Nobel Prize winner Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. originated the nonviolence strategy within the activist civil rights movement. King was born on January 15, 1929, in
Atlanta, Georgia. Following graduation from Morehouse… more
Joining the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association in 1979, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Jr. (born 1959) became one of basketball's most popular stars.
In November 1991,… more
BILL CLINTON
William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton (born 1946) won the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1992 and then
defeated incumbent George Bush to become the 42nd… more
Called "the screwball's Boswell" by Fred Allen, H. Allen Smith achieved overnight success as a humorist with the publication of Low Man on a Totem Pole in 1941. Turning out sequels at the rate of nearly one a year, he was rarely off the be...
Henry Beam Piper was an engineer as well as a mystery and science-fiction writer. He was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and lived most of his life around Williamsport, where he served on the engineering staff of the Pennsylvania Railroad. ...
Known by his friends as "da H. C." (pronounced "hah-tseh") or "da Artmann," H. C. Artmann enjoys great popularity and an ever-growing number of admirers. Unlike most of his colleagues, this self-made poet had little formal education. He ha...
Round Reggie Fortune, doctor and detective, debuted in 1920-as did Hercule Poirot-and the good-living and straight-talking agent of Providence remains the chief claim to fame of his prolific author, H.C. Bailey. Fortune is a stylish charac...
The economist Herbert Cole Coombs (1906-1997) was appointed to a series of public positions which allowed him more influence on the shape of post-war Australia than all except a few prime ministers. Widely respected by all sections of the ...
Herman Cyril McNeile was born 28 September 1888 in Bodmin, Cornwall, England, the son of Malcolm McNeile and Christiana Mary Sloggett. His father was a captain in the Royal Navy and, later, governor of the Royal Naval Prison at Lewes. McNe...
H. E. Bates was one of the most prolific English writers of his generation. From 1926 to 1972 he published, on average, more than one book of fiction a year as well as many nonfiction and juvenile works. He is best known for the power of h...
H. G. Wells's earlier works of science fiction have retained their popularity for nearly a century. In recent years they have also won academic regard for integrating the fantastic with the realistic to produce challenging alien perspectiv...
The English statesman Herbert Henry Asquith, Ist Earl of Oxford and Asquith (1852-1928), was prime minister of Great Britain from 1908 to 1916. His government sponsored significant social legislation, restricted the power of the House of L...
Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart (1907-1992) became a leading scholar in the field of legal philosophy after publishing his most influential work, The Concept of Law, in 1961. Hart was a foremost proponent of legal positivism. Law Career H.L.A...
H. L. Davis is best known for his five novels--Honey in the Horn (1935), Harp of a Thousand Strings (1947), Beulah Land (1949), Winds of Morning (1952), The Distant Music (1957)--and his short stories, but he also wrote poetry, essays, and...
H. L. Hunt (1889-1974) was an entrepreneur who built a financial empire from a small early investment in oil in Arkansas. In his later years he was perhaps the world's richest man. Born on his father's farm near Vandalia, Illinois, on Febr...
During his lifetime H. L. Mencken was called the Great Iconoclast and the Sage of Baltimore, appellations he gained because of his journalistic writing in newspapers and magazines. However, his contributions to American letters were more e...
During his long and varied literary career, H. M. Tomlinson wrote thirty book-length works that, in terms of sheer volume and variety, place him among the most prolific writers of the modern age. His books include collections of essays, li...
Study Pack: 3 Biographies, 1 Summary, 10 Criticisms
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) is widely considered the most important literary supernaturalist of the twentieth century. He is one of the greatest in a line of authors that originated with the Gothic novelists of the eighteenth century and w...
Study Pack: 2 Biographies, 1 Summary, 13 Criticisms, 1 Quotes
Best known for his creation of Ganesh Ghote (pronounced "Go-tay"), a Bombay policeman who is both an effective investigator and an appealing man, H. R. F. Keating has been instrumental in widening the boundaries of the mystery novel. In th...
A government official, business consultant, and author, H. R. Haldeman gained notoriety for his involvement in the 1972 Watergate scandal--a scheme devised by top-ranked government officials, including President Richard M. Nixon, to cover ...
H. Rap Brown, known after his conversion to Islam in prison in the mid-1970s as Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on October 4, 1943. As a student at Southern University, Brown joined the civil rights organization...
The Protestant theologian Helmut Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962) was one of the most original and perceptive American theologians of the 20th century. On Sept. 3, 1894, H. Richard Niebuhr was born in Wright City, Mo., the youngest of five chil...
Henry Rider Haggard, K.B.E., wrote tales of romantic adventure which may be termed "mysteries" only in a nonconventional sense of the term. The reader encounters no Poirots, no Lord Peter Wimseys, no clues; and while there are murders aple...
H. Robert Horvitz identified the genes that play a significant role in programmed cell death and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS); he also discovered a new receptor that responds to serotonin. His pioneering research was performed on th...
Instantaneous identification of an author with a popular and well-known creation, in this case a curious monkey, is the hallmark of significant contribution. H. A. Rey and his collaborator wife, Margret, were so closely linked with Curious...
The American poet, translator, and novelist Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), generally called H. D., was an imagist whose lyric art conveys intense feelings through sharp images and "free" forms. Hilda Doolittle was born on Sept. 10, 1886, in ...
Study Pack: 3 Biographies, 2 Summaries, 24 Criticisms, 1 Quotes
Herbert Vere Evatt (1894-1965) was an Australian statesman, judge, and author. He laid the foundations of Australia's foreign policy and played an important part in establishing the United Nations. Herbert Vere Evatt was a noted internatio...
