1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
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New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
3.
T. S. Eliot
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Thomas Stearns Eliot OM was a British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and one of the twentieth centurys major poets. He moved from his native United States to England in 1914 at the age of 25, settling, working and he eventually became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, renouncing his American citizenship. Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and it was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets. He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry. The Eliots were a Boston family with roots in Old and New England, Thomas Eliots paternal grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, had moved to St. Louis, Missouri to establish a Unitarian Christian church there. Eliot was the last of six surviving children, his parents were both 44 years old when he was born, Eliot was born at 2635 Locust St. property owned by his grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot. His four sisters were between 11 and 19 years older, his brother was eight years older, known to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Stearns. Eliots childhood infatuation with literature can be ascribed to several factors, firstly, he had to overcome physical limitations as a child. Struggling from a congenital double inguinal hernia, he could not participate in physical activities. As he was isolated, his love for literature developed. Once he learned to read, the boy immediately became obsessed with books and was absorbed in tales depicting savages. In his memoir of Eliot, his friend Robert Sencourt comments that the young Eliot would often curl up in the window-seat behind an enormous book, setting the drug of dreams against the pain of living. Secondly, Eliot credited his hometown with fuelling his literary vision, I feel that there is something in having passed ones childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been here, rather than in Boston, or New York. From 1898 to 1905, Eliot attended Smith Academy, where his studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, French and he began to write poetry when he was fourteen under the influence of Edward Fitzgeralds Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a translation of the poetry of Omar Khayyam. He said the results were gloomy and despairing and he destroyed them and his first published poem, A Fable For Feasters, was written as a school exercise and was published in the Smith Academy Record in February 1905. Also published there in April 1905 was his oldest surviving poem in manuscript and he also published three short stories in 1905, Birds of Prey, A Tale of a Whale and The Man Who Was King. The last mentioned story significantly reflects his exploration of Igorot Village while visiting the 1904 Worlds Fair of St. Louis, such a link with primitive people importantly antedates his anthropological studies at Harvard
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Classicism
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Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for a classical period, classical antiquity in the Western tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. Classicism is a genre of philosophy, expressing itself in literature, architecture, art, and music, which has Ancient Greek and Roman sources. It was particularly expressed in the Neoclassicism of the Age of Enlightenment, Classicism is a recurrent tendency in the Late Antique period, and had a major revival in Carolingian and Ottonian art. Until that time the identification with antiquity had been seen as a history of Christendom from the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine I. Renaissance classicism introduced a host of elements into European culture, including the application of mathematics and empiricism into art, humanism, literary and depictive realism, importantly it also introduced Polytheism, or paganism, and the juxtaposition of ancient and modern. The classicism of the Renaissance led to, and gave way to and this period sought the revival of classical art forms, including Greek drama and music. Opera, in its modern European form, had its roots in attempts to recreate the combination of singing and dancing with theatre thought to be the Greek norm, examples of this appeal to classicism included Dante, Petrarch, and Shakespeare in poetry and theatre. Tudor drama, in particular, modeled itself after classical ideals, studying Ancient Greek became regarded as essential for a well-rounded education in the liberal arts. They also began reviving plastic arts such as bronze casting for sculpture, for example, the painting of Jacques-Louis David which was seen as an attempt to return to formal balance, clarity, manliness, and vigor in art. Various movements of the period saw themselves as classical revolts against a prevailing trend of emotionalism and irregularity. The 20th century saw a number of changes in the arts, thus, both pre-20th century disciplines were labelled classical and modern movements in art which saw themselves as aligned with light, space, sparseness of texture, and formal coherence. Examples of classicist playwrights are Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine and Moliere, the influence of these French rules on playwrights in other nations is debatable. In the English theatre, Restoration playwrights such as William Wycherly and those of Shakespeares plays that seem to display the unities, such as The Tempest, probably indicate a familiarity with actual models from classical antiquity. Classicism in architecture developed during the Italian Renaissance, notably in the writings and designs of Leon Battista Alberti and this style quickly spread to other Italian cities and then to France, Germany, England, Russia and elsewhere. In the 16th century, Sebastiano Serlio helped codify the classical orders, building off of these influences, the 17th-century architects Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren firmly established classicism in England. For the development of classicism from the mid-18th-century onwards, see Neoclassical architecture, for Greek art of the 5th century B. C. E. See Classical art in ancient Greece and the Severe style Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture are marked by their renewal of classical forms, motifs and subjects. In the 15th century Leon Battista Alberti was important in theorizing many of the ideas for painting that came to a fully realised product with Raphaels School of Athens during the High Renaissance
