The Conscious Reader Author Background Info

Betty Friedan

(1921-2006) American feminist, activist and writer. Best known for starting the "Second Wave" of feminism through the writing of her book "The Feminine Mystique".

Alan B. Durning

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Vaclav Havel

ACCOUNTLoginJoinEXPLOREHomePopular TopicsQuizzesGalleriesLists Share Václav Havel Written by The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica Last Updated8-4-2013 Václav Havel, (born October 5, 1936, Prague,Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic]—died December 18, 2011, Hrádeček, Czech Republic), Czech playwright, poet, and political dissident, who, after the fall ofcommunism, was president of Czechoslovakia (1989-92) and of the Czech Republic (1993-2003). Havel was the son of a wealthy restaurateur whose property was confiscated by the communist government of Czechoslovakia in 1948. As the son of bourgeois parents, Havel was denied easy access to education but managed to finish high school and study on the university level. He found work as a stagehand in a Prague theatrical company in 1959 and soon began writing plays with Ivan Vyskočil. By 1968 Havel had progressed to the position of resident playwright of the Theatre of the Balustrade company. He was a prominent participant in the liberal reforms of 1968 (known as the Prague Spring), and, after the Soviet clampdown on Czechoslovakia that year, his plays were banned and his passport was confiscated. During the 1970s and '80s he was repeatedly arrested and served four years in prison (1979-83) for his activities on behalf ofhuman rights in Czechoslovakia. After his release from prison Havel remained in his homeland. Havel's first solo play, Zahradní slavnost(1963; The Garden Party), typified his work in its absurdist, satirical examination of bureaucratic routines and their dehumanizing effects. In his best-known play, Vyrozumění (1965; The Memorandum), an incomprehensible artificial language is imposed on a large bureaucratic enterprise, causing the breakdown of human relationships and their replacement by unscrupulous struggles for power. In these and subsequent works Havel explored the self-deluding rationalizations and moral compromises that characterize life under a totalitarian political system. Havel continued to write plays steadily until the late 1980s; these works include Ztížená možnost soustředění (1968; The Increased Difficulty of Concentration); Spiklenci (1971; The Conspirators); the three one-act playsAudience (1975), Vernisáž (1975; Private View), and Protest (1978); Largo Desolato(1985); and Zítra to Spustíme (1988;Tomorrow). When massive antigovernment demonstrations erupted in Prague in November 1989, Havel became the leading figure in the Civic Forum, a new coalition of noncommunist opposition groups pressing for democratic reforms. In early December the Communist Party capitulated and formed a coalition government with the Civic Forum. As a result of an agreement between the partners in this bloodless "Velvet Revolution," Havel was elected to the post of interim president of Czechoslovakia on December 29, 1989, and he was reelected to the presidency in July 1990, becoming the country's first noncommunist leader since 1948. As the Czechoslovak union faced dissolution in 1992, Havel, who opposed the division, resigned from office. The following year he was elected president of the new Czech Republic. His political role, however, was limited, as Prime Minister Václav Klaus(1993-97) commanded much of the power. In 1998 Havel was reelected by a narrow margin, and, under his presidency, the Czech Republic joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1999. Barred constitutionally from seeking a third term, he stepped down as president in 2003. Havel's first new play in more than 20 years—Odcházení (Leaving), a tragicomedy that draws on his experiences as president and presents a chancellor leaving his post while grappling with a political enemy—premiered in 2008. Havel subsequently directed its film adaptation (2011). Quick Facts Vaclav HavelPresident of Czech Republic Born October 5, 1936 Prague, Czech Republic Died December 18, 2011

E.L. Doctorow

Edgar Lawrence "E. L." Doctorow (born January 6, 1931) is an American author. He is known internationally for his unique works ofhistorical fiction. Early lifeEdit Doctorow was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Rose (Levine) and David Richard Doctorow, second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish descent who named him after Edgar Allan Poe.[1] He attended city public grade schools and theBronx High School of Science where, surrounded by mathematically gifted children, he fled to the office of the school literary magazine, Dynamo. He published his first literary effort, "The Beetle," in it, which he describes as "a tale of etymological self-defamation inspired by my reading ofKafka."[2] Doctorow attended Kenyon College in Ohio, where he studied with the poet and New CriticJohn Crowe Ransom, acted in college theater productions, and majored in philosophy. After graduating with honors in 1952, he completed a year of graduate work in English drama atColumbia University before being drafted into the United States Army. He served as acorporal in the signal corps, in Germany 1954-55 during the Allied occupation. He returned to New York after his military service and took a job as a reader for a motion picture company, where he said he had to read so many Westerns that he was inspired to write what became his first novel,Welcome to Hard Times. He began it as aparody of western fiction, but it evolved to be a serious reclamation of the genre before he was finished.[3] It was published to positive reviews in 1960. Marriage and familyEdit In 1953, Doctorow married a fellow Columbia University drama student, Helen Esther Setzer, while in Germany. By the time he had moved on from his reader's job in 1960 to become editor at the New American Library (NAL), amass-market paperback publisher, they were the parents of three children. CareerEdit Doctorow at the Miami Book Fair International, 1991 To support his family, Doctorow spent nine years as a book editor, first at NAL working with Ian Fleming and Ayn Rand among others; and from 1964, as editor-in-chief atThe Dial Press, publishing work by James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Ernest J. Gaines andWilliam Kennedy, among others. In 1969, Doctorow left publishing in order to write, accepting a position as Visiting Writer at the University of California, Irvine, where he completed The Book of Daniel (1971), a freely fictionalized consideration of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was widely acclaimed, called a "masterpiece" by The Guardian, and said by The New York Times to launch the author into "the first rank of American writers" according to Christopher Lehmann-Haupt.[4] Doctorow's next book, written in his home inNew Rochelle, New York, was Ragtime (1975), later named one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library editorial board.[5] His subsequent work includes the award-winning novels World's Fair (1985), Billy Bathgate (1989) and The March (2005); two volumes of short fiction, Lives of the Poets I(1984) and Sweetland Stories (2004); and two volumes of essays, Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution (1993) and Creationists(2006). He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, theYale School of Drama, the University of Utah, the University of California, Irvine, andPrinceton University. He is the Loretta andLewis Glucksman Professor of English and American Letters at New York University. He has donated his papers to the Fales Library of New York

Jamaica Kincaid

GradeSaver: Getting you the grade Menu HomeKincaid, Jamaica Biography of Jamaica Kincaid Born in Antigua in the West Indies, Jamaica Kincaid has cultivated a voice distinct from male Caribbean writers such as Derek Walcott and Caryl Phillips. Using life to inspire fiction, Kincaid often explores the complexity of mother-daughter relationships, the effects and aftereffects of colonialism, and alienation more generally. Her work also transcends Afro-centric and feminist perspectives. Her deceptively simple prose is marked by poetic lyricism, vivid imagery, and nonlinear time. On May 25, 1949, she was born as Elaine Potter Richardson in St. John's, Antigua, an island that would not gain full independence from British colonial rule until 1981. The young girl never knew her biological father, a taxi driver named Roderick Potter. Her mother, Annie Richardson Drew, and stepfather, David Drew, nurtured Elaine as their only child until she was nine. During that time, she was well educated under the British educational system and won a scholarship to the Princess Margaret School. When she was nine, her life changed when the first of her three brothers was born. Later, as an adult, the author would express the following about this situation and her relationship with her mother: I don't know if having other children was the cause for our relationship changing--it might have changed as I entered adolescence, but her attention went elsewhere. And also our family money remained the same but there were more people to feed and to clothe and so everything got sort of shortened not only material things but emotional things, the good emotional things I got a short end of that. But then I got more of things I didn't have, like a certain kind of cruelty and neglect... If I hadn't become a writer I don't know what would have happened to me; that was a kind of self rescuing. Once the center of her mother's attention, Elaine was sidelined while her brothers were encouraged to achieve a university education. At 13, Elaine's mother pulled her out of school to help her ailing stepfather. At 17, she was sent to America to work as an au pair, to support her family in Antigua, and eventually to become a nurse. Feeling embittered and alienated, Elaine refused to respond to her mother's correspondence or send money home. Instead of nursing, she studied photography. In 1973, Elaine changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid in order to write anonymously. That year Kincaid's first published piece, an interview with Gloria Steinem, led to a series of articles titled "When I was Seventeen." For three years, Kincaid worked as a freelance writer until William Shawn, the editor of the New Yorker, hired her as a staff writer. In time she took over the "Talk of the Town" column. Encouraged by her editor, Kincaid began to write fiction, which was often published as installments in the New Yorker. Kincaid's first collection of short stories, At the Bottom of the River (1983), won the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. The predominately autobiographical Annie John (1985) was critically acclaimed for its universal appeal as a coming-of-age story and for its treatment of indigenous Caribbean culture. Not having returned home in over twenty years, Kincaid wrote the book-length essay A Small Place (1988), which chronicled Kincaid's outrage at the devastation of postcolonial Antigua: the corruption of the new leaders and the exploitation resulting from the influx of tourism. In 1989, Kincaid received the Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1991, after the publication of Lucy (1990), Kincaid received honorary degrees from Williams College and Long Island College. In 1996, Kincaid's youngest brother Devon died from AIDS at 33. That year she resigned from the New Yorker. The Autobiography of My Mother (1995), My Brother (1997), and Mr. Potter (2003) have received critical acclaim. Kincaid's love of horticulture has taken center stage in My Favorite Plant (1998), My Garden Book (1999), and Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya (2004). Kincaid married her editor's son, Allen Shawn, and they had a daughter, Annie, in 1985 and a son, Harold, in 1989. Kincaid and her family reside in North Bennington, Vermont. She is currently a visiting lecturer on African and African American Studies and on English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University. Study Guides on Works by Jamaica Kincaid Annie John Jamaica Kincaid Study Guide Q & A Essays Wikipedia Autobiography of My Mother Jamaica Kincaid Study Guide Q & A Essays Wikipedia Lucy Jamaica Kincaid In addition to brilliant explorations of the mother-daughter relationship and its relationship with themes of colonialism, Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy (1990)

Karl Jaspers

Karl Jaspers, in full Karl Theodor Jaspers (born Feb. 23, 1883, Oldenburg, Ger.—diedFeb. 26, 1969, Basel, Switz.), German philosopher, one of the most importantExistentialists in Germany, who approached the subject from man's direct concern with his own existence. In his later work, as a reaction to the disruptions of Nazi rule in Germany and World War II, he searched for a new unity of thinking that he called worldphilosophy. Early life and education Jaspers was the oldest of the three children of Karl Wilhelm Jaspers and Henriette Tantzen. His ancestors on both sides were peasants, merchants, and pastors who had lived in northern Germany for generations. His father, a lawyer, was a high constable of the district and eventually a director of a bank. Jaspers was delicate and sickly in his childhood. As a consequence of his numerous childhood diseases, he developed bronchiectasis (a chronic dilation of the bronchial tubes) during his adolescent years, and this condition led to cardiac decompensation (the inability of the heart to maintain adequate circulation). These ailments were a severe handicap throughout his adult life. Jaspers entered the University of Heidelbergin 1901, enrolling in the faculty of law; in the following year he moved to Munich, where he continued his studies of law, but without much enthusiasm. He spent the next six years studying medicine at the Universities of Berlin, Göttingen, and Heidelberg. After he completed his state examination to practice medicine in 1908, he wrote his dissertationHeimweh und Verbrechen ("Nostalgia and Crime"). In February 1909 he was registered as a doctor. He had already become acquainted with his future wife, Gertrud Mayer, during his student years, and he married her in 1910. Research in clinical psychiatry In 1909 Jaspers became a volunteer research assistant at the University of Heidelberg psychiatric clinic, a position he held until 1915. The clinic was headed by the renowned neuropathologist Franz Nissl, who had assembled under him an excellent team of assistants. Because of his desire to learn psychiatry in his own way without being regimented into any particular pattern of thought by his teachers, Jaspers elected to work in his own time, at his own pace, and with patients in whom he was particularly interested. This was granted to him only because he agreed to work without a salary. When Jaspers started his research work, clinical psychiatry was considered to be empirically based but lacking any underlying systematic framework of knowledge. It dealt with different aspects of the human organism as they might affect the behaviourof human beings suffering from mental illness. These aspects ranged from anatomical, physiological, and genetic to neurological, psychological, and sociological influences. A study of these aspects opened the way to an understanding and explanation of human behaviour. Diagnosis was of paramount importance; therapy was largely neglected. Aware of this situation, Jaspers realized the conditions that were required in order to establish psychopathology as a science: a language had to be found that, on the basis of previously conducted research, was capable of describing the symptoms of disease well enough to facilitate positive recognition in other cases; and various methods appropriate to the different spheres of psychiatry had to be worked out. Jaspers tried to bring the methods ofPhenomenology—the direct investigation and description of phenomena as consciously experienced, without theories about their causal explanation—into the field of clinical psychiatry. These efforts soon bore fruit, and his reputation as a researcher in the forefront of new developments in psychiatry was established. In 1911, when he was only 28 years old, he was requested by Ferdinand Springer, a well-known publisher, to write a textbook on psychopathology; he completed the Allgemeine Psychopathologie (General Psychopathology 1965) two years later. The work was distinguished by its critical approach to the various methods available for the study of psychiatry and by its attempt to synthesize these methods into a cohesive whole. Transition to philosophy In 1913 Jaspers, by virtue of his status in the field of psychology, entered the philosophical faculty—which included a department of psychology—of the University of Heidelberg. His academic advance in the university was rapid. In 1916 he was appointed assistant professor in psychology; in 1920 assistant professor in philosophy; in 1921 professor in philosophy; and in 1922 he took over the second chair in that field. The transition from medicine to philosophy was due in part to the fact that, while the medical faculty was fully staffed, the philosophical faculty needed an empirical psychologist. But the transition also corresponded to Jaspers' intellectual development. In 1919 Jaspers published some of his lectures, entitled Psychologie der Weltanschauungen ("Psychology of World Views"). He did not intend to present a philosophical work but rather one aimed at demarcating the limits of a psychological understanding of man. Nevertheless, this work touched on the border of philosophy. In it were foreshadowed all of the basic themes that were fully developed later in Jaspers' major philosophical works. By investigating the legitimate boundaries of philosophical knowledge, Jaspers tried to clarify the relationship of philosophy to science. Science appeared to him as knowledge of facts that are obtained by means of scholarly methodological principles and that are apodictically certain and universally valid. Following Max Weber, a sociologist and historian, he asserted that scientific principles also applied to both the social and humanistic sciences. In contrast to science, Jaspers considered philosophy to be a subjective interpretation of Being, which—although prophetically inspired—attempted to postulate norms of value and principles of life as universally valid. As Jaspers' understanding of philosophy deepened, he gradually discarded his belief in the role of a prophetic vision in philosophy. He bent all his energies toward the development of a philosophy that would be independent of science but that would not become a substitute for religious beliefs. Though the resulting system presupposed science, it passed beyond the boundaries of science in an effort to illuminate the totality of man's existence. For Jaspers man's existence meant not mere being-in-the-world but rather man's freedom of being. The idea of being oneself signified for Jaspers the potentiality to realize one's freedom of being in the world. Thus, the task of philosophy was to appeal to the freedom of the individual as the subject who thinks and exists and to focus on man's existence as the centre of all reality. The elaboration of these germinal ideas occupied Jasper's thought from 1920 to 1930. During this decade his brother-in-law, Ernst Mayer, himself a philosopher of repute, worked with him. During these years he also enjoyed the friendship of Martin Heidegger. Somewhat later, this friendship broke up because of Heidegger's entry into the National Socialist Party. In the early years of the 1930s the fruits of his intellectual labour became evident: in 1931 Die geistige Situation der Zeit (Man in the Modern Age, 1933) was published; in 1932 the three volumes of Philosophie(Philosophy 1969) appeared—perhaps the most systematic presentation of Existential philosophy in the German language. A book on Max Weber also appeared in 1932. When Hitler came into power in 1933, Jaspers was taken by surprise, as he had not taken National Socialism seriously. He thought that this movement would destroy itself from within, thus leading to a reorganization and liberation by the other political forces active at the time. These expectations, however, did not materialize. Because his wife was Jewish, Jaspers qualified as an enemy of the state. From 1933 he was excluded from the higher councils of the university but was allowed to teach and publish. In 1935 the first part of his future work on logic, entitled Vernunft und Existenz (Reason and Existenz 1955), appeared; in 1936 a book on Nietzsche; in 1937 an essay on Descartes; in 1938 a further work preliminary to his logic, entitledExistenzphilosophie (Philosophy of Existence, 1971). Unlike many other famous intellectuals of that time, he was not prepared to make any concessions to the doctrines of National Socialism. Consequently, a series of decrees were promulgated against him, including removal from his professorship and a total ban on any further publication. These measures effectively barred him from carrying on his work in Germany. Friends tried to assist him to emigrate to another country. Permission was finally granted to him in 1942 to go to Switzerland, but a condition was imposed by the Nazis that required his wife to remain behind in Germany. He refused to accept this condition and decided to stay with his wife, notwithstanding the dangers. It became necessary for his friends to hide his wife. Both of them had decided, in case of an arrest, to commit suicide. In 1945 he was told by a reliable source that his deportation was scheduled to take place on April 14. On March 30, however, Heidelberg was occupied by the Americans. Disillusioned by the events of these years, Jaspers withdrew more and more into himself. He revised the General Psychopathology in an effort to make it represent the high point of a free but responsible search for knowledge of man, as distinct from science, which had betrayed man. He also completed his work on logic,Von der Wahrheit ("Of Truth"), the first part of which was intended to throw the light of reason on the irrational teachings of the times. These works appeared in print in 1946 and 1947. After the capitulation of Germany, Jaspers saw himself confronted with the tasks of rebuilding the university and helping to bring about a moral and political rebirth of the people. He dedicated all of his energies in the postwar years toward the accomplishment of these two tasks. He also represented the interests of the university to the military powers. He gathered his thoughts on how the universities could best be rebuilt in his workDie Idee der Universität (1946; The Idea of the University, 1959). He called for a complete de-Nazification of the teaching staff, but this proved to be impossible because the number of professors who had never compromised with the Nazis was too small. It was only gradually that the autonomous university of the pre-Nazi years could once again assert itself in Germany. Jaspers felt that an acknowledgment of national guilt was a necessary condition for the moral and political rebirth of Germany. In one of his best political works, Die Schuldfrage (1946; 1947), he stated that whoever had participated actively in the preparation or execution of war crimes and crimes against humanity was morally guilty. Those, however, who passively tolerated these happenings because they did not want to become victims of Nazism were only politically responsible. In this respect, all survivors of this era bore the same responsibility and shared a collective guilt. He felt that the fact that no one could escape this collective guilt and responsibility might enable the German people to transform theirsociety from its state of collapse into a more highly developed and morally responsible democracy. The fact that these ideas attracted hardly any attention was a further disappointment to Jaspers. In the spring of 1948 he accepted a professorship in philosophy in Basel, Switz. In spite of the apparent neglect of Jaspers' ideas of a moral regeneration of the German people, his departure for Basel was regarded as a betrayal by many of the German people. Jaspers himself hoped to find there a peace of mind that might enable him to work through and revise once again his whole approach to the entire field of philosophy. This revision was guided mainly by the conviction that modern technology in the sphere of communication and warfare had made it imperative for mankind to strive for world unity. This new development in his thinking was defined by him as world philosophy, and its primary task was the creation of a mode of thinking that could contribute to the possibility of a free world order. The transition from existence philosophy to world philosophy was based on his belief that a different kind of logicwould make it possible for free communication to exist among all mankind. His thought was expressed in Der philosophische Glaube (1948; The Perennial Scope of Philosophy, 1949) and Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung (1962; Philosophical Faith and Revelation, 1967). Since all thought in its essence rests on beliefs, he reasoned, the task confronting man is to free philosophical thinking from all attachments to the transient objects of this world. To replace previous objectifications of all metaphysical and religious systems, Jaspers introduced the concept of the cipher. This was a philosophical abstraction that could represent all systems, provided that they entered into communication with one another by means of the cipher. In other words, the concept of the cipher enabled a common ground to be shared by all of the various systems of thought, thus leading to a far greater tolerance than had ever before been possible. A world history of philosophy, entitled Die grossen Philosophen (1957; The Great Philosophers, 2 vol., 1962, 1966), had as its aim to investigate to what extent all past thought could become communicable. Jaspers also undertook to write a universal history of the world, called Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (1949; The Origin and Goal of History, 1953). At the centre of history is the axial period (from 800 to 200 bc), during which time all the fundamental creations that underlie man's current civilization came into being. Following from the insights that came to him in preparing this work, he was led to realize the possibility of a political unity of the world in a 1958 work called Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen (The Future of Mankind, 1961). The aim of this political world union would not be absolute sovereignty but rather world confederation, in which the various entities could live and communicate in freedom and peace. Under the influence of these ideas, Jaspers closely observed, during the latter years of his life, both world politics and the politics of Germany. When the efforts toward democracy in Germany appeared to him to turn more and more into a national oligarchy of parties, he wrote a bitter attack on these tendencies in Wohin treibt die Bundesrepublik? (1966; 1967). This book caused much annoyance among West German politicians of all shades. Jaspers, in turn, reacted to their unfair reception by returning his German passport in 1967 and taking out Swiss citizenship. At the time of his death in 1969,

