Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

329 results found

short story

(Encyclopedia)short story, brief prose fiction. The term covers a wide variety of narratives—from stories in which the main focus is on the course of events to studies of character, from the “short short” sto...

Dirac, Paul Adrien Maurice

(Encyclopedia)Dirac, Paul Adrien Maurice dĭrăkˈ [key], 1902–84, English physicist. He was educated at the Univ. of Bristol and St. John's College, Cambridge, and became professor of mathematics at Cambridge in...

Kafka, Franz

(Encyclopedia)Kafka, Franz fränts käfˈkä [key], 1883–1924, German-language novelist, b. Prague. Along with Joyce, Kafka is perhaps the most influential of 20th-century writers. From a middle-class Jewish fami...

Randolph, Asa Philip

(Encyclopedia)Randolph, Asa Philip, 1889–1979, U.S. labor leader, b. Crescent City, Fla., attended the College of the City of New York. As a writer and editor of the black magazine The Messenger, which he helped ...

Wiseman, Frederick

(Encyclopedia)Wiseman, Frederick, 1930–, American documentary filmmaker, b. Boston, grad. Williams College (B.A., 1951), Yale Law School (LL.B., 1954). Wiseman practiced and taught law for about a decade, but his...

Berry, Chuck

(Encyclopedia)Berry, Chuck (Charles Edward Anderson Berry), 1926–2017, American rock music guitarist, singer, and songwriter, b. San Jose, Calif. Berry is widely regarded as one of the leading pioneers of rock mu...

Modoc

(Encyclopedia)Modoc mōˈdŏk [key], Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Sahaptin-Chinook branch of the Penutian linguistic stock (see Native American languages). They formerly lived in SW Oregon a...

gold rush

(Encyclopedia)gold rush, influx of prospectors, merchants, adventurers, and others to newly discovered gold fields. One of the most famous of these stampedes in pursuit of riches was the California gold rush. The d...

beat generation

(Encyclopedia)beat generation, term applied to certain American artists and writers who were popular during the 1950s. Essentially anarchic, members of the beat generation rejected traditional social and artistic f...

Berry, Wendell Erdman

(Encyclopedia)Berry, Wendell Erdman, 1934–, American farmer, environmentalist, and writer, b. Henry co., Ky., grad. Univ of Kentucky (B.A., 1956; M.A., 1957). He taught at various colleges including his alma mate...
 

Browse by Subject