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Conservatism
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Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes retaining traditional social institutions in the context of culture and civilization. The term, historically associated with right-wing politics, has since used to describe a wide range of views. There is no set of policies that are universally regarded as conservative, because the meaning of conservatism depends on what is considered traditional in a given place. Thus conservatives from different parts of the world—each upholding their respective traditions—may disagree on a range of issues. In contrast to the definition of conservatism, political theorists such as Corey Robin define conservatism primarily in terms of a general defense of social. In Great Britain, conservative ideas emerged in the Tory movement during the Restoration period, Toryism supported a hierarchical society with a monarch who ruled by divine right. Tories opposed the idea that sovereignty derived from the people, and rejected the authority of parliament, Robert Filmers Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings, published posthumously in 1680 but written before the English Civil War of 1642–1651, became accepted as the statement of their doctrine. However, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 destroyed this principle to some degree by establishing a government in England. Faced with defeat, the Tories reformed their movement, now holding that sovereignty was vested in the three estates of Crown, Lords, and Commons rather than solely in the Crown, Toryism became marginalized during the long period of Whig ascendancy in the 18th century. Conservatives typically see Richard Hooker as the father of conservatism, along with the Marquess of Halifax, David Hume. Halifax promoted pragmatism in government, whilst Hume argued against political rationalism and utopianism, Burke served as the private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham and as official pamphleteer to the Rockingham branch of the Whig party. Together with the Tories, they were the conservatives in the late 18th century United Kingdom, Burkes views were a mixture of liberal and conservative. He supported the American Revolution of 1765–1783 but abhorred the violence of the French Revolution and he insisted on standards of honor derived from the medieval aristocratic tradition, and saw the aristocracy as the nations natural leaders. That meant limits on the powers of the Crown, since he found the institutions of Parliament to be better informed than commissions appointed by the executive and he favored an established church, but allowed for a degree of religious toleration. Burke justified the order on the basis of tradition, tradition represented the wisdom of the species and he valued community. Burke was a leading theorist in his day, finding extreme idealism an endangerment to broader liberties, despite their influence on future conservative thought, none of these early contributors were explicitly involved in Tory politics. Hooker lived in the 16th century, long before the advent of toryism, whilst Hume was an apolitical philosopher, Burke described himself as a Whig. Shortly after Burkes death in 1797, conservatism revived as a political force as the Whigs suffered a series of internal divisions
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The New York Times
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The New York Times is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since September 18,1851, by The New York Times Company. The New York Times has won 119 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper, the papers print version in 2013 had the second-largest circulation, behind The Wall Street Journal, and the largest circulation among the metropolitan newspapers in the US. The New York Times is ranked 18th in the world by circulation, following industry trends, its weekday circulation had fallen in 2009 to fewer than one million. Nicknamed The Gray Lady, The New York Times has long been regarded within the industry as a newspaper of record. The New York Times international version, formerly the International Herald Tribune, is now called the New York Times International Edition, the papers motto, All the News Thats Fit to Print, appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. On Sunday, The New York Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine and T, some other early investors of the company were Edwin B. Morgan and Edward B. We do not believe that everything in Society is either right or exactly wrong, —what is good we desire to preserve and improve, —what is evil, to exterminate. In 1852, the started a western division, The Times of California that arrived whenever a mail boat got to California. However, when local California newspapers came into prominence, the effort failed, the newspaper shortened its name to The New-York Times in 1857. It dropped the hyphen in the city name in the 1890s, One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials it published alone. At Newspaper Row, across from City Hall, Henry Raymond, owner and editor of The New York Times, averted the rioters with Gatling guns, in 1869, Raymond died, and George Jones took over as publisher. Tweed offered The New York Times five million dollars to not publish the story, in the 1880s, The New York Times transitioned gradually from editorially supporting Republican Party candidates to becoming more politically independent and analytical. In 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential campaign, while this move cost The New York Times readership among its more progressive and Republican readers, the paper eventually regained most of its lost ground within a few years. However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893, the paper slowly acquired a reputation for even-handedness and accurate modern reporting, especially by the 1890s under the guidance of Ochs. Under Ochs guidance, continuing and expanding upon the Henry Raymond tradition, The New York Times achieved international scope, circulation, in 1910, the first air delivery of The New York Times to Philadelphia began. The New York Times first trans-Atlantic delivery by air to London occurred in 1919 by dirigible, airplane Edition was sent by plane to Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening. In the 1940s, the extended its breadth and reach. The crossword began appearing regularly in 1942, and the section in 1946
7.