Colin Fletcher

Last edited 17 days ago by AnomieBOT Colin FletcherWatch this page This article is about the backpacker and author. For the Anglican bishop, see Colin Fletcher (bishop). For the British mixed martial artist, see Colin Fletcher (fighter). Colin Fletcher (photograph, John Sexton/Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association) Colin Fletcher (14 March 1922 - 12 June 2007) was a pioneering backpacker and writer. In 1963, Fletcher walked the length of that portion of Grand Canyon contained within the 1963 boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park. Although his route spans only a little more than 1/3 the length of Grand Canyon, Fletcher was only the second person to complete this section and the first to accomplish the feat "in one go" — as chronicled in his bestselling 1968 memoir The Man Who Walked Through Time. Fletcher obtained the route information critical for successfully completing his epic trip from the godfather of Grand Canyon hiking, Harvey Butchart, who completed the distance barely ahead of Fletcher the same year — having hiked it one section at a time over 17 years. Through his influential hiker's guide, The Complete Walker, published the same year, he became a kind of "spiritual godfather" of the wilderness backpacking movement. Through successive editions, this book became the definitive work on the topic and was christened "the Hiker's Bible" by Field and Stream magazine. BiographyEdit Early life and career Born in Cardiff, Wales on 14 March 1922, Fletcher was educated in England and served six years in the Royal Marine Commandosduring World War II. He married Sonia Mary Ash in 1945 and they lived in St. Ives, Cornwall for a year where he was an instructor at the Mountain Warfare Training Centre. They moved to Kenya in 1947 where they ran the Kitale Hotel. They separated in 1948 and he spent time farming in Kenya, surveying in Zimbabwe, and as a prospector in western Canada, he moved to the United States in 1956. Two years later, he walked the length of the state of California, a journey that was the basis for his first book The Thousand Mile Summer. Writing career Fletcher published a total of 10 books between 1964 and 2001, which included 4 editions of the The Complete Walker. His first book was The Thousand Mile Summer (1964) recounting his 1958 hike along the entire eastern edge of California. His second book was The Man Who Walked Through Time(1968), in which Fletcher was the first person to walk a continuous route through Grand Canyon National Park. The book covered such topics as technique, the journey itself, and reflections which included the concept, after weeks of walking, of achieving a state of mentally "merging" with the place that one is visiting. When Fletcher conducted the trip in 1963, the National Park did not encompass the entire length of the canyon, the park was later expanded to include the entire Canyon. The first person to walk the entire length of the Grand Canyon was Kenton Grua in 1977. He was inspired by Fletcher's book but set out to "do it right" by walking from end to end, not just the section of the canyon inside the National Park.[1] In 1968, Fletcher published the first edition ofThe Complete Walker, his most popular work including three new editions with the last in 2001, in total selling over 500,000 copies.[2]Fletcher's book is distinguished by its encyclopedic treatment of the technique and equipment of wilderness travel, as well as by what critics and readers have praised as its rousing humor and elegant, vigorous prose. While certainly comprehensive in its discussion of all aspects of wilderness travel, it also devotes a generous amount of coverage to Fletcher's self-confessed idiosyncrasies, ranging from his affection for walking staffs and corduroy shorts to his loathing of wilderness trail guidebooks. In the early 1970s, Fletcher returned toKenya's Serengeti Plain, and Great Rift Valleyfor a year, an experience he recounted in The Winds of Mara, published in 1973. In 1981, he published The Man From the Cave, which relates how, after finding a trunk and a few belongings abandoned by someone in a desert cave in Nevada, he spent years piecing together the life story of "Trunkman." As he pieced together the mystery of the man's life, Fletcher saw in it a discovery and reflection of himself, "We both valued solitude and silence and square, smoothed-off granite boulders."[2] In 1989, Fletcher rafted and hiked the entire length of the Green/Colorado River from its source in the Wind River Range of Wyomingto the Gulf of California. He related the story of the journey in River (1997), adding to his customary description of the places through which he travelled as metaphor, comparing the course of the river and its emptying into the sea, to life itself, and his own life in particular. His last edition of The Complete Walker, The Complete Walker IV (2002), was written withChip Rawlins. Later years In his later years, Fletcher became a prolific writer on environmental issues. He was publicity-shy[citation needed], rarely responding to letters or interview requests, although always willing to incorporate reader feedback into revised editions of The Complete Walker. In 2001, at the age of seventy-nine, Fletcher was struck and seriously injured by an SUVwhile walking to a town meeting near his home in Monterey County, California. His survival was attributed to his excellent physical condition. Within a year of the accident, he was back on his feet and walking daily. According to published obituaries, Fletcher died on 12 June 2007 in Monterey, California, as a result of complications from a head injury sustained from being hit by the car six years earlier.[3] Influence and legacyQuotesBibliographyEdit The Thousand Mile Summer (1964) ISBN 0-394-74631-7 and ISBN 0-8310-7154-0The Man Who Walked Through Time (1968)ISBN 0-394-71852-6 and ISBN 0-679-72306-4The Complete Walker (1968)The New Complete Walker (1974) ISBN 0-394-48099-6The Complete Walker III (1984) ISBN 0-394-51962-0 and ISBN 0-394-72264-7The Complete Walker IV (2002) ISBN 0-375-70323-3The Winds of Mara (1973) ISBN 0-394-47091-5The Man from the Cave (1981) ISBN 0-394-71157-2 and ISBN 0-394-40695-8The Secret Worlds of Colin Fletcher (1989)ISBN 0-679-72554-7 and ISBN 0-394-56283-6River: One Man's Journey Down the Colorado, Source to Sea (1997) ISBN 0-394-57421-4Autobiography (incomplete

Niles Eldredge

Last edited 3 months ago by Bender235 Niles EldredgeWatch this page This page has some issues Niles Eldredge (/ˈɛldrɛdʒ/; born August 25, 1943) is an American biologist andpaleontologist, who, along with Stephen Jay Gould, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972. EducationEdit Eldredge began his undergraduate studies inLatin at Columbia University. Before completing his degree he switched to the study of anthropology under Norman D. Newell. It was at this time that his work at the American Museum of Natural History began, under the combined Columbia University-American Museum graduate studies program. Eldredge graduated summa cum laude fromColumbia College of Columbia University in 1965, and enrolled in the university's doctoral program while continuing his research at the museum. He completed his PhD in 1969. PaleontologyEdit In 1969, Eldredge became a curator in the Department of Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History, and subsequently a curator in the Invertebrate Paleontology section of Paleontology, a position from which he recently retired. He was also an Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York. His specialty was the evolution of mid-Paleozoic Phacopida trilobites: a group of extinct arthropods that lived between 543 and 245 million years ago. Evolutionary theoryEdit Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould proposedpunctuated equilibria in 1972. Punctuated equilibrium is a refinement to evolutionary theory. It describes patterns of descent taking place in "fits and starts" separated by long periods of stability. Eldredge went on to develop a hierarchical vision of evolutionary and ecological systems. Around this time, he became focused on the rapid destruction of many of the world's habitats and species. Throughout his career, he has used repeated patterns in the history of life to refine ideas on how the evolutionary process actually works. Eldredge is proponent of the importance of environment in explaining the patterns in evolution. Eldredge is a critic of the gene-centric view of evolution. His most recent venture is the development of an alternative account to the gene-based notions of evolutionary psychology to explain human behavior. He has published more than 160 scientific articles, books, and reviews, includingReinventing Darwin, an examination of current controversies in evolutionary biology, andDominion, a consideration of the ecological and evolutionary past, present, and future ofHomo sapiens. Personal lifeEdit Eldredge enjoys playing jazz trumpet and is an avid collector of 19th century cornets.[1]He shares his home in Ridgewood, New Jersey with his wife and more than 500 cornets.[1] He also has two sons, two daughters-in-law, and five grandchildren. Eldredge possesses a chart of the historical development of cornets (the musical instruments), which he uses as a comparison with that of the development of trilobites. The differences between them are meant to highlight the failures of intelligent design by comparing a system that is definitely designed, with a system

