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Wilmot Proviso

(Encyclopedia)Wilmot Proviso, 1846, amendment to a bill put before the U.S. House of Representatives during the Mexican War; it provided an appropriation of $2 million to enable President Polk to negotiate a territ...

Koestler, Arthur

(Encyclopedia)Koestler, Arthur kĕstˈlər [key], 1905–83, English writer, b. Budapest of Hungarian parents. Koestler spent his early years in Vienna and Palestine. He was an influential Communist journalist in B...

Boswell, James

(Encyclopedia)Boswell, James, 1740–95, Scottish author, b. Edinburgh; son of a distinguished judge. At his father's insistence the young Boswell reluctantly studied law. Admitted to the bar in 1766, he practiced ...

Black Panthers

(Encyclopedia)Black Panthers, U.S. African-American militant party, founded (1966) in Oakland, Calif., by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Originally aimed at armed self-defense against the local police, the party g...

Rorty, Richard

(Encyclopedia)Rorty, Richard, 1931–2007, American philosopher. b. New York City. After studying at the Univ. of Chicago (B.A. 1949, M.A. 1952) and Yale (Ph.D. 1956), Rorty taught philosophy at Wellesley College (...

La Tène

(Encyclopedia)La Tène lä tĕn [key], ancient Celtic site on Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland, that gives its name to the second and final period of the European Iron Age. It is characterized by an art style that drew...

Matthew, Gospel according to

(Encyclopedia)Matthew, Gospel according to, 1st book of the New Testament. Scholars conjecture that it was written for the church at Antioch toward the end of the 1st cent. Traditonally regarded as the earliest Gos...

Mason, Bobbie Ann

(Encyclopedia)Mason, Bobbie Ann, 1940–, American regional author, b. Mayfield, Ky., grad. Univ. of Kentucky (B.A., 1962), State Univ. of New York, Binghamton (M.A., 1966), Univ. of Connecticut (Ph.D., 1972). Her ...

Coptic art

(Encyclopedia)Coptic art, Christian art in the upper Nile valley of Egypt. Reaching its mature phase in the late 5th and 6th cent., the development of Coptic art was interrupted by the Arab conquest of Egypt betwee...

Cyrenaics

(Encyclopedia)Cyrenaics sīrĭnāˈĭks, sĭ– [key], one of the minor schools of Greek philosophy, flourishing in the late 4th and early 3d cent. b.c. Cyrenaic philosophy taught that present individual pleasure i...
 

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