Roger Scruton
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Sir Roger Vernon Scruton, FBA, FRSL is an English philosopher and writer who specialises in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views. His most notable publications include The Meaning of Conservatism, Sexual Desire, The Aesthetics of Music and he has been a regular contributor to the popular media, including The Times, The Spectator and the New Statesman. From 1971 to 1992 Scruton was a lecturer and professor of aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London, after which he held several academic positions. Scruton was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to philosophy, teaching and public education. Scruton was born in Buslingthorpe, Lincolnshire, to John Jack Scruton, a teacher from Manchester, and his wife, Beryl Claris Scruton, the Scruton surname had been acquired relatively recently. Jacks fathers birth certificate showed him as Matthew Lowe, after Matthews mother, Margaret Lowe, but Margaret had decided, for reasons unknown, to raise her son as Matthew Scruton instead. Scruton wondered whether she had employed at the former Scruton Hall in Scruton, Yorkshire. Jack was raised in a back-to-back on Upper Cyrus Street, Ancoats, an inner-city area of Manchester, and won a scholarship to Manchester High School, a grammar school. Scruton told The Guardian that Jack hated the upper classes and loved the countryside, while Beryl was fond of romantic fiction and he described his mother as cherishing an ideal of gentlemanly conduct and social distinction that. Father set out with considerable relish to destroy, Scruton lived with his parents, two sisters, and Sam the dog, in a pebbledashed semi-detached house in Hammersley Lane, High Wycombe. Although his parents had brought up as Christians, they regarded themselves as humanists. Scrutons, indeed the whole familys, relationship with his father was difficult, after passing his 11-plus, he attended the Royal Grammar School High Wycombe from 1954 to 1962. He left school with three A-levels, in pure and applied mathematics, physics and chemistry, which he passed with distinction, the results won him an open scholarship in natural sciences to Jesus College, Cambridge, as well as a state scholarship. Scruton writes that he was expelled from the school afterwards, when the headmaster found the school stage on fire. When he told his family he had won a place at Cambridge, having intended to study natural sciences at Cambridge—where he felt although socially estranged, spiritually at home—Scruton switched on the first day to moral sciences. He graduated in 1965, then spent time overseas, some of it teaching at the University of Pau and Pays de lAdour in Pau, France, where he met his first wife, Danielle Laffitte. In 1967 he began studying for his PhD at Jesus, then became a fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge. It was while visiting her during the May 1968 student protests in France that Scruton first embraced conservatism, what I saw was an unruly mob of self-indulgent middle-class hooligans
8.
William F. Buckley Jr.
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William Frank Buckley Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. Former Senate Republican leader Bob Dole said Buckley lighted the fire, Buckley wrote God and Man at Yale and more than fifty other books on writing, speaking, history, politics, and sailing, including a series of novels featuring CIA agent Blackford Oakes. Buckley referred to himself as either a libertarian or conservative and he resided in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut. His mother, from New Orleans, was of Swiss-German, German, the sixth of ten children, Buckley moved as a boy with his family to Mexico, and then to Sharon, Connecticut, before beginning his formal schooling in Paris, where he attended first grade. By age seven, he received his first formal training in English at a day school in London, his first and second languages were Spanish, as a boy, Buckley developed a love for music, sailing, horses, hunting, and skiing. All of these interests would be reflected in his later writings, just before World War II, at age 13, he attended high school at the Catholic preparatory school Beaumont College in England. During the war, Buckleys family took in the future British historian Alistair Horne as a child war evacuee and he and Horne remained lifelong friends. Buckley and Horne both attended the Millbrook School, in Millbrook, New York, and graduated as members of the Class of 1943, at Millbrook, Buckley founded and edited the schools yearbook, The Tamarack, his first experience in publishing. When Buckley was a man, his father was an acquaintance of libertarian author Albert Jay Nock. William F. Buckley, Sr. encouraged his son to read Nocks works, as a youth, Buckley developed many musical talents. He played the very well, later calling it the instrument I love beyond all others. He was an accomplished pianist and appeared once on Marian McPartlands National Public Radio show Piano Jazz, a great admirer of Johann Sebastian Bach, Buckley said that he wanted Bachs music played at his funeral. Buckley was homeschooled through the 8th grade using the Calvert School of Baltimores Homeschool Curriculum, Buckley attended the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1943. The following year upon his graduation from the U. S. Army Officer Candidate School, in his book, Miles Gone By, he briefly recounts being a member of Franklin Roosevelts honor guard upon the Presidents death. He served stateside throughout the war at Fort Benning, Georgia, Fort Gordon, Georgia, with the end of World War II in 1945, he enrolled in Yale University, where he became a member of the secret Skull and Bones society and was a masterful debater. He was an member of the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union. Buckley studied political science, history, and economics at Yale and he excelled on the Yale Debate Team, and under the tutelage of Yale professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Buckley honed his acerbic style. These two officers remained lifelong friends, in a November 1,2005, column for National Review, Buckley recounted that while he worked for the CIA, the only employee of the organization that he knew was Hunt, his immediate boss