Marya Mannes

Marya Mannes, an author, journalist and critic, died Thursday at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco. She was 85 years old. Her son, David R. J. Blow, said she had died after suffering a series of strokes this week at the hospital, a geriatric facility that she entered in March. She had lived in various residences for the elderly, mainly in California, since 1983, after residing most of her earlier life in Manhattan. The versatile Ms. Mannes was a social critic and a critic of radio, television and theater. She worked as a staff writer for the magazine The Reporter from 1952 to 1963. Her writing there included articles, essays and reviews. She even wrote satirical verse, under the pen name ''Sec.'' She did much writing over the years for The New Yorker and for other publications ranging from McCalls to The New York Times, and was the author of several books. More Than Outspoken Ms. Mannes's 1958 collection of essays - largely from The Reporter -was contentiously titled ''More in Anger: Some Opinions, Uncensored and Unteleprompted.'' William du Bois, reviewing it in The New York Times, said that ''to call these pages outspoken is putting things mildly.'' The book, he continued, ''is guaranteed to shock you into awareness of its author as an original thinker.'' ''Whether she is writing of the Rheingold girls or the boys in Washington,'' he observed, ''of social-minded mothers and their child victims, of the world of Miltown or the think-room at the United Nations, of the 'half-people' of our automotive age or the heirs of Senator McCarthy, she hews to the line and lets the quips fall where they may.'' For some years, Ms. Mannes was seen often on television, but she was a champion of the written word. In a speech to a gathering of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, she once said, ''No picture on a screen can ever be an adequate substitute for the reporting of a trained observer and an honest writer.'' Marya Mannes was born on Nov. 14, 1904, on the West Side of Manhattan. Her parents were David Mannes and the former Clara Damrosch - founders of the Mannes College of Music. She grew up in Manhattan, graduating in 1923 from Miss Veltin's School for Girls. Instead of going to college, she went to Europe for two years and studied sculpture, mainly in England. She went on to do varied writing - including a play, ''Cafe,'' that failed on Broadway in 1930. From 1933 to 1936, she worked for Vogue magazine, as an associate editor and later as feature editor. Wartime Analyst During part of World War II, she was an intelligence analyst with the Office of Strategic Services. After the war, she did much free-lance writing in addition to her work on The Reporter. Over the decades, 329 articles with her byline were published - 275 of them in The Reporter. In later years she appeared on various televison programs. The Times television critic Jack Gould wrote in 1961 that ''her sustained acerbity is one of the attractive adornments of contemporary criticism.'' She also lectured across the country. Her books include ''Out of My Time'' (1971), an autobiography; ''Message From a Stranger'' (1948) and ''They'' (1968) - both novels - and ''Subverse: Rhymes for Our Times'' (1959), a volume of satiric verse. She was also a co-author of ''Uncoupling: The Art of Coming Apart'' (1972), a book about divorce. ''The Best of Marya Mannes,'' an anthology of her writing edited by Robert Mottley, was published in 1986. In 1958 she won the George Polk Memorial Award, one of many honors given for her writing. Her three marriages - to the set designer Jo Melziener, to Richard A. Blow, an artist, and to Christopher Clarkson, a representative of British companies - ended in divorce. She is survived by her son, who lives in San Francisco.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli Biography Diplomat, Writer (1469-1527) 177170610 QUICK FACTSNAMENiccolò MachiavelliOCCUPATIONDiplomat, WriterBIRTH DATEMay 3, 1469DEATH DATEJune 21, 1527PLACE OF BIRTHFlorence, ItalyPLACE OF DEATHFlorence, ItalyAKAMachiavelliNiccolò di BernardoNiccolò MachiavelliFULL NAMENiccolò di Bernardo dei MachiavelliNICKNAME"Father of Modern Political Theory" Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli is best known for writing The Prince, a handbook for unscrupulous politicians that inspired the term "Machiavellian" and established its author as the "father of modern political theory." Synopsis Born on May 3, 1469, in Florence, Italy, Niccolò Machiavelli was a diplomat for 14 years in Italy's Florentine Republic during the Medici family's exile. When the Medici family returned to power in 1512, Machiavelli was dismissed and briefly jailed. He then wrote The Prince, a handbook for politicians on the use of ruthless, self-serving cunning, inspiring the term "Machiavellian" and establishing Machiavelli as the "father of modern political theory." He also wrote several poems and plays. He died on June 21, 1527, in Florence, Italy. Early Life and Diplomatic Career Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, on May 3, 1469—a time when Italy was divided into four rival city-states and, thusly, was at the mercy of stronger governments throughout the rest of Europe. The young Niccolò Machiavelli became a diplomat after the temporary fall of Florence's ruling Medici family in 1494. He served in that position for 14 years in Italy's Florentine Republic during the Medici family's exile, during which time he earned a reputation for deviousness, enjoying shocking his associates by appearing more shameless than he truly was. After his involvement in an unsuccessful attempt to organize a Florentine militia against the return of the Medici family to power in 1512 became known, Machiavelli was tortured, jailed and banished from an active role in political life. Authoring 'The Prince' Though it was initially a dark period for his career, Machiavelli's time away from politics gave him the opportunity to read Roman history and to write political treatises, most notably The Prince. The main theme of this short work about monarchal rule and survival is man's capacity for determining his own destiny in opposition to the power of fate, which has been interpreted as the political philosophy that one may resort to any means in order to establish and preserve total authority. The work has been regarded as a handbook for politicians on the use of ruthless, self-serving cunning, and inspired the term "Machiavellian." While many believe that the book's title character, "the prince," was based upon the infamous Cesare Borgia, some scholars consider it a satire. Pope Clement VIII condemned The Prince for its endorsement of rule by deceit and fear. One excerpt from the book reads: "Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved." In addition to The Prince, Machiavelli wrote the treatise On the Art of War (1521), among others, and several poems and plays, including 1524's satirical The Mandrake. Advertisement — Continue reading below Later Years and Legacy In his later years, Niccolò Machiavelli resided in a small village just outside of Florence. He died in the city on June 21, 1527. His tomb is in the church of Santa Croce in Florence, which, ironically, he had been banned from entering during the last years of his life. Today, Machiavelli is regarded as the "father of modern political theory." Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Cite This PageAPA Style Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli. (2014). The Biography.com website. Retrieved 06:42, Dec 16, 2014, fromhttp://www.biography.com/people/niccolò-machiavelli-9392446. Harvard Style Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli. [Internet]. 2014. The Biography.com website. Available from:http://www.biography.com/people/niccolò-machiavelli-9392446 [Accessed 16 Dec 2014]. MLA Style "Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014. Web. 16 Dec. 2014. View More Citation Formats » by Taboola Promoted Links AROUND THE WEB Think Money + Power = Success? Think Again Says Arianna HuffingtonLinkedIn Talent Solutions 13 Haunting Facts About Edgar Allan Poe's Death 15 Dog Smiles To Get You In The Holiday Spiritpetco Liam Payne - Biography - Singer Beethoven: 5 Facts About the Composer & Pop Culture Nods to His Influence BIO STAFF 8 HOURS AGO HISTORY & CULTURE Who Am I? BIO STAFF 8 HOURS AGO CELEBRITY Disney on Ice: Walt's Frosty Afterlife? It's one of the coolest Hollywood rumors (literally). Was animation legend Walt Disney frozen after death so he could be reanimated in the future? Read on for... DAVID BLATTY 20 HOURS AGO HISTORY & CULTURE Gone With the Wind's 75th Anniversary: 7 Facts We Want You to Give a

D.H. Lawrence

Born in England on September 11, 1885, he is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Lawrence published many novels and poetry volumes during his lifetime, including Sons and Loversand Women in Love, but is best known for his infamous novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. The graphic and highly sexual novel was published in Italy in 1928, but was banned in the United States until 1959, and banned in England until 1960. Garnering fame for his novels and short stories early into his career, Lawrence later received acclaim for his personal letters, in which he detailed a range of emotions, from exhilaration to depression to prophetic brooding. He died in France in 1930. Early Life regarded today as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, was born David Herbert Lawrence on September 11, 1885, on the Haggs Farm in the small mining town of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England. His father, Arthur , was a coal miner, and his mother, Lydia , worked in the lace-making industry to supplement the family income. Lawrence's mother was from a middle-class family that had fallen into financial ruin, but not before she had become well-educated and a great lover of literature. She instilled in a love of books and a strong desire to rise above his blue-collar beginnings. hardscrabble, working-class upbringing made a strong impression on him, and he later wrote extensively about the experience of growing up in a poor mining town. "Whatever I forget," he later said, "I shall not forget the Haggs, a tiny red brick farm on the edge of the wood, where I got my first incentive to write." As a child, he often struggled to fit in with other boys. He was physically frail and frequently susceptible to illness, a condition exacerbated by the dirty air of a town surrounded by coal pits. He was poor at sports and, unlike nearly every other boy in town, had no desire to follow in his father's footsteps as a miner. However, he was an excellent student and in 1897, at the age of 12, he became the first boy in Eastwood's history to win a scholarship to Nottingham High School. At Nottingham, Lawrence once again struggled to make friends. He often fell ill and grew depressed and lethargic in his studies, graduating in 1901 having made little academic impression. Reflecting back on his childhood, Lawrence said, "If I think of my childhood it is always as if there was a sort of inner darkness, like the gloss of coal in which we moved and had our being." In the summer of 1901, took a job as a factory clerk for a Nottingham surgical appliances manufacturer called Haywoods. However, that autumn, his older brother William suddenly fell ill and died, and in his grief, Lawrence also came down with a bad case of pneumonia. After recovering, he began working as a student teacher at the British School in Eastwood, where he met a young woman named Jessie Chambers who became his close friend and intellectual companion. At her encouragement, he began writing poetry and also started drafting his first novel, which would eventually become The White Peacock. 'The White Peacock' & 'The Trespasser' In the fall of 1906, left Eastwood to attend the University College of Nottingham to obtain his teacher's certificate. While there, he won a short story competition for "An Enjoyable Christmas: A Prelude," which was published in the Nottingham Guardian in 1907. In order to enter multiple stories in the competition, he entered "An Enjoyable Christmas: A Prelude" under Jessie Chambers's name, and although it was published as such, people soon discovered that Lawrence was its true author. In 1908, having received his teaching certificate, Lawrence took a teaching post at an elementary school in the London suburb of Croydon. He also continued to write, and in 1909 he received his big break when Jessie Chambers managed to get some of his poems published in theEnglish Review. The publishers at the English Review took a great interest in Lawrence's work, recommending his draft of The White Peacock to another publisher, William Heinemann, who printed it in 1911. Set in his childhood hometown of Eastwood, the novel foreshadowed many of the themes, such as mismatched marriages and class divides, that would pervade his later work. A year later, Lawrence published his second novel, The Trespasser, a story based on the experiences of a fellow teacher who had an affair with a married man who then committed suicide. Around the same time, Lawrence became engaged to an old friend from college named Louie Burrows. 'Sons and Lovers' However, in the spring of 1912, life changed suddenly and irrevocably when he went to visit an old Nottingham professor, Ernest Weekley, to solicit advice about his future and his writing. During his visit, Lawrence fell desperately in love with Weekley's wife, Frieda von Richthofen. Lawrence immediately resolved to break off his engagement, quit teaching, and try to make a living as a writer, and, by May of that year, he had persuaded Frieda to leave her family. The couple ran off to Germany, later traveling to Italy. While traveling with his new love, Lawrence continued to write at a furious pace. He published his first play, The Daughter-in-Law, in 1912. A year later, he published his first volume of poetry: Love Poems and Others. Later in 1913, Lawrence published his third novel, Sons and Lovers, a highly autobiographical story of a young man and aspiring artist named Paul Morel who struggles to transcend his upbringing in a poor mining town. The novel is widely considered Lawrence's first masterpiece, as well as one of the greatest English novels of the 20th century. 'The Rainbow' & 'Women in Love' D.H. Lawrence and Frieda von Richtofen soon returned to England, where they married on July 13, 1914. That same year, Lawrence published a highly regarded short story collection,The Prussian Officer, and in 1915 he published another novel, The Rainbow, which was quite sexually explicit for the time. Critics harshly condemned The Rainbow for its sexual content and the book was soon banned for obscenity. Feeling betrayed by his country but unable to travel abroad because of World War I, Lawrence retreated to Cornwall at the far southwestern edge of Great Britain. However, the local government considered the presence of a controversial writer and his German wife so near the coast to be a wartime security threat, and it banished him from Cornwall in 1917. Lawrence spent the next two years moving among friends' apartments. However, despite the tumult of the period, Lawrence managed to publish four volumes of poetry between 1916 and 1919: Amores (1916), Look! We Have Come Through! (1919), New Poems (1918) and Bay: A Book of Poems (1919). In 1919, with the First World War finally ended, Lawrence once again departed England for Italy. There, he spent two highly enjoyable years traveling around Italy and writing. In 1920, he revised and published Women in Love, which he considered the second half of The Rainbow. He also edited a series of short stories that he had written during the war, which were published under the title My England and Other Stories in 1922. Determined to fulfill a lifelong dream of traveling to America, in February 1922, Lawrence left Europe and traveled east. By the end of the year—after stays in both Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka) and Australia—he landed in the United States, settling in Taos, New Mexico. While in New Mexico, Lawrence completed Studies in Classic American Literature, a book of highly regarded and influential literary criticism of great American authors such as Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Excepting brief trips to Mexico, New York and England, Lawrence lived primarily on a ranch in New Mexico until 1927. His works during this time include a novel,Boy in the Bush (1924); a story collection about the American continent, St. Mawr (1925); and another novel, The Plumed Serpent(1926)

Mary Wollstonecraft

Feminist writer and intellectual she was born on April 27, 1759, in London. Brought up by an abusive father, she left home and dedicated herself to a life of writing. While working as a translator to Joseph Johnson, a publisher of radical texts, she published her most famous work,A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She died 10 days after her second daughter, Mary, was born. Early Life and First Works Feminist writer and intellectual was born on April 27, 1759, in Spitalfields, London. Her father was abusive and spent his somewhat sizable fortune on a series of unsuccessful ventures in farming. Perturbed by the actions of her father and by her mother's death in 1780, set out to earn her own livelihood. In 1784, , her sister Eliza and her best friend, Fanny, established a school in Newington Green. From her experiences teaching, wrote the pamphletThoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787). When her friend Fanny died in 1785, took a position as governess for the Kingsborough family in Ireland. Spending her time there to mourn and recover, she eventually found she was not suited for domestic work. Three years later, she returned to London and became a translator and an adviser to Joseph Johnson, a noted publisher of radical texts. When Johnson launched the Analytical Review in 1788, Mary became a regular contributor. Within four years, she published her most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). In the work, she clearly abhors prevailing notions that women are helpless adornments of a household. Instead, she states that society breeds "gentle domestic brutes" and that a confined existence makes women frustrated and transforms them into tyrants over their children and servants. The key, she purports, is educational reform, giving women access to the same educational opportunities as men. The ideas in her book were truly revolutionary at the time and caused tremendous controversy. Wollstonecraft also wrote Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, which asserted that women had strong sexual desires and that it was degrading and immoral to pretend otherwise. In 1792, while visiting friends in France, Wollstonecraft met Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American timber merchant and adventurer. Taken by him, she soon became pregnant. They named their daughter Fanny, after Mary's best friend. While nursing her firstborn, Wollstonecraft wrote a conservative critique of the French Revolution in An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution. She also wrote a deeply personal travel narrative, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, which became her most popular book in the 1790s. After their travels to Scandinavia, Imlay left her. recovered, finding new hope in a relationship with William Godwin, the founder of philosophical anarchism. Despite their belief in the tyranny of marriage, the couple eventually wed due to her pregnancy. In 1797, their daughter Mary (who later famously wrote Frankenstein), was born. Ten days later, due to complications of childbirth, Wollstonecraft died. The life and legacyhas been the subject of several biographies, beginning with her husband'sMemoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman(1798). For many years, the scandalous aspects of her life (such as her two children born out of wedlock) were more noted than her works. The 1900s brought renewed interest in her writings. In 2011, her image was projected onto the Palace of Westminster to raise support for a permanent statue of the author.

