Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Caro, Sir Anthony Alfred, 1924–2014, British sculptor, one of the most important and influential modernist sculptors of the late 20th cent. Educated as an engineer (grad. Cambridge, 1944), he studie...

(Encyclopedia) Barnburners, radical element of the Democratic party in New York state from 1842 to 1848, opposed to the conservative Hunkers. The name derives from the fabled Dutchman who burned his barn to rid it o...

(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...

(Encyclopedia) sharecropping, an agricultural system in which a landowner allows a tenant to use their land in return for a share of the crop produced. In the United S...

(Encyclopedia) Alcott, Bronson ôlˈkət, ăl–, –kŏt [key], 1799–1888, American educational and social reformer, b. near Wolcott, Conn., as Amos Bronson Alcox. His meager formal education was supplemented by ...

(Encyclopedia) National Dialogue Quartet, informal grouping of four Tunisian civil society organizations formed in mid-2013 to facilitate political dialogue in Tunisia that would lead to consensus on the adoption of...

(Encyclopedia) Safra, family of Brazilian bankers with Sephardic Jewish roots. They began as merchant bankers in Syria and Lebanon, financing caravans throughout the Middle East. The Safras are also noted philanthro...

(Encyclopedia) Garvey, Marcus, 1887–1940, American proponent of black nationalism, b. Jamaica. At the age of 14, Garvey went to work as a printer's apprentice. After leading (1907) an unsuccessful printers' strike...

(Encyclopedia) Gilgamesh gĭlˈgəmĕsh [key], in Babylonian legend, king of Uruk. He is the hero of the Gilgamesh epic, written on 12 tablets c.2000 b.c. and discovered among the ruins at Nineveh. The epic was lost...

(Encyclopedia) Yeats, W. B. (William Butler Yeats), 1865–1939, Irish poet and playwright, b. Dublin. The greatest lyric poet Ireland has produced and one of the major figures of 20th-century literature, Yeats was ...