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist, author, and former Dutch politician. She is an opponent of female genital mutilation and is an atheist, in 2003, Hirsi Ali was elected a member of the House of Representatives, representing the Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy. A political crisis related to the validity of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from parliament, Hirsi Ali has been a vocal critic of Islam, calling for a reformation of the religion. In 2004, she collaborated on a movie with Theo van Gogh, entitled Submission. The film sparked controversy, which resulted in threats against the two and the eventual assassination of Van Gogh later that year by Mohammed Bouyeri, a second-generation migrant from Morocco. In a 2007 interview, she described Islam as an enemy that needs to be defeated before peace can be achieved, in her latest book Heretic she moderated her views of Islam and now calls for a reform of the religion by supporting reformist Muslims. In 2005, Hirsi Ali was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Hirsi Ali has published two autobiographies, in 2006 and 2010. Hirsi Ali emigrated to the United States, where she was a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and she founded the womens rights organization the AHA Foundation. She became a U. S. citizen in 2013 and that year was made a fellow at the Kennedy Government School at Harvard University and she is married to Scottish historian and public commentator Niall Ferguson. Ayaan was born in 1969 in Mogadishu, Somalia and her father, Hirsi Magan Isse, was a prominent member of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front and a leading figure in the Somalian Revolution. Shortly after she was born, her father was imprisoned owing to his opposition to the Siad Barre government, according to Hirsi Ali, she was fortunate that her grandmother could not find a woman to do the procedure, as the mutilation was much milder when performed by men. After her father escaped from prison, he and the family left Somalia in 1977, going to Saudi Arabia and then to Ethiopia, before settling in Nairobi, There he established a comfortable upper-class life for them. Hirsi Ali attended the English-language Muslim Girls Secondary School, by the time she reached her teens, Saudi Arabia was funding religious education in numerous countries and its religious views were becoming influential among many Muslims. A charismatic religious teacher, trained under this aegis, joined Hirsi Alis school, Hirsi Ali said later that she had long been impressed by the Quran and had lived by the Book, for the Book throughout her childhood. She sympathised with the views of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and this was unusual at the time but has become more common among some young Muslim women. At the time, she agreed with the fatwa proclaimed against British Indian writer Salman Rushdie in reaction to the portrayal of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in his novel The Satanic Verses. After completing secondary school, Hirsi Ali attended a course at Valley Secretarial College in Nairobi for one year. As she was growing up, she also read English-language adventure stories, such as the Nancy Drew series, Hirsi Ali arrived in the Netherlands in 1992
10.
Christopher Hitchens
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Christopher Eric Hitchens was an Anglo-American author, columnist, essayist, orator, religious and literary critic, social critic, and journalist. He contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, and Vanity Fair. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of over 30 books, including five collections of essays, on a range of subjects, including politics, literature, and religion. A staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, his style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure and public intellectual. Known for his stance on a number of issues, Hitchens criticised such public and generally popular figures as Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger. He was the brother of the conservative journalist and author Peter Hitchens. His strong support of the Iraq War separated him further, in 2007, Hitchens published his most popular book, God Is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything, which was a New York Times bestseller. His best-reviewed works include the essay collections Love, Poverty, and War, Hitchens was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, the elder of two boys. His parents, Eric Ernest Hitchens and Yvonne Jean Hitchens, met in Scotland when both were serving in the Royal Navy during World War II, later in life, Hitchens identified as Jewish—since Judaism is matrilineal and his mother was Jewish. His mother was a Wren, and his father an officer aboard the cruiser HMS Jamaica, Hitchenss mother sent him to Mount House School in Tavistock in Devon at the age of eight, followed by the independent Leys School in Cambridge. Hitchens then went up to Balliol College, Oxford, where he was tutored by Steven Lukes and Anthony Kenny and read Philosophy, Politics and Economics, in 1968, he took part in the TV quiz show University Challenge. In the 1960s, Hitchens joined the left, drawn by his anger over the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, racism. He expressed affinity with the politically charged countercultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s, Hitchens was first inspired to become a journalist after reading a piece by James Cameron. Hitchens was bisexual during his younger days, shortly after he joined a small but growing post-Trotskyist Luxemburgist sect. Hitchens began working as a correspondent for the magazine International Socialism, published by the International Socialists and this group was broadly Trotskyist, but differed from more orthodox Trotskyist groups in its refusal to defend communist states as workers states. Their slogan was Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism, Hitchens left Oxford with a third-class degree. In 1971 he went to work at the Times Higher Education Supplement where he served as a science correspondent. Hitchens admitted that he hated the position, and was fired six months in the job
11.