Few writers have appeared on the American literary scene to such sudden acclaim as the Chinese émigré Ha Jin. His first short-story collection about life in the Chinese People's Liberation Army, Ocean of Words (1996), won the...
Study Pack: 2 Biographies, 1 Summary, 4 Criticisms
In the mid-1940s, A. J. Haagen-Smit led investigations into the origins of smog. Through his research he discovered that smog is created by the oxidation of organic material in the air. Haagen-Smit spent a major part of his life challengin...
Habib Bourguiba (1903-2000) was president of the Tunisian Republic and played a primordial role in leading his country's nationalist struggle for independence. Habib Bourguiba was born on Aug. 3, 1903, at Monastir into a modest family. He ...
Peter Hacks was a leading dramatist in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). With the possible exception of Heiner Müller, Hacks has probably had a greater impact than any of his East German contemporaries with the number of hi...
Rachel Hadas, a poet, translator, essayist, critic, and professor of literature, grew up in an environment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan contiguous to Columbia University and connected with the generation of New York intellectuals th...
The Roman emperor Hadrian (76-138), or Publius Aelius Hadrianus, reversed the expansionist policies of Rome in a permanent shift to the defensive. Hadrian was born in Rome on Jan. 24, 76. A ward of his uncle, Emperor Trajan, he spent the f...
Study Pack: 1 Biography, 2 Summaries, 1 Essay, 8 Criticisms
The 1960s and 1970s were a period of destabilization in German literature. Notions of sociopolitical relevance eroded the position of the traditional genres in favor of activist, experimental forms. Even established writers were driven off...
Shams al-Din Hafiz (ca. 1320-1390) was a great Persian mystical poet who, as a professor of Koranic exegesis, composed some of the most sensitive and lyrical poetry ever produced in the Middle East. Hafiz was born in Shiraz, the capital of...
Study Pack: 1 Biography, 2 Summaries, 9 Criticisms
Hafiz Assad (al-'Asad; 1930-2000) took power in Syria in 1970 and became president, a position he retained longer than any other person since Syrian independence in 1946. Hafiz Assad was born on October 6, 1930 into a large, poor peasant f...
Rudolf Hagelstange was acclaimed as a lyric and narrative poet during the first years after World War II and has been widely read as a novelist, short-story writer, and essayist since the 1960s. His poetry is often idealistic, advocating p...
In "Om lyrikk" (On Poetry), published in the magazine Kvinnen og tiden (The Woman and the Time) in 1953 and collected in her Østenfor kjærlighet, vestenfor drøm: prosa gjennom 30 år (East of Love, West of Dream: P...
Alyson Hagy is a writer of lyrical and emotionally rugged fiction in which psychologically complex characters confront the realities of their lives, often within a rural and decidedly American landscape and culture. Born Alyson Carol Hagy ...
Mary Downing Hahn has taken the old dictum of writing what you know and has turned it into a body of work that encompasses some twenty novels for young teens and young adults. Mining her own childhood as well as that of her parents and chi...
One might term Gordon S. Haight an "archival" biographer of women writers of the nineteenth century. He combined massive erudition with literary grace, indefatigable scholarship with a historian's sense of the outer world of the nineteenth...
Haile Selassie (1892-1975) was an emperor of Ethiopia whose influence as an African leader far surpassed the confines of his country. Haile Selassie was born on July 23, 1892, the son of Ras Makonnen, a cousin and confidant of Emperor Meni...
John Meade Haines was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of naval officer John Meade Haines and Helen M. Donaldson Haines. After serving in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1946, he was educated in Washington, D.C., at St. Johns, at the National...
The second president after Indonesia's independence, Suharto (born 1921) was a strong anti-Communist who drew Indonesia closer to the West and presided during a period of economic improvement in the country. Notwithstanding, his tenure was...
Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon is considered one of the best centers playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA). While most of his teammates and rivals got involved with the sport in grade school, Olajuwan didn't play the game until...
Don L. Lee was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, the son of Jimmy and Maxine Graves Lee. He attended Dunbar Vocational High School in Chicago, Chicago City College (A.A., 1966), Roosevelt University in Chicago (1966-1967), and the University ...
Hal Clement is the pen name of Harry Clement Stubbs, one of the most exactingly scientific of science-fiction writers. Most of his novels and stories work out in minute detail the physical conditions for life on other worlds, from the astr...
Hal Foster was one of the pioneers of comic strip illustration. "Conspicuously talented and greatly influential, Foster drew two of the best-looking adventure strips in comics, 'Tarzan' and 'Prince Valiant,'" according to a contributor for...
A director and producer whose long list of credits includes the musical blockbusters West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Evita, and The Phantom of the Opera, as well as groundbreaking works with lyricist/composer Stephen Sondhei...
Frantisek Halas is one of the most important representatives of Czech lyric poetry of the twentieth century. He was a poet, a translator, an essayist concentrating on literature and art, and a journalist writing on cultural matters. His na...
To some, Max Halbe ranks second to Gerhart Hauptmann among the dramatists of the German naturalist movement; to others, he is a minor figure whose significance lies in his evocation of the landscape and traditions of West Prussia. That dua...
Haldan Keffer Hartline was born on December 22, 1903, in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, to Daniel Schollenberger Hartline and Harriet Franklin Hartline. He attended college at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, graduating with a B.S. in...
Clara Hale (1905-1992) spent 52 years bringing hope and assistance to the less fortunate. Her greatest endeavor was the founding of Hale House, a home for drug-addicted and AIDS-infected children. Clara Hale was a humble woman and a great ...