Bertrand Russell

Logic and philosophy was born at Trelleck on 18th May, 1872. His parents were Viscount Amberley and Katherine, daughter of 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley. At the age of three he was left an orphan. His father had wished him to be brought up as an agnostic; to avoid this he was made a ward of Court, and brought up by his grandmother. Instead of being sent to school he was taught by governesses and tutors, and thus acquired a perfect knowledge of French and German. In 1890 he went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, and after being a very high Wrangler and obtaining a First Class with distinction in philosophy he was elected a fellow of his college in 1895. But he had already left Cambridge in the summer of 1894 and for some months was attaché at the British embassy at Paris. In December 1894 he married Miss Alys Pearsall Smith. After spending some months in Berlin studying social democracy, they went to live near Haslemere, where he devoted his time to the study of philosophy. In 1900 he visited the Mathematical Congress at Paris. He was impressed with the ability of the Italian mathematician Peano and his pupils, and immediately studied Peano's works. In 1903 he wrote his first important book, The Principles of Mathematics, and with his friend Dr. Alfred Whitehead proceeded to develop and extend the mathematical logic of Peano and Frege. From time to time he abandoned philosophy for politics. In 1910 he was appointed lecturer at Trinity College. After the first World War broke out, he took an active part in the No Conscription fellowship and was fined £ 100 as the author of a leaflet criticizing a sentence of two years on a conscientious objector. His college deprived him of his lectureship in 1916. He was offered a post at Harvard university, but was refused a passport. He intended to give a course of lectures (afterwards published in America asPolitical Ideals, 1918) but was prevented by the military authorities. In 1918 he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for a pacifistic article he had written in theTribunal. His Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919) was written in prison. His Analysis of Mind (1921) was the outcome of some lectures he gave in London, which were organized by a few friends who got up a subscription for the purpose. In 1920 Russell had paid a short visit to Russia to study the conditions of Bolshevism on the spot. In the autumn of the same year he went to China to lecture on philosophy at the Peking university. On his return in Sept. 1921, having been divorced by his first wife, he married Miss Dora Black. They lived for six years in Chelsea during the winter months and spent the summers near Lands End. In 1927 he and his wife started a school for young children, which they carried on until 1932. He succeeded to the earldom in 1931. He was divorced by his second wife in 1935 and the following year married Patricia Helen Spence. In 1938 he went to the United States and during the next years taught at many of the country's leading universities. In 1940 he was involved in legal proceedings when his right to teach philosophy at the College of the City of New York was questioned because of his views on morality. When his appointment to the college faculty was cancelled, he accepted a five-year contract as a lecturer for the Barnes foundation, Merion, Pa., but the cancellation of this contract was announced in Jan. 1943 by Albert C. Barnes, director of the foundation. was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1908, and re-elected a fellow of Trinity College in 1944. He was awarded the Sylvester

Howard Gardner

MENU Howard Gardner, multiple intelligences and education Education, Index, Learning, Schooling, Social pedagogy, Teaching and pedagogy, Thinkers and innovators Howard Gardner, multiple intelligences and education. Howard Gardner's work around multiple intelligences has had a profound impact on thinking and practice in education - especially in the United States. Here we explore the theory of multiple intelligences; why it has found a ready audience amongst educationalists; and some of the issues around its conceptualization and realization. Contents: introduction · howard gardner - a life · howard gardner on multiple intelligences · the appeal of multiple intelligences ·are there additional intelligences? ·howard gardner's multiple intelligences - some issues and problems · conclusion · further reading and references · how to cite this article I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place. Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productive directions. An important part of that understanding is knowing who we are and what we can do... Ultimately, we must synthesize our understandings for ourselves. The performance of understanding that try matters are the ones we carry out as human beings in an imperfect world which we can affect for good or for ill. (Howard Gardner 1999: 180-181) Howard Earl Gardner's (1943- ) work has been marked by a desire not to just describe the world but to help to create the conditions to change it. The scale of Howard Gardner's contribution can be gauged from following comments in his introduction to the tenth anniversary edition of his classic work Frames of Mind. The theory of multiple intelligences: In the heyday of the psychometric and behaviorist eras, it was generally believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited; and that human beings - initially a blank slate - could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way. Nowadays an increasing number of researchers believe precisely the opposite; that there exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things that go against early 'naive' theories of that challenge the natural lines of force within an intelligence and its matching domains. (Gardner 1993: xxiii) One of the main impetuses for this movement has been Howard Gardner's work. He has been, in Smith and Smith's (1994) terms, a paradigm shifter. Howard Gardner has questioned the idea that intelligence is a single entity, that it results from a single factor, and that it can be measured simply via IQ tests. He has also challenged the cognitive development work of Piaget. Bringing forward evidence to show that at any one time a child may be at very different stages for example, in number development and spatial/visual maturation, Howard Gardner has successfully undermined the idea that knowledge at any one particular developmental stage hangs together in a structured whole. In this article we explore Howard Gardner's contribution and the use to which it has been put by educators. Howard Gardner - a life Howard Gardner was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1943. His parents had fled from Nürnberg in Germany in 1938 with their three-year old son, Eric. Just prior to Howard Gardner's birth Eric was killed in a sleighing accident. These two events were not discussed during Gardner's childhood, but were to have a very significant impact upon his thinking and development (Gardner 1989: 22). The opportunities for risky physical activity were limited, and creative and intellectual pursuits encouraged. As Howard began to discover the family's 'secret history' (and Jewish identity) he started to recognize that he was different both from his parents and from his peers. His parents wanted to send Howard to Phillips Academy in Andover Massachusetts - but he refused. Instead he went to a nearby preparatory school in Kingston, Pennsylvania (Wyoming Seminary). Howard Gardner appears to have embraced the opportunities there - and to have elicited the support and interest of some very able teachers. From there he went to Harvard University to study history in readiness for a career in the law. However, he was lucky enough to have Eric Erikson as a tutor. In Howard Gardner's words Erikson probably 'sealed' his ambition to be a scholar (1989: 23). But there were others: My mind was really opened when I went to Harvard College and had the opportunity to study under individuals—such as psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, sociologist David Riesman, and cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner—who were creating knowledge about human beings. That helped set me on the course of investigating human nature, particularly how human beings think. (Howard Gardner quoted by Marge Sherer 1999) Howard Gardner's interest in psychology and the social sciences grew (his senior thesis was on a new California retirement community) and he graduatedsumma cum laude in 1965. Howard Gardner then went to work for a brief period withJerome Bruner on the famous MACOS Project ('Man: A course of study'). Bruner's work, especially inThe Process of Education (1960) was to make a profound impact, and the questions that the programme asked were to find an echo in Gardner's subsequent interests. During this time he began to read the work of Claude Levi-Strauss and Jean Piaget in more detail. He entered Harvard's doctoral programme in 1966, and in the following year became part of the Project Zero research team on arts education (with which he has remained involved to the present). Howard Gardner completed his PhD in 1971 (his dissertation was on style sensitivity in children). He remained at Harvard. Alongside his work with Project Zero (he now co-directs it with David Perkins) he was a lecturer (1971-1986) and then professor in education (1986- ). His first major book, The Shattered Mind appeared in 1975 and some fifteen have followed. Howard Gardner is currently Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and adjunct professor of neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine. Project Zero provided an environment in which Howard Gardner could begin to explore his interest in human cognition. He proceeded in a very different direction to the dominant discourses associated with Piaget and with psychometric testing. Project Zero developed as a major research centre for education - and provided an intellectual home for a significant grouping of researchers. A key moment came with the establishment of the Project on Human Potential in the late 1970s (funded by Bernard van Leer Foundation) to 'assess the state of scientific knowledge concerning human potential and its realization'. The result was Frames of Mind (1983) Howard Gardner's first full-length statement of his theory of multiple intelligences. Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences - the initial listing Howard Gardner viewed intelligence as 'the capacity to solve problems or to fashion products that are valued in one or more cultural setting' (Gardner & Hatch, 1989). He reviewed the literature using eight criteria or 'signs' of an intelligence: Potential isolation by brain damage.The existence of idiots savants, prodigies and other exceptional individuals. An identifiable core operation or set of operations. A distinctive development history, along with a definable set of 'end-state' performances. An evolutionary history and evolutionary plausibility. Support from experimental psychological tasks. Support from psychometric findings. Susceptibility to encoding in a symbol system. (Howard Gardner 1983: 62-69) Candidates for the title 'an intelligence' had to satisfy a range of these criteria and must include, as a prerequisite, the ability to resolve 'genuine problems or difficulties' (ibid.: 60) within certain cultural settings. Making judgements about this was, however, 'reminiscent more of an artistic judgement than of a scientific assessment' (ibid.: 62). Howard Gardner initially formulated a list of seven intelligences. His listing was provisional. The first two have been typically valued in schools; the next three are usually associated with the arts; and the final two are what Howard Gardner called 'personal intelligences' (Gardner 1999: 41-43). Linguistic intelligence involves sensitivity to spoken and written language, the ability to learn languages, and the capacity to use language to accomplish certain goals. This intelligence includes the ability to effectively use language to express oneself rhetorically or poetically; and language as a means to remember information. Writers, poets, lawyers and speakers are among those that Howard Gardner sees as having high linguistic intelligence. Logical-mathematical intelligence consists of the capacity to analyze problems logically, carry out mathematical operations, and investigate issues scientifically. In Howard Gardner's words, it entails the ability to detect patterns, reason deductively and think logically. This intelligence is most often associated with scientific and mathematical thinking. Musical intelligence involves skill in the performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patterns. It encompasses the capacity to recognize and compose musical pitches, tones, and rhythms. According to Howard Gardner musical intelligence runs in an almost structural parallel to linguistic intelligence. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligenceentails the potential of using one's whole body or parts of the body to solve problems. It is the ability to use mental abilities to coordinate bodily movements. Howard Gardner sees mental and physical activity as related. Spatial intelligence involves the potential to recognize and use the patterns of wide space and more confined areas. Interpersonal intelligence is concerned with the capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people. It allows people to work effectively with others. Educators, salespeople, religious and political leaders and counsellors all need a well-developed interpersonal intelligence. Intrapersonal intelligence entails the capacity to understand oneself, to appreciate one's feelings, fears and motivations. In Howard Gardner's view it involves having an effective working model of ourselves, and to be able to use such information to regulate our lives. In Frames of Mind Howard Gardner treated the personal intelligences 'as a piece'. Because of their close association in most cultures, they are often linked together. However, he still argues that it makes sense to think of two forms of personal intelligence. Gardner claimed that the seven intelligences rarely operate independently. They are used at the same time and tend to complement each other as people develop skills or solve problems. In essence Howard Gardner argued that he was making two essential claims about multiple intelligences. That: The theory is an account of human cognition in its fullness. The intelligences provided 'a new definition of human nature, cognitively speaking' (Gardner 1999: 44). Human beings are organisms who possess a basic set of intelligences. People have a unique blend of intelligences. Howard Gardner argues that the big challenge facing the deployment of human resources 'is how to best take advantage of the uniqueness conferred on us as a species exhibiting several intelligences' (ibid.: 45). These intelligences, according to Howard Gardner, are amoral - they can be put to constructive or destructive use. The appeal of multiple intelligences to educators Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences has not been readily accepted within academic psychology. However, it has met with a strongly positive response from many educators. It has been embraced by a range of educational theorists and, significantly, applied by teachers and policymakers to the problems of schooling. A number of schools in North America have looked to structure curricula according to the intelligences, and to design classrooms and even whole schools to reflect the understandings that Howard Gardner develops. The theory can also be found in use within pre-school, higher, vocational and adult education initiatives. This appeal was not, at first, obvious. At first blush, this diagnosis would appear to sound a death knell for formal education. It is hard to teach one intelligence; what if there are seven? It is hard to enough to teach even when anything can be taught; what to do if there are distinct limits and strong constraints on human cognition and learning? (Howard Gardner 1993: xxiii) Howard Gardner responds to his questions by first making the point that psychology does not directly dictate education, 'it merely helps one to understand the conditions within which education takes place'. What is more: Seven kinds of intelligence would allow seven ways to teach, rather than one. And powerful constraints that exist in the mind can be mobilized to introduce a particular concept (or whole system of thinking) in a way that children are most likely to learn it and least likely to distort it. Paradoxically, constraints can be suggestive and ultimately freeing. (op. cit.) Mindy L. Kornhaber (2001: 276), a researcher involved with Project Zero, has identified a number of reasons why teachers and policymakers in North America have responded positively to Howard Gardner's presentation of multiple intelligences. Among these are that: ... the theory validates educators' everyday experience: students think and learn in many different ways. It also provides educators with a conceptual framework for organizing and reflecting on curriculum assessment and pedagogical practices. In turn, this reflection has led many educators to develop new approaches that might better meet the needs of the range of learners in their classrooms. The response to Howard Gardner is paralleled by the adoption of Kolb'smodel of experiential learning by adult and informal educators. While significant criticism can be made of the formulation (see below) it does provide a useful set of questions and 'rules of thumb' to help educators to think about their practice. The way in which Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences has been translated into policy and practice has been very varied. Howard Gardner did not, initially, spell out the implications of his theory for educators in any detail. Subsequently, he has looked more closely at what the theory might mean for schooling practice (e.g. inThe Unschooled Mind, Intelligence Reframed, and The Disciplined Mind). From this work three particular aspects of Gardner's thinking need noting here as they allow for hope, and an alternative way of thinking, for those educators who feel out of step with the current, dominant product orientation to curriculum and educational policy. The approach entails: A broad vision of education. All seven intelligences are needed to live life well. Teachers, therefore, need to attend to all intelligences, not just the first two that have been their tradition concern. As Kornhaber (2001: 276) has noted it involves educators opting 'for depth over breadth'. Understanding entails taking knowledge gained in one setting and using it in another. 'Students must have extended opportunities to work on a topic' (op. cit.). Developing local and flexible programmes. Howard Gardner's interest in 'deep understanding', performance, exploration and creativity are not easily accommodated within an orientation to the 'delivery' of a detailed curriculum planned outside of the immediate educational context. 'An "MI setting" can be undone if the curriculum is too rigid or if there is but a single form of assessment' (Gardner 1999: 147). In this respect the educational implications of Howard Gardner's work stands in a direct line from the work of John Dewey. Looking to morality. 'We must figure out how intelligence and morality can work together', Howard Gardner argues, 'to create a world in which a great variety of people will want to live' (Gardner 1999: 4). While there are considerable benefits to developing understanding in relation to the disciplines, something more is needed. Are there additional intelligences? Since Howard Gardner's original listing of the intelligences in Frames of Mind (1983) there has been a great deal of discussion as to other possible candidates for inclusion (or candidates for exclusion). Subsequent research and reflection by Howard Gardner and his colleagues has looked to three particular possibilities: a naturalist intelligence, a spiritual intelligence and an existential intelligence. He has concluded that the first of these 'merits addition to the list of the original seven intelligences' (Gardner 1999: 52). Naturalist intelligence enables human beings to recognize, categorize and draw upon certain features of the environment. It 'combines a description of the core ability with a characterization of the role that many cultures value' (ibid.: 48). The case for inclusion of naturalist intelligence appears pretty straightforward, the position with regard to spiritual intelligence is far more complex. According to Howard Gardner (1999: 59) there are problems, for example, around the 'content' of spiritual intelligence, its privileged but unsubstantiated claims with regard to truth value, 'and the need for it to be partially identified through its effect on other people'. As a result: It seems more responsible to carve out that area of spirituality closest 'in spirit' to the other intelligences and then, in the sympathetic manner applied to naturalist intelligence, ascertain how this candidate intelligence fares. In doing so, I think it best to put aside the term spiritual, with its manifest and problematic connotations, and to speak instead of an intelligence that explores the nature of existence in its multifarious guises. Thus, an explicit concern with spiritual or religious matters would be one variety - often the most important variety - of an existential intelligence. Existential intelligence, a concern with 'ultimate issues', is, thus, the next possibility that Howard Gardner considers - and he argues that it 'scores reasonably well on the criteria' (ibid.: 64). However, empirical evidence is sparse - and although a ninth intelligence might be attractive, Howard Gardner is not disposed to add it to the list. 'I find the phenomenon perplexing enough and the distance from the other intelligences vast enough to dictate prudence - at least for now' (ibid.: 66). The final, and obvious, candidate for inclusion in Howard Gardner's list is moral intelligence. In his exploration, he begins by asking whether it is possible to delineate the 'moral domain'. He suggests that it is difficult to come to any consensual definition, but argues that it is possible to come to an understanding that takes exploration forward. Central to a moral domain, Howard Gardner suggests, 'is a concern with those rules, behaviours and attitudes that govern the sanctity of life - in particular, the sanctity of human life and, in many cases, the sanctity of any other living creatures and the world they inhabit' (ibid.: 70). If we accept the existence of a moral realm is it then possible to speak of moral intelligence? If it 'connotes the adoption of any specific moral code' then Howard Gardner does not find the term moral intelligence acceptable (ibid.: 75). Furthermore, he argues, researchers and writers have not as yet 'captured the essence of the moral domain as an instance of human intelligence' (ibid.: 76). As I construe it, the central component in the moral realm or domain is a sense of personal agency and personal stake, a realization that one has an irreducible role with respect to other people and that one's behaviour towards others must reflect the results of contextualized analysis and the exercise of one's will.... The fulfilment of key roles certainly requires a range of human intelligences - including personal, linguistic, logical and perhaps existential - but it is fundamentally a statement about the kind of person that has developed to be. It is not, in itself, an intelligence. 'Morality' is then properly a statement about personality, individuality, will, character - and, in the happiest cases, about the highest realization of human nature. (ibid.: 77) So it is, that Howard Gardner has added an eighth intelligence - naturalist intelligence - to his list. He has also opened the door to another possibility - especially that of existential intelligence - but the court is out on that one. Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences - some issues and problems There are various criticisms of, and problems around, Howard Gardner's conceptualization of multiple intelligences. Indeed, Gardner himself has listed some of the main issues and his responses (1993: xxiii-xxvii; 1999: 79-114). Here, I want to focus on three key questions that have been raised in debates. (There are plenty of other questions around - but these would seem to be the most persistent): Are the criteria Howard Gardner employs adequate? John White (1997) has argued that there are significant issues around the criteria that Howard Gardner employs. There are questions around the individual criteria, for example, do all intelligences involve symbol systems; how the criteria to be applied; and why these particular criteria are relevant. In respect of the last, and fundamental question, White states that he has not been able to find any answer in Gardner's writings (ibid.: 19). Indeed, Howard Gardner himself has admitted that there is an element of subjective judgement involved. Does Howard Gardner's conceptualization of intelligence hold together? For those researchers and scholars who have traditionally viewed intelligence as, effectively, what is measured by intelligence tests - Howard Gardner's work will always be problematic. They can still point to a substantial tradition of research that demonstrates correlation between different abilities and argue for the existence of a general intelligence factor. Howard Gardner (1993: xxiv) disputes much of the evidence and argues that it is not possible, as yet, to know how far intelligences actually correlate. More recent developments in thinking around intelligence such as Robert Sternberg's (1985, 1996) advancement of a 'triarchic model' have shared Gardner's dislike of such standard intelligence theory. However, in contrast to Howard Gardner, Robert Sternberg does not look strongly at the particular material that the person is processing. Instead he looks to what he calls the componential, experiential and contextual facets of intelligence. A further set of criticisms centre around the specific intelligences that Howard Gardner identified. For example, it can be argued that musical intelligence and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence are better approached as talents (they do not normally need to adapt to life demands). Is there sufficient empirical evidence to support Howard Gardner's conceptualization? A common criticism made of Howard Gardner's work is that his theories derive rather more strongly from his own intuitions and reasoning than from a comprehensive and full grounding in empirical research. For the moment there is not a properly worked-through set of tests to identify and measure the different intelligences. I once thought it possible to create a set of tests of each intelligence - an intelligence-fair version to be sure - and then simply to determine the correlation between the scores on the several tests. I now believe that this can only be accomplished if someone developed several measures for each intelligence and then made sure that people were comfortable in dealing with the materials and methods used to measure each intelligence. (Gardner 1999: 98) Howard Gardner himself has not pursued this approach because of a more general worry with such testing - that it leads to labelling and stigmatization. It can be argued that research around the functioning of the brain generally continues to support the notion of multiple intelligence (although not necessarily the specifics of Howard Gardner's theory). There are further questions around the notion of selfhood that Howard Gardner employs - something that he himself has come to recognize. In the early 1990s he began to look to the notion of distributed cognition as providing a better way of approaching the area than focusing on what goes on in the mind of a single individual (Hatch and Gardner 1993) (see the discussion of social/situational orientations to learning). Conclusion While there may be some significant questions and issues around Howard Gardner's notion of multiple intelligences, it still has had utility in education. It has helped a significant number of educators to question their work and to encourage them to look beyond the narrow confines of the dominant discourses of skilling, curriculum, and testing. For example, Mindy Kornhaber and her colleagues at the Project SUMIT (Schools Using Multiple Intelligences Theory) have examined the performance of a number of schools and concluded that there have been significant gains in respect of SATs scores, parental participation, and discipline (with the schools themselves attributing this to MI theory). To the extent that Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences theory has helped educators to reflect on their practice, and given them a basis to broaden their focus and to attend to what might assist people to live their lives well, then it has to be judged a useful addition. Project SUMIT (2000) uses the metaphor of Compass Points-'routes that educators using the theory have taken and which appear to benefit students'. They have identified the following markers that characterize schools with some success in implementing practices that attend to multiple intelligences theory. Culture: support for diverse learners and hard work. Acting on a value system which maintains that diverse students can learn and succeed, that learning is exciting, and that hard work by teachers is necessary. Readiness: awareness-building for implementing MI. Building staff awareness of MI and of the different ways that students learn. Tool: MI is a means to foster high quality work. Using MI as a tool to promote high quality student work rather than using the theory as an end in and of itself. Collaboration: informal and formal exchanges. Sharing ideas and constructive suggestions by the staff in formal and informal exchanges. Choice: meaningful curriculum and assessment options. Embedding curriculum and assessment in activities that are valued both by students and the wider culture. Arts. Employing the arts to develop children's skills and understanding within and across disciplines. Informal educators can usefully look at this listing in respect of their projects and agencies. The multiple intelligences themselves also provide a good focus for reflection. Arguably, informal educators have traditionally been concerned with the domains of the interpersonal and the intrapersonal, with a sprinkling of the intelligences that Howard Gardner identifies with the arts. Looking to naturalist linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences could help enhance their practice. Further reading and references The main Howard Gardner writings on multiple intelligences are as follows: Gardner, Howard (1983; 1993)Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences, New York: Basic Books. The second edition was published in Britain by Fontana Press. 466 + xxix pages. (All references in this article refer to this second, 10th Anniversary, edition). A major addition to the literature of cognitive psychology being the first full length explication of multiple intelligences. Gardner, Howard (1989) To Open Minds: Chinese clues to the dilemma of contemporary education, New York: Basic Books. This book includes a significant amount of material on Gardner's early life. Gardner, H. (1991) The Unschooled Mind: How children think and how schools should teach, New York: Basic Books. Gardner, Howard (1999)Intelligence Reframed. Multiple intelligences for the 21st century, New York: Basic Books. 292 + x pages. Useful review of Gardner's theory and discussion of issues and additions. Gardner, Howard (1999) The Disciplined Mind: Beyond Facts And Standardized Tests, The K-12 Education That Every Child Deserves, New York: Simon and Schuster (and New York: Penguin Putnam). References Brualdi, A, C. (1996) 'Multiple Intelligences: Gardner's Theory. ERIC Digest', Eric Digests, [http://www.ericdigests.org/1998-1/multiple.htm. Accessed June 15, 2008] Bruner, J (1960) The Process of Education, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Gardner, Howard (1975) The Shattered Mind, New York: Knopf. Gardner, Howard (2006) Changing Minds. The art and science of changing our own and other people's minds. Boston MA.: Harvard Business School Press. Gardner, H., Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Damon, W. (2001) Good Work: Where Excellence and Ethics Meet, New York: Basic Books. Gardner, H., & Hatch, T. (1989). Multiple intelligences go to school: Educational implications of the theory of multiple intelligences.Educational Researcher, 18(8), 4-9. T. Hatch and H. Gardner (1993) 'Finding cognition in the classroom: an expanded view of human intelligence' in G. Salomon (ed.)Distributed Cognitions. Psychological and educational considerations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kornhaber, M. L. (2001) 'Howard Gardner' in J. A. Palmer (ed.) Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education. From Piaget to the present, London: Routledge. Project SUMIT (2000) SUMIT Compass Points Practices.[http://pzweb.harvard.edu/Research/SUMIT.htm. Accessed June 15, 2008] Scherer, M. (1999) 'The Understanding Pathway: A Conversation with Howard Gardner', Educational Leadership57(3) [www.georgejacobs.net/MIArticles/Gardner%20ASCD%201999.doc. Accessed June 15, 2008]. Smith, L. G. and Smith, J. K. (1994)Lives in Education. A narrative of people and ideas 2e, New York: St Martin's Press. Sternberg, R. J. (1985) Beyond IQ: A triarchic theory of human intelligence. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (1996) Successful intelligence. New York: Simon & Schuster. White, J. (1998) Do Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences add up? London: Institute of Education, University of London. Williams, W. M., Blythe, T., White, N., Li, J., Sternberg, R. J., & Gardner, H. (1996). Practical intelligence for school. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers. Acknowledgement: The picture of Howard Gardner is reproduced here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Licence. It is part of the Aspen Institute's photostream at Flickr. To cite this article: Smith, Mark K. (2002, 2008) 'Howard Gardner and multiple intelligences', the encyclopedia of informal education,http://www.infed.org/mobi/howard-gardner-multiple-intelligences-and-education. © Mark K. Smith 2002, 2008 Print PDF TAGGED WITH → education • Howard Gardner • learning • multiple intellegences SHARE → infed.org: millions of users and hundreds of pages exploring education, learning and community.Not-for-profit and based at: log in | register | feed back Find us on Facebook Write for us Check out our events and courses Resources: Youth and Policy 113 is now available. 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Henry David Thoreau