Henry Kissinger
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Henry Alfred Kissinger is an American diplomat and political scientist. Born in Germany, Kissinger was a Jewish refugee who fled the Nazi regime with his family in 1938 and he became National Security Advisor and later concurrently United States Secretary of State in the administrations of presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. For his actions negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam, Kissinger received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize under controversial circumstances, Kissinger later sought, unsuccessfully, to return the prize after the ceasefire failed. After his term, his advice has been sought by world leaders including subsequent U. S. presidents, a proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a prominent role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. Kissinger has also associated with such controversial policies as CIA involvement in Chile and U. S. support for Pakistan. He is the founder and chairman of Kissinger Associates, a consulting firm. Kissinger has been an author of books on diplomatic history. General opinion of Henry Kissinger is strongly divided, several scholars have ranked him as the most effective U. S. Secretary of State since 1965, while some journalists, activists, and human rights lawyers have condemned him as a war criminal. Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany, in 1923 during the Weimar Republic and his father, Louis Kissinger, was a schoolteacher. His mother, Paula Kissinger, from Leutershausen, was a homemaker, Kissinger has a younger brother, Walter Kissinger. The surname Kissinger was adopted in 1817 by his great-great-grandfather Meyer Löb, as a youth, Heinz enjoyed playing soccer, and played for the youth wing of his favorite club, SpVgg Fürth, which was one of the nations best clubs at the time. In 1938, fleeing Nazi persecution, his family moved to London, England, Kissinger spent his high school years in the Washington Heights section of upper Manhattan as part of the German Jewish immigrant community that resided there at the time. Although Kissinger assimilated quickly into American culture, he never lost his pronounced Frankish accent, following his first year at George Washington High School, he began attending school at night and worked in a shaving brush factory during the day. Following high school, Kissinger enrolled in the City College of New York and he excelled academically as a part-time student, continuing to work while enrolled. His studies were interrupted in early 1943, when he was drafted into the U. S. Army, Kissinger underwent basic training at Camp Croft in Spartanburg, South Carolina. On June 19,1943, while stationed in South Carolina, at the age of 20 years, the army sent him to study engineering at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, but the program was cancelled, and Kissinger was reassigned to the 84th Infantry Division. Kissinger saw combat with the division, and volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge, within eight days he had established a civilian administration. Kissinger was then reassigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps, with the rank of sergeant and he was given charge of a team in Hanover assigned to tracking down Gestapo officers and other saboteurs, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. He was a critic of the Soviet Union and communism. He was allowed to only one work in the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. After this he had to publish in the West, most notably Cancer Ward, August 1914, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature. Solzhenitsyn was afraid to go to Stockholm to receive his award for fear that he would not be allowed to reenter and he was eventually expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1994 after the states dissolution. Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, RSFSR and his mother, Taisiya Zakharovna was of Ukrainian descent. Her father had risen from humble beginnings to become a wealthy landowner, during World War I, Taisiya went to Moscow to study. While there she met and married Isaakiy Solzhenitsyn, a officer in the Imperial Russian Army of Cossack origins. The family background of his parents is vividly brought to life in the chapters of August 1914. In 1918, Taisia became pregnant with Aleksandr, on 15 June, shortly after her pregnancy was confirmed, Isaakiy was killed in a hunting accident. Aleksandr was raised by his mother and aunt in lowly circumstances. His earliest years coincided with the Russian Civil War, by 1930 the family property had been turned into a collective farm. Later, Solzhenitsyn recalled that his mother had fought for survival and his educated mother encouraged his literary and scientific learnings and raised him in the Russian Orthodox faith, she died in 1944. As early as 1936, Solzhenitsyn began developing the characters and concepts for an epic work on World War I. This eventually led to the novel August 1914 – some of the chapters he wrote then still survive, Solzhenitsyn studied mathematics at Rostov State University. At the same time he took courses from the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History. As he himself makes clear, he did not question the state ideology or the superiority of the Soviet Union until he spent time in the camps. During the war Solzhenitsyn served as the commander of a battery in the Red Army, was involved in major action at the front
