Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Berlin, Irving bərlĭnˈ [key], 1888–1989, American songwriter, b. Russia as Israel Baline; his Jewish family fled a pogrom in 1893 and settled in New York's Lower East Side. Alexander's Ragtime Ba...

(Encyclopedia) fashion, in dress, the prevailing mode affecting modifications in costume. Styles in Asia have been characterized by freedom from change, and ancient Greek and Roman dress preserved the same flowing l...

(Encyclopedia) Phillips, Samuel, 1752–1802, American educator and politician, b. North Andover, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1771. A member of the Massachusetts provincial congress (1775–80) and a delegate to the state...

(Encyclopedia) modulation, in music, shift in the key center of a composition. For its accomplishment use is made of the fact that each chord figures in the harmonic relationships of several keys. In modulating from...

(Encyclopedia) Cope, Edward Drinker, 1840–97, American paleontologist and comparative anatomist, b. Philadelphia, studied at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, and at the Smithsonian Institution. His l...

(Encyclopedia) Cullen, Countee kounˈtēˈ [key], 1903–46, American poet, b. New York City, grad. New York Univ. 1925, M.A. Harvard, 1926. A major writer of the Harlem Renaissance—a flowering of black artistic a...

(Encyclopedia) Zechariah zĕkˌərīˈə [key], prophetic book of the Bible, which dates from 520 b.c.–518 b.c. at Jerusalem. The prophet was associated with Haggai in a movement to restore the Temple. The book, a...

(Encyclopedia) Barbirolli, Sir John bärˌbərōˈlē [key], 1899–1970, English conductor and cellist, b. London. After being cellist (1920–24) in the International String Quartet, he organized the Barbirolli St...

(Encyclopedia) Borah, William Edgar bôrˈə [key], 1865–1940, U.S. Senator (1907–40), b. near Fairfield, Ill. Admitted to the bar in Kansas in 1887, after 1890 he became prominent in law and politics at Boise, ...

(Encyclopedia) White, Stanford, 1853–1906, American architect, b. New York City; son of Richard Grant White. In 1872 he entered the office of Gambrill and Richardson in Boston, at the time when H. H. Richardson wa...