OCCUPATION Philosopher, Poet, Journalist BIRTH DATE July 12, 1817 DEATH DATE May 6, 1862 EDUCATION Harvard University, Concord Academy PLACE OF BIRTH Concord, Massachusetts PLACE OF DEATH Concord, Massachusetts American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher, Henry David Thoreau was a New England Transcendentalist and author of the book Walden. Synopsis Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. He began writing nature poetry in the 1840s, with poet Ralph Waldo Emerson as a mentor and friend. In 1845 he began his famous two-year stay on Walden Pond, which he wrote about in his master work, Walden. He also became known for his beliefs in Transcendentalism and civil disobedience, and was a dedicated abolitionist. Early Life One of America's most famous writers, Henry David Thoreau is remembered for his philosophical and naturalist writings. He was born and raised in Concord, Massachusetts, along with his older siblings John and Helen and younger sister Sophia. His father operated a local pencil factory, and his mother rented out parts of the family's home to boarders. A bright student, Thoreau eventually went to Harvard College (now Harvard University). There he studied Greek and Latin as well as German. According to some reports, Thoreau had to take a break from his schooling for a time because of illness. He graduated from college in 1837 and struggled with what do to next. At the time, an educated man like Thoreau might pursue a career in law or medicine or in the church. Other college graduates went into education, a path he briefly followed. With his brother John, he set up a school in 1838. The venture collapsed a few years later after John became ill. Thoreau then went to work for his father for a time. After college, Thoreau befriended writer and fellow Concord resident Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through Emerson, he became exposed to Transcendentalism, a school of thought that emphasized the importance of empirical thinking and of spiritual matters over the physical world. It encouraged scientific inquiry and observation. Thoreau came to know many of the movement's leading figures, including Bronson Alcott and Margaret Fuller. Emerson acted as a mentor to Thoreau and supported him in many ways. For a time, Thoreau lived with Emerson as a caretaker for his home. Emerson also used his influence to promote Thoreau's literary efforts. Some of Thoreau's first works were published in The Dial, a Transcendentalist magazine. And Emerson gave Thoreau access to the lands that would inspire one of his greatest works. Advertisement — Continue reading below Walden Pond In 1845, Thoreau built a small home for himself on Walden Pond, on property owned by Emerson. He spent more than two years there. Seeking a simpler type of life, Thoreau flipped the standard routine of the times. He experimented with working as little as possible rather than engage in the pattern of six days on with one day off. Sometimes Thoreau worked as a land surveyor or in the pencil factory. He felt that this new approach helped him avoid the misery he saw around him. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," Thoreau once wrote. His schedule gave him plenty of time to devote to his philosophical and literary interests. Thoreau worked on A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). The book drew from a boating trip he took with his brother John in 1839. Thoreau eventually started writing about his Walden Pond experiment as well. Many were curious about his revolutionary lifestyle, and this interest provided the creative spark for a collection of essays. Published in 1854, Walden; or, Life in the Woods espoused living a life close to nature. The book was a modest success, but it wasn't until much later that the book reached a larger audience. Over the years, Walden has inspired and informed the work of naturalists, environmentalists and writers. While living at Walden Pond, Thoreau also had an encounter with the law. He spent a night in jail after refusing to pay a poll tax. This experience led him to write one of his best-known and most influential essays, "Civil Disobedience" (also known as "Resistance to Civil Government"). Thoreau held deeply felt political views, opposing slavery and the Mexican-American War. He made a strong case for acting on one's individual conscience and not blindly following laws and government policy. "The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right," he wrote. Since its publication in 1849, "Civil Disobedience" has inspired many leaders of protest movements around the world. This non-violent approach to political and social resistance has influenced American civil rights movement activist Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi, who helped India win independence from Great Britain, among many others. Later Years After leaving Walden Pond, Thoreau spent some time looking after Emerson's house while he was on tour in England. He soon took to lecturing himself. Still fascinated with nature, Thoreau wrote down his observations on plant and wildlife in his native Concord and on his journeys. He visited the woods of Maine and the shoreline of Cape Cod several times. Thoreau also remained a devoted abolitionist until the end of his life. To support his cause, he wrote several works, including the 1854 essay "Slavery in Massachusetts." Thoreau also took a brave stand for Captain John Brown, a radical abolitionist who led an uprising against slavery in Virginia. He and his supporters raided a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry to arm themselves in October 1859, but their plan was thwarted. An injured Brown was later convicted of treason and put to death for his crime. Thoreau rose to defend him with the speech "A Plea for Capt. John Brown," calling him "an angel of light" and "the bravest and humanest man in all the country." In his later years, Thoreau battled an illness that had plagued him for decades. He had tuberculosis, which he had contracted decades earlier. To restore his health, Thoreau went to Minnesota in 1861, but the trip didn't improve his condition. He finally succumbed to the disease on May 6, 1862. Thoreau was heralded as "an original thinker" and "a man of simple tastes, hardy habits, and of preternatural powers of observation" in some of his obituaries. While other writers from his time have faded into obscurity, Thoreau has endured because so much of what he wrote about is still relevant today. His writings on government were revolutionary, with some calling him an early anarchist. Thoreau's studies of nature were equally radical in their own way, earning him the moniker of "father of environmentalism." And his major work, Walden, has offered up an interesting antidote to living in the modern rat race.

