Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Balla, Giacomo, 1871–1958, Italian painter, one of the founders of futurism. He moved from Turin to Rome in his twenties and began painting in a realist style. He travelled (1900) to Paris, where he...

(Encyclopedia) Dick, Philip K. (Philip Kindred Dick), 1928–82, American science-fiction writer, b. Chicago. Dick often wrote of the psychological states of individuals caught in altered realities where the everyda...

(Encyclopedia) Hughes, Ted (Edward James Hughes), 1930–98, English poet, b. Mytholmyroyd, Yorkshire, studied Cambridge. Hughes's best poetry focuses on the unsentimental within nature. His poems are marked by cont...

(Encyclopedia) Foucault, Michel, 1926–84, French philosopher and historian. He was professor at the Collège de France (1970–84). He is renowned for historical studies that reveal the sometimes morally disturbin...

(Encyclopedia) softball, variant of baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Invented (1888) in Chicago as an indoor game, it was at various times called indoor baseball, mush ball, playground ball, ki...

(Encyclopedia) bibliography. The listing of books is of ancient origin. Lists of clay tablets have been found at Nineveh and elsewhere; the library at Alexandria had subject lists of its books. Modern bibliography b...

(Encyclopedia) Petraeus, David Howell pĕtrāˈəs [key], 1952–, American military officer and government official, b. Cornwall, N.Y., studied West Point (B.S., 1974), U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (...

(Encyclopedia) capital, in economics, the elements of production from which an income is derived, usually defined with the exception of land and labor. As originally used in business, capital denoted interest-bearin...

(Encyclopedia) heraldry, system in which inherited symbols, or devices, called charges are displayed on a shield, or escutcheon, for the purpose of identifying individuals or families. In the Middle Ages the herald,...

(Encyclopedia) Texas Rangers, mounted fighting force organized (1835) during the Texas Revolution. During the republic they became established as the guardians of the Texas frontier, particularly against Native Amer...