Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1996, Gould was hired as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University, where he divided his time teaching there and at Harvard.
Millenarianism, from Latin mīllēnārius "containing a thousand", is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming fundamental transformation of society, after which "all things will be changed". Millenarianism exists in various cultures and religions worldwide, with various interpretations of what constitutes a transformation.
A millennium is a period of one thousand years, sometimes called a kiloyear. Sometimes, the word is used specifically for periods of a thousand years that begin at the starting point of the calendar in consideration and at later years that are whole number multiples of a thousand years after the start point. The term can also refer to an interval of time beginning on any date. Millennia sometimes have religious or theological implications.
Arthur Phillips is an American novelist. His books include Prague (2002), The Egyptologist (2004), Angelica (2007), The Song Is You (2009), and The Tragedy of Arthur (2011). His next novel, The King at the Edge of the World will be published in 2020.
Independence Day is a 1995 novel by Richard Ford and the sequel to Ford's 1986 novel The Sportswriter. This novel is the second in what is now a four-part series, the first being The Sportswriter. It was followed by The Lay of the Land (2006) and Let Me Be Frank With You (2014). Independence Day won the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1996, becoming the first novel ever to win both awards in a single year.
Michiko Kakutani is an American literary critic and former chief book critic for The New York Times. Her awards include a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
James Fisk Jr. – known variously as "Big Jim", "Diamond Jim", and "Jubilee Jim" – was an American stockbroker and corporate executive who has been referred to as one of the "robber barons" of the Gilded Age. Though Fisk was admired by the working class of New York and the Erie Railroad, he achieved much ill-fame for his role in Black Friday in 1869, where he and his partner Jay Gould befriended the unsuspecting President Ulysses S. Grant in an attempt to use the President's good name in a scheme to corner the gold market in New York City. Several years later Fisk was murdered by a disgruntled business associate.
Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man is a novel by Joseph Heller, published posthumously in 2000. His final work, it depicts an elderly author as he tries to write a novel that is as successful as his earlier work, mirroring Heller's own career after the success of Catch-22.
An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales is a 1995 book by neurologist Oliver Sacks consisting of seven medical case histories of individuals with neurological conditions such as autism and Tourette syndrome. An Anthropologist on Mars follows up on many of the themes Sacks explored in his earlier book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, but here the essays are significantly longer and Sacks has more of an opportunity to discuss each subject with more depth and to explore historical case studies of patients with similar symptoms. In addition, Sacks studies his patients outside the hospital, often traveling considerable distances to interact with his subjects in their own environments. Sacks concludes that "defects, disorders, [and] diseases... can play a paradoxical role, by bringing out latent powers, developments, evolutions, forms of life that might never be seen, or even be imaginable, in their absence".
An Urchin in the Storm is a 1987 essay collection from paleontologist and science writer Stephen Jay Gould.
The Lying Stones of Marrakech (2000) is the ninth volume of collected essays by the Harvard paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould. The essays were culled from his monthly column "The View of Life" in Natural History magazine, to which Gould contributed for 27 years. The book deals with themes familiar to Gould's writing: evolution and its teaching, science biography, probability, and iconoclasm.
Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish is a 2001 novel by Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan. Gould's Book of Fish was Flanagan's third novel.
The Humbling is a novel by Philip Roth published in the fall of 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It is Roth's 30th book and concerns "an aging stage actor whose empty life is altered by a 'counterplot of unusual erotic desire'."
Wells Tower is an American writer of short stories and non-fiction. In 2009 he published his first short story collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned to much critical acclaim. His short fiction has also been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, Vice, Harper's Magazine, A Public Space, Fence and other periodicals.
American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime is a book written by Teri Thompson, Michael O'Keeffe, Nathaniel Vinton & Christian Red, four sportswriters from the New York Daily News, that was released in 2009. It focuses on seven-time Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Roger Clemens' alleged use of steroids, relationship with trainer Brian McNamee, and both their testimonies in front of Congress regarding the Mitchell Report (2007). The book received a very positive review from Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times. Clemens gave a rare radio interview to ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning on the book's release date to combat its claims.
Robert Hilburn is an American pop music critic, author, and radio host. As critic and music editor at the Los Angeles Times from 1970 to 2005, his reviews, essays and profiles appeared in publications around the world. Hilburn has since written a memoir and best-selling biographies of Johnny Cash and Paul Simon. He was a member of the nominating committee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for more than 20 years and lives in Los Angeles.
Nora Okja Keller is a Korean American author. Her 1997 breakthrough work of fiction, Comfort Woman, and her second book (2002), Fox Girl, focus on multigenerational trauma resulting from Korean women's experiences as sex slaves, euphemistically called comfort women, for Japanese and American troops during World War II.
Stephen Grosz is a psychoanalyst and author.
The Age of Miracles is the debut novel of American writer Karen Thompson Walker. It was published in June 2012 by Random House in the United States and Simon & Schuster in the United Kingdom. The book chronicles the fictional phenomenon of 'slowing', in which one Earth day takes longer to complete.
Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama is a 2017 biography of former President of the United States Barack Obama by American author and academic David Garrow. It is Garrow's fifth book.