Carson McCullers

OCCUPATION Playwright, Author BIRTH DATE February 19, 1917 DEATH DATE September 29, 1967 EDUCATION Columbia University, Washington Square College Of New York University PLACE OF BIRTH Columbus, Georgia PLACE OF DEATH Nyack, New York The work of Carson McCullers, author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding, is must-read southern gothic fiction. Synopsis Born Lula Carson Smith on February 19, 1917, Carson McCullers gained early critical and commercial success with her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. During WWII, McCullers lived in the February House, a Brooklyn artist's commune, where freethinking voices such as W.H. Auden congregated, debated and composed iconic works. Although she comes from the Southern Gothic tradition, McCullers wrote all of her fiction after leaving the South. She died in Nyack, New York, at the age of 50. Early Life Originally Lula Carson Smith, Carson McCullers was born on February 19, 1917, in Columbus, Georgia. The daughter of a jewelry store owner, McCullers first aspired to be a musician and started taking piano lessons at age 10. Always sickly, McCullers fought a bout of rheumatic fever as a child, and it led her to move music to the back burner, a period during which she began exploring writing. Nonetheless, in 1934 she headed off to New York City, where she was to study at the famed Juilliard School of Music. Once in New York, McCullers abandoned music to pursue her new literary passion. It's unclear if she actually intended to go to Juilliard or simply used the plan as an excuse to go to New York and pursue writing. Regardless, with music left behind, McCullers jumped in with both feet, taking creative writing classes at Columbia University and New York University while working odd jobs. Success came early to this young writer. At the age of 19, McCullers had her first story, "Wunderkind," published in the December 1936 issue of Story magazine, which was edited by her former writing teacher, Whit Burnett. The story explored the painful revelation of a young girl who discovers that she is not a musical prodigy. Around the time of the story's publication, McCullers was in her hometown recovering from an illness. She was in a relationship with James Reeves McCullers Jr., whom she had met through a friend. The following year, the two married in September—a union that would prove to be quite stormy over the years. There was some jealousy between the pair—her husband also wrote—and both were heavy drinkers. Advertisement — Continue reading below Big Break In 1940, McCullers received an enormous amount of critical praise and commercial success with her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. The work centered on a deaf-mute who finds himself the sounding board for four members of a small Georgia town—a restaurant owner, a political activist, an African-American doctor and a teenage girl. Through their stories, the characters reveal their frustrations, their loneliness and their isolation from those around them. While her career was taking off, McCullers was going through a difficult time personally. Separated from her husband, she joined several other literary and artistic talents, such as author Richard Wright and composer Leonard Bernstein, to live in a house in Brooklyn Heights, New York. Called the February House by Anais Nin, the residence was owned by Harper's Bazaar editor George Davis. Divorced from her husband in 1941, McCullers had mixed results with her second novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye, which was published that same year. (It had appeared earlier in Harper's Bazaar.) It drew a number of negative reviews but had some commercial success. Continuing her exploration of loneliness and isolation, the work was more provocative than her first novel, tackling issues relating to impotency, bisexuality, infidelity, bestiality and murder. Some of elements of the tumultuous relationships depicted in this story may have been inspired by her own marriage—both she and her husband were bisexual and had affairs. The Ballad of the Sad Café That same year, Carson grappled with some more health issues. But she also made her first visit to the Yaddo artists' colony in Upstate New York, where she started her next major work, The Ballad of the Sad Café, which was first published in Harper's Bazaar in 1943. In this story, McCullers wrote about a love triangle in a small Southern town, and some consider this to be one of her best works. While she had divorced her husband, McCullers remained close to Reeves and the pair decided to remarry in 1945. Her career continued to thrive with the publication of the novella The Member of the Wedding the following year. Also in 1946, McCullers met a young, gifted writer named Truman Capote through her sister Rita. The two became fast friends, and McCullers helped launch Capote's career. Unfortunately, the friendship later soured over McCullers' concerns that Capote may have used some of her material and that he was not properly grateful for her support. Advertisement — Continue reading below Health Concerns Having struggled with health problems much of her life, McCullers was dealt a devastating blow in 1947 when she had two strokes—one in August and one in November—which left her paralyzed on one side. She grew increasingly despondent over her poor health, leading to a suicide attempt in 1948. Recovering physically and emotionally from the incident, McCullers spent much of the latter part of the year with Tennessee Williams, a close friend, working on a stage adaptation of The Member of the Wedding. In January 1950, her play opened on Broadway to strong reviews and won the Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play that year. In the early 1950s, McCullers spent a lot of time in Europe with her husband and such literary friends as W. H. Auden, Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams. Reeves McCullers was increasingly depressed and wanted the pair to commit suicide together. Fearing for her own well-being, McCullers returned to the United States in 1953, and Reeves ended his own life in a Paris hotel by taking an overdose of sleeping pills in November of that year. In 1957, her play The Square Root of Wonderful opened on Broadway, but it closed after only 45 performances. Her final novel, Clock Without Hands, was published in 1961 without garnering much critical attention or commercial interest. The following year, McCullers had surgery to remove a cancerous breast and another surgery to repair her paralyzed left hand. Her final work, a collection of children's verse titled Sweet as a Pickle, Clean as a Pig, was published in 1964. Around this time, Edward Albee's adaptation of McCullers' The Ballad of the Sad Café debuted on Broadway, earning six Tony Award nominations. Legacy McCullers suffered a final stroke on August 15, 1967, which left her in a coma for 46 days. She died on September 29 at Nyack Hospital and was later buried at the town's Oak Hill Cemetery. More than 200 people attended her funeral, including Capote, Williams and actresses Myrna Loy and Julie Harris. Shortly after her death, the first film adaptation of Reflections in a Golden Eye was released, starring Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor. The following year, the film version of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968) appeared on the big screen and netted Academy Award nominations for two of its stars—Alan Arkin and Sondra Locke. In recent years, there has been a revived interest in McCullers's work. Oprah Winfrey selected McCullers's first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, for her popular book club in 2004, sending paperback sales soaring. More than 60 years after its original publication, the novel's themes of loneliness and isolation still speak to today's readers.

May Sarton

born on May 3, 1912, in Wondelgem, Belgium, and grew up in Cambridge, . Her first volume of poetry, Encounters in April, was published in 1937 and her first novel, The Single Hound, in 1938. An accomplished memoirist, Sarton boldly came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her later memoir, Journal of a Solitude, was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton died in York, Maine, on July 16, 1995.

Bruno Bettelheim

(born August 28, 1903, Vienna, Austria—died March 13, 1990, Silver Spring, Md., U.S.), Austrian-born American psychologist known for his work in treating and educating emotionally disturbed children. Bettelheim worked in his family's lumber business in Vienna, but after the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938 he was placed in German concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald because he was Jewish. After his release in 1939, he immigrated to the United States, where he became a research associate with the Progressive Education Association at the University of Chicago. Later he served as an associate professor at Rockford (Ill.) College (1942-44). In October 1943 he wrote an article that won wide and immediate recognition, "Individual and Mass Behaviour in Extreme Situations." Based on his observations and experiences at Dachau and Buchenwald, this pioneer study examined human adaptability to the stresses of concentration-camp lifeand considered the effects of Nazi terrorism on personality. By this time Bettelheim claimed to have earned a doctorate at the University of Vienna. In 1944 he was appointed both assistant professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and head of the university's Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, a residential laboratory school for 6- to 14-year-old children with serious emotional problems, which became the centre of his work with autistic children. An associate professor from 1947 and professor from 1952, he concerned himself with applying psychoanalytic principles to social problems, especially in relation to the upbringing of children. His writings stem from his work with children and include the books Love Is Not Enough (1950) and Truants from Life (1954). He retired from teaching and the directorship of the school in 1973. In his writings and research Bettelheim tried to determine what can be done therapeutically to relieve the emotional suffering and turmoil of disturbed children and to help them function in socially useful capacities. His writings also provided many insights for dealing effectively with normal children. His other works include The Informed Heart (1960); The Empty Fortress(1967), on autistic children; Children of the Dream (1967), treating the communal rearing of children in Israeli kibbutzim; and The Uses of Enchantment (1976), in which Bettelheim argued for the importance of fairy tales in child development. Bettelheim died a suicide, depressed after the death of his wife in 1984 and after suffering a stroke in 1987. His reputation was subsequently clouded by revelations that he had invented his Viennese academic credentials and that he had abused and misdiagnosed a number of the children under his care at the Orthogenic School.

Rollo May

Biography Rollo May was born April 21, 1909, in Ada, Ohio. His childhood was not particularly pleasant: His parents didn't get along and eventually divorced, and his sister had a psychotic breakdown. After a brief stint at Michigan State (he was asked to leave because of his involvement with a radical student magazine), he attended Oberlin College in Ohio, where he received his bachelors degree. After graduation, he went to Greece, where he taught English at Anatolia College for three years. During this period, he also spent time as an itinerant artist and even studied briefly with Alfred Adler. When he returned to the US, he entered Union Theological Seminary and became friends with one of his teachers, Paul Tillich, the existentialist theologian, who would have a profound effect on his thinking. May received his BD in 1938. May suffered from tuberculosis, and had to spend three years in a sanatorium. This was probably the turning point of his life. While he faced the possibility of death, he also filled his empty hours with reading. Among the literature he read were the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish religious writer who inspired much of the existential movement, and provided the inspiration for May's theory. He went on to study psychoanalysis at White Institute, where he met people such as Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm. And finally, he went to Columbia University in New York, where in 1949 he received the first PhD in clinical psychology that institution ever awarded. After receiving his PhD, he went on to teach at a variety of top schools. In 1958, he edited, with Ernest Angel and Henri Ellenberger, the book Existence, which introduced existential psychology to the US. He spent the last years of his life in Tiburon, California, until he died in October of 1994. Theory Rollo May is the best known American existential psychologist. Much of his thinking can be understood by reading about existentialism in general, and the overlap between his ideas and the ideas of Ludwig Binswanger is great. Nevertheless, he is a little off of the mainstream in that he was more influenced by American humanism than the Europeans, and more interested in reconciling existential psychology with other approaches, especially Freud's. May uses some traditional existential terms slightly differently than others, and invents new words for some of existentialism's old ideas. Destiny, for example, is roughly the same as thrownness combined with fallenness. It is that part of our lives that is determined for us, our raw materials, if you like, for the project of creating our lives. Another example is the word courage, which he uses more often than the traditional term "authenticity" to mean facing one's anxiety and rising above it. He is also the only existential psychologist I'm aware of who discusses certain "stages" (not in the strict Freudian sense, of course) of development: Innocence -- the pre-egoic, pre-self-conscious stage of the infant. The innocent is premoral, i.e. is neither bad nor good. Like a wild animal who kills to eat, the innocent is only doing what he or she must do. But an innocent does have a degree of will in the sense of a drive to fulfil their needs! Rebellion -- the childhood and adolescent stage of developing one's ego or self-consciousness by means of contrast with adults, from the "no" of the two year old to the "no way" of the teenager. The rebellious person wants freedom, but has as yet no full understanding of the responsibility that goes with it. The teenager may want to spend their allowance in any way they choose -- yet they still expect the parent to provide the money, and will complain about unfairness if they don't get it! Ordinary -- the normal adult ego, conventional and a little boring, perhaps. They have learned responsibility, but find it too demanding, and so seek refuge in conformity and traditional values. Creative -- the authentic adult, the existential stage, beyond ego and self-actualizing. This is the person who, accepting destiny, faces anxiety with courage! These are not stages in the traditional sense. A child may certainly be innocent, ordinary or creative at times; An adult may be rebellious. The only attachments to certain ages is in terms of salience: Rebelliousness stands out in the two year old and the teenager! On the other hand, he is every bit as interested in anxiety as any existentialist. His first book, The Meaning of Anxiety, was based on his doctoral dissertation, which in turn was based on his reading of Kierkegaard. His definition of anxiety is "the apprehension cued off by a threat to some value which the individual holds essential to his existence as a self" (1967, p. 72). While not "pure" existentialism, it does obviously include fear of death or "nothingness." Later, he quotes Kierkegaard: "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." Love and Will Many of May's unique ideas can be found in the book I consider his best, Love and Will. In his efforts at reconciling Freud and the existentialists, he turns his attention to motivation. His basic motivational construct is the daimonic. The daimonic is the entire system of motives, different for each individual. It is composed of a collection of specific motives called daimons. The word daimon is from the Greek, and means little god. It comes to us as demon, with a very negative connotation. But originally, a daimon could be bad or good. Daimons include lower needs, such as food and sex, as well as higher needs, such as love. Basically, he says, a daimon is anything that can take over the person, a situation he refers to as daimonic possession. It is then, when the balance among daimons is disrupted, that they should be considered "evil" -- as the phrase implies! This idea is similar to Binswanger's idea of themes, or Horney's idea of coping strategies. For May, one of the most important daimons is eros. Eros is love (not sex), and in Greek mythology was a minor god pictured as a young man. (See the story of Eros and Psyche by clicking here!) Later, Eros would be transformed into that annoying little pest, Cupid. May understood love as the need we have to "become one" with another person, and refers to an ancient Greek story by Aristophanes: People were originally four-legged, four-armed, two-headed creatures. When we became a little too prideful, the gods split us in two, male and female, and cursed us with the never-ending desire to recover our missing half! Anyway, like any daimon, eros is a good thing until it takes over the personality, until we become obsessed with it. Another important concept for May is will: The ability to organize oneself in order to achieve one's goals. This makes will roughly synonymous with ego and reality-testing, but with its own store of energy, as in ego psychology. I suspect he got the notion from Otto Rank, who uses will in the same way. May hints that will, too, is a daimon that can potentially take over the person. Another definition of will is "the ability to make wishes come true." Wishes are "playful imaginings of possibilities," and are manifestations of our daimons. Many wishes, of course, come from eros. But they require will to make them happen! Hence, we can see three "personality types" coming out of our relative supply, you might say, of our wishes for love and the will to realize them. Note that he doesn't actually come out and name them -- that would be too categorical for an existentialist -- and they are not either-or pigeon holes by any means. But he does use various terms to refer to them, and I have picked representative ones. There is the type he refers to as "neo-Puritan," who is all will, but no love. They have amazing self-discipline, and can "make things happen"... but they have no wishes to act upon. So they become "anal" and perfectionistic, but empty and "dried-up." The archetypal example is Ebenezer Scrooge. The second type he refers to as "infantile." They are all wishes but no will. Filled with dreams and desires, they don't have the self-discipline to make anything of their dreams and desires, and so become dependent and conformist. They love, but their love means little. Perhaps Homer Simpson is the clearest example! The last type is the "creative" type. May recommends, wisely, that we should cultivate a balance of these two aspects of our personalities. He said "Man's task is to unite love and will." This idea is, in fact, an old one that we find among quite a few theorists. Otto Rank, for example, makes the same contrast with death (which includes both our need for others and our fear of life) and life (which includes both our need for autonomy and our fear of loneliness). Other theorists have talked about communion and agency, homonymy and autonomy, nurturance and assertiveness, affiliation and achievement, and so on. Myths May's last book was The Cry for Myth. He pointed out that a big problem in the twentieth century was our loss of values. All the different values around us lead us to doubt all values. As Nietzsche pointed out, if God is dead (i.e. absolutes are gone), then anything is permitted! May says we have to create our own values, each of us individually. This, of course, is difficult to say the least. So we need help, not forced on us, but "offered up" for us to use as we will. Enter myths, stories that help us to "make sense" out of out lives, "guiding narratives." They resemble to some extent Jung's archetypes, but they can be conscious and unconscious, collective and personal. A good example is how many people live their lives based on stories from the Bible. Other examples you may be familiar with include Horatio Alger, Oedipus Rex, Sisyphus, Romeo and Juliet, Casablanca, Leave it to Beaver, Star Wars, Little House on the Prairie, The Simpsons, South Park, and the fables of Aesop. As I intentionally suggest with this list, a lot of stories make lousy myths. Many stories emphasize the magical granting of one's wishes (infantile). Others promise success in exchange for hard work and self-sacrifice (neo-Puritan). Many of our stories today say that valuelessness is itself the best value! Instead, says May, we should be actively working to create new myths that support people's efforts at making the best of life, instead of undermining them! The idea sounds good -- but it isn't terribly existential! Most existentialists feel that it is necessary to face reality much more directly than "myths" imply. In fact, they sound a little too much like what the great mass of people succumb to as a part of fallenness, conventionality, and inauthenticity! A controversy for the future....

