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California State University System

(Encyclopedia)California State University System, coordinating agency established in 1960 by the merger of individual California state colleges, now consisting of 23 campuses. It constitutes one of the three Califo...

environmentalism

(Encyclopedia)environmentalism, movement to protect the quality and continuity of life through conservation of natural resources, prevention of pollution, and control of land use. The philosophical foundations for ...

Albee, Edward

(Encyclopedia)Albee, Edward ălˈbē [key], 1928–2016, American playwright, one of the leading dramatists of his generation, b. Washington, D.C., as Edward Harvey. His most characteristic work constitutes an absu...

Great Basin

(Encyclopedia)Great Basin, semiarid, N section of the Basin and Range province, the intermontane plateau region of W United States and N Mexico. Lying mostly in Nevada and extending into California, Oregon, Idaho, ...

Sappho

(Encyclopedia)Sappho săfˈō [key], fl. early 6th cent. b.c., greatest of the early Greek lyric poets (Plato calls her “the tenth Muse”), b. Mytilene on Lesbos. Facts about her life are scant. She was an arist...

Céline, Louis Ferdinand

(Encyclopedia)Céline, Louis Ferdinand lwē fĕrdēnNˈ sālēnˈ [key], 1894–1961, French author, whose real name was Louis Ferdinand Destouches. Céline wrote grim, scatological, and blackly funny novels. His f...

log cabin

(Encyclopedia)log cabin or log house, style of home typical of the American pioneer on the Western frontier of the United States in the great westward expansion after 1765. It was constructed with few tools, usuall...

Sontag, Susan

(Encyclopedia)Sontag, Susan sŏnˈtäg [key], 1933–2004, American writer and critic, b. New York City. She grew up in Arizona and California, studied philosophy at the Univ. of Chicago, Harvard, and Oxford, absor...

Sullivan, Louis Henry

(Encyclopedia)Sullivan, Louis Henry, 1856–1924, American architect, b. Boston, studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. He is of great importance in the evolution...

Miller, Arthur

(Encyclopedia)Miller, Arthur, 1915–2005, American dramatist, b. New York City, grad. Univ. of Michigan, 1938. One of America's most distinguished playwrights, he has been hailed as the finest realist of the 20th-...

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