English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain. Considered a Victorian realist, Hardy examines the social constraints on the lives of those living in Victorian England. Also, Hardy wrote a number of significant war poems that relate to both the Boer Wars and World War I, including "Drummer Ho... Read More
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. In the early 20th-century, Russell led the British "revolt against idealism". He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore and prot... Read More
British philosopher, mathematician, historian, writer, and political activist Bertrand Russell was born on 18 May 1872 at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire, into an influential and liberal family of the British aristocracy. He received his Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought." Russel... Read More
The People of the Abyss is a book by Jack London about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote this first-hand account after living in the East End, including the Whitechapel District, within Central and East London, for several weeks, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. There had been several previous accounts of slum conditions in England, most notably The Con... Read More
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author, translator and activist who has been an outspoken critic of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin and the President of the United States, Donald Trump. Masha Gessen’s “The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy” seeks to explain how Dzhokhar and his older brother, Tamerlan, became the Bombers. Early in Masha Gessen’s book “The Brother... Read More
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist and author. Gessen has written extensively on LGBT rights. Described as "Russia's leading LGBT rights activist," she has said that for many years she was "probably the only publicly out gay person in the whole country." Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot is an account of the Pussy Riot protest, the ensuing global support movement, an... Read More
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author, translator and activist. Gessen writes primarily in English but also in her native Russian. In addition to being the author of several non-fiction books, she has been a prolific contributor to such publications as The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, New Statesman, G... Read More
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author, and activist who has been an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. Gessen is a Moscow native who understands the culture and psychology of Russia. Her family left Russia when she was a teenager, but she returned for a 10-year stay as an independent journalist. In The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, Gessen's analysis o... Read More
John Updike, in full John Hoyer Updike, was an American writer of novels, short stories, and poetry, known for his careful craftsmanship and realistic but subtle depiction of “American, Protestant, small-town, middle-class” life. Updike grew up in Shillington, Pennsylvania, and many of his early stories draw on his youthful experiences there. He graduated from Harvard University in 1954. In 195... Read More
American author John Hoyer Updike was born on March 18, 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. His father, Wesley, was a high school mathematics teacher, the model for several sympathetic father figures in Updike's early works. Because Updike's mother, Linda Grace Hoyer Updike, had literary dreams of her own, books were a large part of the boy's early life. Updike began his remarkable career as a... Read More
American author John Updike mirrored his America in poems, short stories, essays, and novels, especially the four-volume "Rabbit" series. At the age of twenty-two, Updike began his writing career when he published his first story "Friends from Philadelphia," in the New Yorker in 1954. Since childhood, Updike had admired the New Yorker and always dreamed of becoming a cartoonist for the magazine... Read More
John Hoyer Updike was an American writer, poet, literary critic and novelist. He was born on 18th March 1932 in Reading, Pennsylvania. Updike was the only child of Wesley Russell Updike, a mathematics teacher and an aspiring writer Linda Grace Hoyer. Updike’s initial desire was to become a cartoonist. To pursue this goal he entered the ‘The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts’ at the Univers... Read More
Poet, essayist, short-story writer, critic, and novelist John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, on March 18, 1932. His father taught high school math, and his mother wrote short stories and novels. Updike received his BA from Harvard University in 1954, the year he began to publish in The New Yorker. Updike is the author of more than fifty books. Among his volumes of poetry are Amer... Read More
Considered one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, John Updike was a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author and was also the recipient of many prestigious literary awards. A prodigious and prolific writer, most of Updike’s novels centre on religion, sex and the American middle class. Talking about average American people, he once said, "I like middles. It is in middles th... Read More