Erich Fromm

Fromm, Erich(1900-1980) Forced to flee from Nazi Germany in 1933, Fromm settled in the United States and lectured at the New School of Social Research, Columbia, Yale, and Bennington. In the late 1930s, Fromm broke with the Institute of Social Research and with Escape from Freedom began publishing a series of books which would win him a large audience. Escape From Freedom argued that alienation from soil and community in the transition from feudalism to capitalism increased insecurity and fear. Documenting some of the strains and crises of individualism, Fromm attempted to explain how alienated individuals would seek gratification and security from social orders such as fascism. His post-World War II books, Man For Himself (1947) and The Sane Society, applied Fromm's Freudian-Marxian perspectives to sharp critiques of contemporary capitalism. Fromm popularized the neo-Marxian critiques of the media and consumer society, and promoted democratic socialist perspectives during an era when social repression made it difficult and dangerous to advocate radical positions. Although his social critique was similar in many ways to his former colleague Herbert Marcuse, the two thinkers engaged in sharp polemics from the mid-1950s into the 1970s. Marcuse began the polemic by attacking Fromm as a neo-Freudian revisionist, and Fromm retaliated by calling Marcuse a "nihilist" and "utopian." Marcuse claimed that Fromm's emphasis on the "productive character" simply reproduced the "productivism" intrinsic to capitalism, and that his celebration of the values of love, in books like The Art of Loving, and religious values simply reproduced dominant idealist ideologies. Fromm continued to be a prolific writer up until his death in 1980, publishing a series of books promoting and developing Marxian and Freudian ideas. He was also politically active, helping organize SANE and engaging in early "Ban the Bomb" campaigns, as well participating in the anti-War movement of the 1960s. Fromm continued to argue for a humanistic and democratic socialist position, and claimed that such elements were intrinsic in Marxism. His many books and articles had some influence on the New Left and continue to be widely read and discussed today. One of the distinctive features of Critical Theory is their synthesis of Marx and Freud aimed at producing a theory of the psychological mediations between psyche and society ignored by traditional Marxism.7 The key theoretical essays outlining the Institute's materialist social psychology were published in the Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung by Erich Fromm. Fromm was a practicing psychoanalyst who also received a University position as lecturer in the Institute for Psychoanalysis at the University of Frankfurt; he was interested as well in Marxism and sociology, and joined the Institute as their psychology expert in 1929.8 Fromm was one of the first to attempt to synthesize Marx and Freud to develop a Marxian social psychology, and many of the other members of the Institute were to attempt similar syntheses, though the precise mixture and interpretations of Freud and Marx were often quite different. Fromm sketches the basic outline of his project in his article "The Method and Function of an Analytic Social Psychology" subtitled "Notes on Psychoanalysis and Historical Materialism."9 He begins by discussing the basic principles of psychoanalysis, and then indicates why he thinks Freud's theory, properly interpreted and reconstructed, is compatible with historical materialism. For Fromm, psychoanalysis is a materialist psychology which analyzes instinctual drives and needs as the motive forces for human behavior. It carries out an inventory of the basic instincts and dissects the unconscious forces and mechanisms that sometimes control human behavior. Psychoanalysis also analyzes the influence of specific life experiences on the inherited instinctual constitution. Thus, in Fromm's view, Freud's theory is "exquisitely historical: it seeks to understand the drive structure through the understanding of life history" (CoP, p. 139). The key conception of psychoanalysis for Fromm is the "active and passive adaptation of the biological apparatus, the instincts, to social reality" (CoP, p. 141). Psychoanalysis is especially valuable for social psychology in that it seeks "to discover the hidden sources of the obviously irrational behavior patterns in societal life -- in religion, custom, politics, and education" (CoP, p. 141). Fromm therefore believes that an "analytical social psychology" is thoroughly compatible with historical materialism since both are materialist sciences which "do not start from 'ideas' but from earthly life and needs. They are particularly close in their appraisal of consciousness, which is seen by both as less the driving force behind human behavior than the reflection of other hidden forces" (CoP, p. 142). Although historical materialism tends to assume the primacy of economic forces and interests in individual and social life, while the psychoanalytic focus is on instinctual and psychological forces, Fromm believes that they can be fruitfully synthesized. In particular, he believes that an analytical social psychology can study the ways that socio-economic structure influences and shapes the instinctual apparatus of both individuals and groups. The psychoanalytic emphasis on the primacy of the family in human development can also be given a historical materialist twist, Fromm believes. Since "the family is the medium through which the society or the social class stamps its specific structure on the child," analysis of the family and socialization processes can indicate how society reproduces its class structure and imposes its ideologies and practices on individuals. Psychoanalytic theories, Fromm suggested, which abstract from study of the ways that a given society socialized its members into accepting and reproducing a specific social structure, tend to take bourgeois society as a norm and to illicitly universalize its findings. Historical materialism provides a corrective to these errors by stressing the intrinsically historical nature of all social formations, institutions, practices, and human life. Fromm's essay is primarily programmatic and does not specify in great detail how capitalist-bourgeois society reproduces its structures within its members. Rather he is concerned to outline a research program and to argue for the compatibility of psychoanalysis and Marxism proposing that psychoanalysis "can enrich the overall conception of historical materialism on one specific point. It can provide a more comprehensive knowledge of one of the factors that is operative in the social process: the nature of man himself" (CoP, p. 154). For Fromm, natural instincts are part of the base (Unterbau) of society, and he believes that our understanding of human behavior and social processes will be enriched by reciprocal knowledge of how society molds and adapts instincts to its structures, and how human beings shape and change their environments to meet their needs. "In certain fundamental respects, the instinctual apparatus itself is a biological given; but it is highly modifiable. The role of primary formative factors goes to the economic conditions. The family is the essential medium through which the economic situation exerts its formative influence on the individual's psyche. The task of social psychology is to explain the shared, socially relevant, psychic attitudes and ideologies -- and their unconscious roots in particular -- in terms of the influence of economic conditions on libido strivings" (CoP, p. 149). Fromm also suggests that psychoanalysis can help explain how the socio-economic interests and structures are transformed into ideologies, as well as how ideologies shape and influence human thought and behavior. Such a merger of Marx and Freud will immeasurably enrich materialist social theory, in Fromm's view, by providing analysis of the mediations through which psyche and society interact and reciprocally shape each other. Every society, he claims, has its own libidinal structure and its processes whereby authority is reproduced in human thought and behavior. An analytical social psychology must thus be deeply empirical to explain how domination and submission take place in specific societies in order to provide understanding of how social and psychological change is possible. In an essay from the same period, "Psychoanalytic Characterology and Its Relevance for Social Psychology," Fromm applies his analytic social psychology to an investigation of how bourgeois society forms dominant character types which reproduce social structure and submit to social authority.10 A theory of social character would be central to Fromm's work, though in this essay he assumes in rather orthodox Freudian fashion that the "general basis of psychoanalytic characterology is to view certain character traits as sublimations or reaction formations of certain instinctual drives that are sexual in nature" (CoP, pp. 164-165). Fromm then discusses Freud's theory of oral, anal, and genital characters, and how specific social structures produce and reward certain types of character traits while eliminating others. In particular, drawing on Werner Sombart's study of the "bourgeois" and on Benjamin Franklin's diaries, Fromm discusses how bourgeois society produced a character structure in which duty, parsimoniousness, discipline, thrift, and so on became dominant traits of the bourgeois character structure while love, sensual pleasure, charity, and kindness were devalued. Anticipating later Institute studies of the changes within personality in contemporary capitalism, Fromm writes of developments of character structure under monopoly capitalism and suggests: "It is clear that the typical character traits of the bourgeois of the nineteenth century gradually disappeared, as the classic type of the self-made, independent entrepreneur, who is both the owner and the manager of his own business, was disappearing. The character traits of the earlier business man became more of a handicap than a help to the new type of capitalist. A description and analysis of the latter's psyche in present-day capitalism is another task that should be undertaken by psychoanalytic social psychology" (CoP, p. 185). Fromm would later describe in detail the dominant character types within contemporary capitalist societies.11 One of the most interesting of his attempts in the early 1930s, however, to develop a materialist social psychology is found in his study of Johann Jacob Bachofen's theory of matriarchy in an article "The Theory of Mother Right and its Relevance for Social Psychology."12 Fromm indicates how Bachofen's study had been appropriated both by socialist thinkers such as Engels and Bebel as well as by conservative thinkers. After criticizing the conservative version of the theory of matriarchy, Fromm suggests how it can be appropriated by progressive thought. To begin, Bachofen provides insights, Fromm believes, into how woman's nature develops from social practices; specifically, how the activity of mothering produces certain nurturing, maternal character traits associated with women, thus anticipating recent feminist theories of mothering.13 Moreover, Fromm suggests that Bachofen's theory of the matriarchal society reveals "a close kinship with the ideals of socialism. For example, concern for man's material welfare and earthly happiness is presented as one of the central ideas of matriarchal society. On other points, too, the reality of matriarchal society as described by Bachofen is closely akin to socialist ideals and goals and directly opposed to romantic and reactionary aims. According to Bachofen, matriarchal society was a primeval democracy where sexuality is free of christian depreciation, where maternal love and compassion are the dominant moral principles, where injury to one's fellowman is the gravest sin, and where private property does not yet exist" (CoP, pp. 118-119). For Fromm, the crucial question concerning the theory of matriarchy is not whether or not a matriarchal society as described by Bachofen actually existed or not. Rather, the theory of matriarchy represents a certain set of institutions, attitudes, and values opposed to capitalist patriarchal society, and for this reason won wide approval "from those socialists who sought, not reform, but a thoroughgoing change of society's social and psychic structure" (CoP, p. 120). In discussion of the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, Fromm suggests some of the ways that the patriarchal social structure "is closely bound up with the class character of present-day society.... The patriarchal family is one of the most important loci for producing the psychic attitudes that operate to maintain the stability of class society." (CoP, p. 124). In his view, a "patricentric complex" develops in bourgeois society which includes "affective dependence on fatherly authority, involving a mixture of anxiety, love and hate; identification with paternal authority vis-a-vis weaker ones; a strong and strict superego whose principle is that duty is more important than happiness; guilt feelings, reproduced over and over again by the discrepancy between the demands of the superego and those of reality, whose effect is to keep people docile to authority. It is this psycho-social condition that explains why the family is almost universally regarded as the foundation (or at least one of the important supports) of society" (CoP, p. 124). In a patricentric society, one's relation to the father is central. Going beyond Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex which also ascribes the father-son relationship primary importance in psychological development, Fromm inventories various ways in which paternal authority is introjected in socialization processes, and the ways that such processes reproduce the values of capitalism and bourgeois society. Fromm then contrasts children's relations with their mother and the matricentric values involved in this relation. While relation to one's father is often conditional on one's behavior, success, and ability to fulfill his expectations, there is at least an unconditional element to mother love and less rigid introjection of values, guilt, and needs to succeed to win love: "Summing up, we can say that the patricentric individual --and society -- is characterized by a complex of traits in which the following are predominant: a strict superego, guilt feelings, docile love for paternal authority, desire and pleasure at dominating weaker people, acceptance of suffering as a punishment for one's own guilt, and a damaged capacity for happiness. The matricentric complex, by contrast, is characterized by a feeling of optimistic trust in mother's unconditional love, far fewer guilt feelings, a far weaker superego, and a greater capacity for pleasure and happiness. Along with these traits there also develops the ideal of motherly compassion and love for the weak and others in need of help" (CoP, p. 131). After a historical sketch of the association of matricentric culture with the Middle Ages and Catholicism, and patricentric culture with the bourgeoisie, capitalism, and Protestantism, Fromm concludes that: "the real, full-fledged representative of the new matricentric tendencies proved to be the class whose motive for total dedication to work was prompted basically by economic considerations rather than by an internalized compunction: the working class. This same emotional structure provided one of the conditions for the effective influence of Marxist socialism on the working class -- in so far as its influence depended on the specific nature of their drive structure" (CoP, p. 134). In Fromm's reading, Bachofen points out the relativity of existing societal relationships and institutions such as marriage, monogamy, private property, and other bourgeois social forms. Fromm suggests that such views on the social constructedness of social arrangements should "be welcomed by a theory and political activity that advocated a fundamental change of the existing social structure" (CoP, p. 123). There were other political reasons as well why such a theory could appeal to progressives: "Aside from the fact that the theory of matriarchy underlined the relativity of the bourgeois social structure, its very special content could not but win the sympathy of Marxists. First of all, it had discovered a period when woman had been the authority and focal point of society, rather than the slave of man and an object for barter; this lent important support to the struggle for woman's political and social emancipation. The great battle of the eighteenth century had to be picked up afresh by those who where fighting for a classless society" (CoP, p. 123). Fromm concludes the study by pointing to compatibilities between the matricentric tendencies and Marxism -- and thus between Marxism and feminism: "The psychic basis of the Marxist social program was predominantly the matricentric complex. Marxism is the idea that if the productive capabilities of the economy were organized rationally, every person would be provided with a sufficient supply of the goods he needed -- no matter what his role in the production process was; furthermore, all this could be done with far less work on the part of each individual than had been necessary up to now, and finally, every human being has an unconditional right to happiness in life, and this happiness basically resides in the 'harmonious unfolding of one's personality' -- all these ideas were the rational, scientific expression of ideas that could only be expressed in fantasy under earlier economic conditions: Mother Earth gives all her children what they need, without regard for their merits" (CoP, p. 134-135). While one might contest Fromm's equation of matricentric culture with Marxian socialism, it is interesting to note his concern for the emancipation of women and his attacks on patriarchy. One also notes in the article his concern, shared by other key members of the Institute, for sensual gratification and happiness. He believes that Bachofen's emphasis on "material happiness on earth" and "social hedonism" in his theory of matriarchy helps explain its appeal to socialist thinkers (CoP, p. 125), and underlines Fromm's own commitment to material happiness and sensual gratification in a discussion of how sexuality "offers one of the most elementary and powerful opportunities for satisfaction and happiness"

Harold Brodkey

Harold Brodkey Biography Harold Brodkey, born Aaron Roy Weintraub (October 25, 1930 born in Staunton, Illinois - January 26, 1996 Manhattan) was an American writer, and novelist. Brodkey was raised in University City, Missouri outside St. Louis. After graduating from Harvard University in 1952, Brodkey began his writing career by contributing short stories to The New Yorker and other magazines. His stories have won him two first-place O. Henry Awards. In 1993 Brodkey announced in The New Yorker that he had contracted AIDS. He later wrote This Wild Darkness about his battle with the disease. At the time of his death in 1996, he was living in New York City with his wife, novelist Ellen Brodkey (née Ellen Schwamm). Brodkey is most famous for his long-awaited novel A Party of Animals, which was eventually published (perhaps only in part) as The Runaway Soul (1991). He died of complication of AIDS.

Virginia Woolf

ORIGINALLYAdeline Virginia Stephen English Writer Virginia Woolf became famous for her nonlinear prose style, especially noted in her novels Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. Synopsis Born into a privileged English household in 1882, writer Virginia Woolf was raised by free-thinking parents. She began writing as a young girl and published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915. Her nonlinear, free form prose style inspired her peers and earned her much praise. She was also known for her mood swings and bouts of deep depression. She committed suicide in 1941, at the age of 59. Early Life English writer Virginia Woolf was raised in a remarkable household. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was an historian and author, and also one of the most prominent figures in the golden age of mountaineering. Woolf's mother, Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson), had been born in India and later served as a model for several Pre-Raphaelite painters. She was also a nurse and wrote a book on the profession. Woolf had three full siblings and four half-siblings; both of her parents had been married and widowed before marrying each other. The eight children lived under one roof at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington. Two of Woolf's brothers had been educated at Cambridge, but all the girls were taught at home and utilized the splendid confines of the family's lush Victorian library. Moreover, Woolf's parents were extremely well connected, both socially and artistically. Her father was a friend to William Thackeray and George Henry Lewes, as well as many other noted thinkers. Her mother's aunt was the famous 19th century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. For these reasons and more, Virginia Woolf was ideally situated to appreciate and experiment with the art of writing. From the time of her birth, on January 25, 1882, until 1895, Woolf spent her summers in St. Ives, a beach town at the very southwestern tip of England. The Stephens' summer home, Talland House, which is still standing today, looks out at the dramatic Porthminster Bay and is a short walking distance to the Godrevy lighthouse. In her later memoirs, Woolf recalled St. Ives with a great fondness. In fact, she incorporated scenes from those early summers into her modernist novel, To the Lighthouse (1927). As a young girl, Virginia was light-hearted and playful. She started a family newspaper, the Hyde Park Gate News, to document her family's humorous anecdotes. She had, however, been traumatized at the age of six when her half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth sexually abuse her. This dark spot was only made deeper and more permanent when her mother suddenly died at the age of 49. The hormones of early adolescence and the undeniable reality of this huge loss spun Woolf into a nervous breakdown, only made worse when two years later, her half-sister Stella also died. Despite her misery, Woolf managed to take classes in German, Greek and Latin at the Ladies' Department of King's College London. Her four years of study introduced her to a handful of radical feminists at the helm of educational reforms. In 1904, her father died. His passing was climatic; during this time she was institutionalized. Virginia Woolf's dance between literary expression and personal desolation would continue for the rest of her life. When Virginia was in her early 20s, her sister Vanessa and brother Adrian sold the family home in Hyde Park Gate, and purchased a house in the Bloomsbury area of London. Through her siblings' connections, Virginia became acquainted with several members of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of intellectuals and artists who became famous in 1910 for their Dreadnought hoax, a practical joke in which members of the group dressed up as a delegation of Ethiopian royals and successfully persuaded the English Royal Navy to show them their warship, the HMS Dreadnought. Woolf disguised herself as a bearded man. After the outrageous act, Leonard Woolf, a writer and a member of the group, took a fancy to Virginia. By 1912, she and Leonard were married. The two shared a passionate love for one another for the rest of their lives. Advertisement — Continue reading below Writings Several years before marrying Leonard, Virginia had begun working on her first novel. The original title was Melymbrosia. After nine years and innumerable drafts, it was released in 1915 as The Voyage Out. Woolf used the book to experiment with several literary tools, including compelling and unusual narrative perspectives, dream-states and free association prose. In 1925,Mrs. Dalloway, her fourth novel, was released to rave reviews. The mesmerizing story interweaves interior monologues and raises issues of feminism, mental illness and homosexuality in post-World War I England. Since it first went press, Mrs. Dalloway has been turned into a movie (1997) and been the subject of a Michael Cunningham novel and film, The Hours (2002). Throughout her career, Woolf spoke regularly at colleges and universities, penned dramatic letters, wrote moving essays and self-published a long list of short stories. By her mid-forties, she had established herself as both an intellectual and an innovative thinker and writer. Her ability to balance dream-like scenes with deeply tense plot lines earned her incredible respect from peers and the public alike. Despite her outward success, she continued to regularly suffer from bouts of depression and dramatic mood swings. Death Woolf's husband, Leonard, always at her side, was quite aware of any signs that pointed to his wife's internal demise. He saw, as she was working on what would be her final manuscript (published posthumously), Between the Acts, she was sinking into a bottomless pit. Leonard, who was Jewish, was certainly in danger of being captured by the Nazis, and the couple's London home had been destroyed during the Blitz. These seemingly insurmountable facts motivated Woolf's decision to, on March 28, 1941, pull on her overcoat, walk out into the River Ouse and fill her pockets with stones. As she waded into the water, the stream took her with it. The authorities found her some three weeks later. Although her popularity decreased after World War II, her stories rang true again for readers during the feminist movement of the 1970s. Woolf remains one of the most well known authors of the 21st century

