Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) mackerel, common name for members of the family Scombridae, open-sea fishes including the albacore, bonito, and tuna. They are characterized by deeply forked tails that narrow greatly where they join ...

(Encyclopedia) vacuum, theoretically, space without matter in it. A perfect vacuum has never been obtained; the best human-generated vacuums contain less than 100,000 gas molecules per cc, compared to about 30 billi...

(Encyclopedia) Carroll, John, 1735–1815, American Roman Catholic churchman, b. Maryland. He studied as a child with Jesuits at Bohemia, Md., and later at Saint-Omer in Flanders, since Catholic secondary education ...

(Encyclopedia) Shays's Rebellion, 1786–87, armed insurrection by farmers in W Massachusetts against the state government. Debt-ridden farmers, struck by the economic depression that followed the American Revolutio...

(Encyclopedia) Duke, James Buchanan, 1856–1925, American industrialist, processor of tobacco products, b. near Durham, N.C. The Civil War left the Duke family poor, but James and his brother, Benjamin, helped thei...

(Encyclopedia) Allston, Washington ôlˈstən [key], 1779–1843, American painter and author, b. Georgetown co., S.C. After graduating from Harvard (1800), where he composed music and wrote poetry (published in 181...

(Encyclopedia) book clubs. As a phenomenon in American cultural life, book clubs have made an impact in two periods of history. During the 18th and 19th cent. book clubs were formed for the purposes of discussion an...

(Encyclopedia) Bradlee, Ben (Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee), 1921–2014, American newspaper editor and journalist, b. Boston, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1942. After serving in the navy during World War II, he became a ...

(Encyclopedia) Frankfurt School, a group of researchers associated with the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute of Social Research), founded in 1923 as an autonomous division of the Univ. of Frankfurt. The inst...

(Encyclopedia) Kristeva, Julia, 1941–, French critic, psychoanalyst, semiotician, and writer, b. Sliven, Bulgaria. Writing in French, she has explored many subjects including structuralist linguistics and semiotic...