

le Carré, John

(Encyclopedia)le Carré, John lə kärāˈ [key], pseud. of David John Moore Cornwell, 1931–2020, English novelist. He was a tutor at Eton College (1956–58), and subsequently worked for the British foreign serv...

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...

Kiarostami, Abbas

(Encyclopedia)Kiarostami, Abbas ăbôˈsā kēyôˈrōmămēˌ [key], 1940–2016, Iranian filmmaker. Widely acclaimed as Iran's greatest film director, he typically explores the lives of ordinary Iranians in his f...

public ownership

(Encyclopedia)public ownership, government ownership of lands, streets, public buildings, utilities, and other business enterprises. The theory that all land and its resources belong ultimately to the people and th...

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