Pete Hamill

Pete Hamill (born June 24, 1935) is an American journalist, novelist, essayist, editor and educator. He is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. Pete Hamill was born in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, N.Y., the first of seven children of Catholic immigrants from Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father, Billy Hamill, emigrated in 1924 and lost a leg from an injury in a semi-pro soccer game three years later in Brooklyn. Pete's mother, Anne Devlin, arrived in New York in 1929, on the day the stock market crashed. Billy and Anne met in 1933 and married in 1934. He worked as a clerk in a grocery chain, in a war plant after 1941, and after the war in a factory that made lighting fixtures. Anne, who graduated from high school in Belfast, worked in Wanamaker's department store, as a domestic (before she married), a part-time nurses' aide, and as a casher in the RKO movie chain. Their son Peter was educated at Holy Name of Jesus grammar school and had his first newspaper job when he was 11, delivering the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1949, he won a scholarship to the prestigious Regis High School in Manhattan. But he dropped out near the end of his second year and went to work as an apprentice sheet metal worker in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. (In June 2010, Regis awarded him an honorary diploma, 59 years after he dropped out). He was then absorbed in trying to become a comic book artist, and while working in the Navy Yard, attended night classes at the School of Visual Arts (then called the Cartoonists and Illustrators School). In the fall of 1952, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. When he was discharged a few years later, he was entitled to the G.I. Bill of Rights. In the fall of 1956, he left for a year as a student at Mexico City College, trying to become a painter. At the end of that Mexican year, he had decided to become a writer. Journalism In the summer of 1960, Hamill went to work as a reporter for the New York Post and began to learn his craft (the story is told in his 1994 memoir, A Drinking Life.) In 1962-63, a prolonged newspaper strike led him to writing magazine articles and by the fall of 1963 he was in Europe as a correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post. Based for six months in Barcelona, and five months in Dublin, he roamed Europe, interviewing actors, movie directors, novelists and ordinary citizens. He was in Belfast with his father on Nov. 22, 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and he witnessed both sides of the sectarian quarrel mourning the fallen American president. Hamill returned to New York in August 1964, covered the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, and worked briefly at the New York Herald Tribune as a feature writer. In the fall of 1965, he started writing a column for the New York Post. By Christmas, he was in Vietnam. His newspaper career would go on for decades, at the Post, the New York Daily News, the Village Voice, and New York Newsday. He would serve briefly as editor of the Post, and later as editor-in-chief-of the Daily News. His longer journalistic work has appeared in New York magazine, the New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and other periodicals. From the beginning, he has been a generalist, not a specialist. He has written about wars in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Lebanon and Northern Ireland. He covered the urban riots of the 1960s. He has covered local and national politics. He wrote about the New York underclass too, their hopes and ambitions, and sometimes, tragedies. But he also wrote about jazz, rock 'n' roll (winning a 1975 Grammy for Best Liner Notes for Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks"), boxing, baseball, and art. At different periods (in addition to Barcelona and Dublin), he has lived in Mexico City, San Juan, P.R., Rome, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, N.M. He has always returned to New York. Two collections of his selected journalism have been published: "Irrational Ravings" (1971) and "Piecework" (1996). He edited for Library of America two volumes of the journalism of A.J. Liebling. In 1998, he published an extended essay on journalism at the end of the 20th century called "News Is A Verb" (Ballantine). He lives in New York City with his wife, the writer Fukiko Aoki. He has two daughters Adriene and Deirdre and one grandson. Fiction In the summer of 1968, Hamill published his first novel, a thriller called "A Killing for Christ," about a plot to assassinate the Pope on Easter Sunday in Rome. This was followed by a short semi-autobiographical novel called "The Gift", where he first began using his Brooklyn roots in a fictional form. Most of his fiction is also set in New York City, including "Snow in August" (1997), "Forever" (2003), and "North River" (2007). All were from Little, Brown and Company, as is his eleventh novel, "Tabloid City", to be published in May 2011. In addition, he has published more than 100 short stories in newspapers, following the example of fiction writers from O. Henry to Alberto Moravia. In the New York Post, the Hamill short stories were part of a series called "The Eight Million." In the Daily News, the stories ran under the title "Tales of New York." He has published two volumes of short stories: "The Invisible City: A New York Sketchbook" (Random House. 1980) and "Tokyo Sketches" (Kodansha. 1992). Memoir, Art, Photography and Comics Hamill's 1994 memoir, "A Drinking Life", was a critical and commercial success. It chronicled his journey from childhood into his thirties, his embrace of drinking and the decision to abandon it. The late Frank McCourt once told him that Hamill's book encouraged him to complete his own memoir, "Angela's Ashes." Hamill's portrait of "Downtown: My Manhattan" (Little, Brown. 2004) is a combination of memoir, history, and reporting about the area of Manhattan where he has spent much of his adult life. It includes some of his own reporting on the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, at which he was present. His passions for art and for Mexico drive his book on the muralist Diego Rivera (Abrams. 1999), a lavishly illustrated volume that explores, among other matters, the effects of ideology on Rivera's art. In "Tools as Art" (Abrams. 1995) he moves through the Hechinger Collection, exploring the idea of tools and the way artists see them (and use them). His biographical essay on the artist was featured in "Underground Together: The Art and Life of Harvey Dinnerstein" (Chronicle Books. 2008). Much of Dinnerstein's work is infused with the light of Hamill's Brooklyn, and the people who live there, walking its streets, riding its ferries and subways. Hamill has often said that he has learned much from photographers, and he has written often about their work. In "New York: City of Islands" (Monacelli Press. 2007), he celebrates his home city as captured by the lens of Jake Rajs. "New York Exposed: Photographs from the Daily News" (Abrams.2001) contains an extended essay about the New York Daily News and its crucial role in the story of photography in American journalism. In his introduction to "Mexico: The Revolution and Beyond" (Aperture. 2003), Hamill tells the story of Agustin Victor Casasola, whose great photographs helped define the Revolution of 1910-1920 and the surge towards modernity that arrived when the shooting ended. In his introduction to "A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life From the Pages of the Forward" (Norton. 2007) Hamill evokes the great days of the Yiddish press. His text for "The Times Square Gym" (Evan. 1996) explores the lives of the prizefighters in John Goodman's superb photographs. His introduction to "Garden of Dreams: Madison Square Garden" (Stewart Tabori & Chang.2004) offers a context for the sports photography of George Kalinski. His own Irish heritage permeates the text for "The Irish Face in America" (Bulfinch. 2004) as seen by the photographer Jim Smith. Hamill has also written about the effect of comics on his life (he has a collection of framed comic strip originals above his desk). Among his writings are an introduction to "Terry and the Pirates" Volume two" by Milton Caniff (Library of American Comics. 2007). He wrote an introductory text for a new version of Al Hirschfeld's "The Speakeasies of 1932" (Glenn Young. 2003). Most recently, he contributed an introduction to "Jerry Robinson: Ambassador of Comics" (Abrams. 2010), hailing the man who helped create the modern comic book, including one the great villains: the Joker

Art Buchwald

was born on October 20, 1925, in Mount Vernon, New York. His first professional column was for The Herald Tribune in Paris. He returned to the United States in the early 1960s, and continued writing his column. In 1982, he won a Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary, and he wrote the memoir Leaving Home in 1994. He kept writing until his death, on January 17, 2007, in Washington, D.C. Early Life Newspaper columnist, author. Born on October 20, 1925, in Mount Vernon. A humorist and satirist, poked fun at much of what was going around him in his illustrious career that spanned more than five decades. It was remarkable that he could find the humor in so many things considering his difficult childhood. The youngest of four children, he spent some of his early days in a facility for orphans and in foster homes. His mother had been institutionalized shortly after his birth and his father was unable to care for Buchwald and his sisters during the Great Depression. Buchwald was later reunited with his father and siblings. Professional Writing Start Instead of finishing high school, he decided to join the United States Marine Corps in 1942. He served in the Pacific during World War II. After the war, he attended the University of Southern California where he worked on the newspaper as a columnist and on a campus magazine as managing editor. He later moved to Paris. It was in Paris that Buchwald started his first professional newspaper column for The Herald Tribune. In his column he offered readers his own light-hearted take on Parisian life. One of his most famous columns from this time had Buchwald explaining Thanksgiving Day to the French. Commercial Success While in Paris, he met Ann McGarry and the two married in 1952. The couple later adopted three children - Joel, Connie, and Jennifer. returned to the United States in the early 1960s, moving to Washington, D.C. He continued writing his column - often with political figures as the target of his famous wit - and became a notable figure in the Washington scene. Buchwald made friends with many influential people from different aspects of American life, including Ethel Kennedy and journalist Mike Wallace. The humor and observations he shared with his readers helped him earn the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary. At its peak, his syndicated column appeared in more than 550 newspapers. Besides his column and other works of nonfiction, Buchwald wrote two novels. A Gift From the Boys, in which he tackled the criminal element, was published in 1958. He took a different approach with The Bolo Caper (1974), trying his hand at the fairy tale. The story was about a leopard that was being hunted. Buchwald also wrote the play Sheep on the Runaway, which had a Broadway run in 1970. In 1988, made headlines not for his popular column, but for his lawsuit against Paramount Pictures over a script idea. He believed that his idea was used as the basis for the film Coming to America, starring Eddie Murphy. After a lengthy court battle, the two sides reached a settlement in 1995. Around this time, Buchwald wrote the 1994 memoir Leaving Home. He again explored his own experiences in I'll Always Have Paris (1996).

Ellen Goodman

Bio Ellen Goodman has spent most of her life chronicling social change and its impact on American life. As a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist she was one of the first women to open up the oped pages to women's voices and became, according to Media Watch, the most widely syndicated progressive columnist in the country. She continues that from her observation post now as a writer, speaker and commentator. Ellen began her career as a researcher for Newsweek magazine in the days when only men wrote for the newsweekly. She landed a job as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press in 1965 and, in 1967, for The Boston Globe where she began writing her column in 1974. It's been syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group since 1976. A 1963 cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College, Ellen returned to Harvard in 1973-74 as a Nieman Fellow, where she studied the dynamics of social change. In 2007, she was a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where she studied gender and the news. As the first Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor in Professional Journalism she taught at Stanford in 1996. Ellen's first book, Turning Points (Doubleday, 1979), detailed the effect of the changing roles of women on the family. Six collections of her columns also have been published: Close to Home (Simon & Schuster, 1979); At Large (Summit Books, 1981);Keeping in Touch (Summit Books, 1985); Making Sense (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989); and Value Judgments (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993) and Paper Trail: Common Sense in Uncommon Times (Simon & Schuster, 2004). She is also co-author with Patricia O'Brien of I Know Just What You Mean: The Power of Friendship in Women's Lives (Simon & Schuster, 2000). Ellen won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary in 1980. She's won many other awards, including the American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award in 1980. She received the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in 1988. In 1993, The National Women's Political Caucus gave her the President's Award. In 1994, the Women's Research & Education Institute presented her with their American Woman Award. In 2008, she won the Ernie Pyle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Society of Newspaper columnists.

Plato

427-347 BC; Socrates' most famous student; described the ideal form of government in his famous book, The Republic. he was so self-conscious about how philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and ambitions properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual currents with which he grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceived—a rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed with a distinctive method—can be called his invention.

Marie Winn

Home | Plug-in Drug | Articles | Links | Author's Bio | Contact Me | Bio and Publishing History BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Born in Prague Czechoslovakia, U.S. citizen Educated in N.Y.C Public Schools, Bronx H.S. of Science, Radcliffe College, Columbia U [BS, 1959], Married to documentary film maker and palindromist Allan Miller Sons: Michael W. Miller, Steven Miller Grandchildren: Izzy, Abby, Eli and Clara BOOKS Central Park in the Dark Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, Picador, 2009 Red-Tails in Love 10th Anniversary edition -- with updates [Vintage, April 2005] The Plug in Drug: Television, Computers & Family Life 25th Anniversary Edition, [Penguin, 2002] Red-Tails in Love [Pantheon, April 1998, Vintage, 1999] [New York Times Notable Book, 1998] Unplugging the Plug-In Drug [Viking Penguin, 1987] The Plug-In Drug: Television, Children & the Family[Viking Penguin, 1985,1977, Bantam, 1978] Children Without Childhood [Penguin, 1984, Pantheon 1983] [winner of Grand Prix, International Janusz Korczak Competition - 1985] The Sick Book [Four Winds Press, 1976] The Baby Reader [Simon & Schuster, 1973] The Playgroup Book [Macmillan, 1967 Penguin '69] CHILDREN"S BOOKS (Simon & Schuster, 1966-1974): Fireside Book of Children's Songs Fireside Book of Fun & Games Songs The Man Who Made Fine Tops The Fisherman Who Needed a Knife The Thief Catcher Shiver, Gobble and Snore What Shall We Do & Allee Galloo [Harper & Row] TRANSLATIONS [From Czech and Russian] Mendelssohn is on the Roof by Jiri Weil, [Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1991] Slum Clearance, a play by Vaclav Havel, 1989 Temptation, a play by Vaclav Havel, 1986 [published by Grove Press] Largo Desolato, a play by Vaclav Havel, 1986 [Performed at N.Y. Public Theater] Summer in Prague, a novel by Zdena Salivarova [Harper & Row, 1973] JOURNALISM 1989-2001, columnist, Leisure & Arts page, Wall Street Journal 5/17/98, N.Y Times, Travel section "The Wild Within", [re: Central Park] 11/95, Smithsonian Magazine, "Phenomena, Notes & Comments" 1968-1993, 10 articles for New York Times Magazine 1978-1991, 4 articles for New York Times Book Review FILM 1991 - November's Children: Revolution in Prague [Associate Producer] 2005: Red-Tails in Love: motion picture rights optioned by Carson Dyle Inc. and Christian McLaughlin