Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)

The American political economist, sociologist, and social critic Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857-1929) wrote about the evolutionary development and mounting internal tensions of modern Western society.

He is remembered in political and moral philosophy for the doctrine of conspicuous consumption, expressed in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). He identifies the fundamental need to display financial well-being in what would otherwise seem wasteful display, in order to manifest status and stability, and to distinguish oneself from those slightly less well-off. Veblen argues that the principle is a human universal that explains a large variety of social phenomena. For example, we appreciate a well-trimmed lawn because it is a sign of surplus labour and wealth, or employ a butler because having an able-bodied man doing next to nothing is more meritorious than having someone who could not do much else. See also Mandeville, Smith, vanity.

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Emily Brontë ( 1818 - 1848 )

* Born: 30 July 1818
* Birthplace: Yorkshire, England
* Died: 19 December 1848 (tuberculosis)
* Best Known As: The author of Wuthering Heights

Brontë died at age 30, leaving the now-legendary Wuthering Heights as her only novel. Little is known about Emily's life; she was a member of the famed Brontë clan, which included her sisters Charlotte (author of Jane Eyre) and Anne (author of Agnes Grey). The three published their poetry in the 1846 book Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. (The names were pseudonyms for Charlotte, Emily and Anne.) Emily began writing Wuthering Heights in 1845 and it was published late in 1847. The book's troubled lovers, Catherine Earnshaw and the stormy Heathcliff, have become famous figures in literature.

Wuthering Heights has been the basis of nearly a dozen feature films and TV movies. The most famous is the 1939 film starring Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon and David Niven. A 1992 edition starred Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff and Juliette Binoche as Catherine... As children the precocious Brontë sisters and their brother Branwell wrote long, intricately detailed stories about imaginary kingdoms they called Gondal and Angria.


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Stephen Hawking ( 1942 )

* Born: 8 January 1942

* Birthplace: Oxford, England

* Best Known As: The author of A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking is considered the world's foremost living theoretical physicist. He's an expert on black holes whose stated intention is to unify quantum mechanics with Einstein's general theory of relativity, forming a single theory to explain the origin (and end) of the universe. Hawking, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, is the author of the best-selling book A Brief History of Time and something of a celebrity: he has made guest appearances on the TV shows Star Trek and The Simpsons. Hawking has suffered from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig's disease) since he was a young man and is confined to a wheelchair.

In 1979 Hawking took the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. According to Hawking's own site, "The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas, who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then in 1663 by Isaac Newton."

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Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970)

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) became one of the most successful mystery writers of all time. Most of his reputation stems from Perry Mason and other memorable characters that he created. Gardner's best novels offer abundant evidence of his natural storytelling talent.

Gardner was born in Malden, Massachusetts on July 17, 1889. He spent much of his childhood traveling with his mining-engineer father through the remote regions of California, Oregon, and the Klondike. In his teens he not only boxed for money, but also promoted a number of unlicensed matches. Gardner attended high school in California and graduated from Palo Alto High School 1909. He enrolled at Valparaiso University in Indiana that same year but was soon expelled for striking a professor.

In the practice of law Gardner found the form of combat he seemed born to master. He was admitted to the California bar in 1911 and opened an office in Oxnard, where he practiced law until 1918. As a lawyer he represented the Chinese community and gained a reputation for flamboyant trial tactics. In one case, for instance, he had dozens of Chinese merchants exchange identities so that he could discredit a policeman's identification of a client. Gardner worked as a salesman for the Consolidated Sales Company from 1918 until 1921. He then resumed his legal career in Ventura, California from 1921 until 1933.


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Shmuel Yoseph Agnon (1888–1970)

Israeli writer, b. Buczacz, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Buchach, Ukraine), as Samuel Josef Czaczkes. Widely regarded as the greatest 20th-century writer of fiction in Hebrew, he shared (with Nelly Sachs) the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Agnon settled in Palestine in 1907 and spent most of his life in Jerusalem. His fiction explores Jewish existence from late-18th- and early-19th-century E Europe shtels to the declining Jewish culture of the late 19th cent. to the post–World War I period and the lives of immigrants in Palestine and Israel. Although he initially wrote in both Hebrew and Yiddish, eventually he wrote in Hebrew alone.

His novels, which range in approach from the realistic to the surreal, include Hakhnasat kalah (1919, tr. The Bridal Canopy, 1967), the autobiographical Ore'ah Nata' Lalun (1938, tr. A Guest for the Night, 1968), and 'Tmol shilshom (1945, tr. Only Yesterday, 2000). Agnon is also acclaimed for his short stories, which have been translated into English in Days of Awe (1938, tr. 1948), 21 Stories (1970), and Jaffa, Belle of the Seas (1998).

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Iris Murdoch ( 1919 - 1999 )

* Born: 15 July 1919
* Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland
* Died: 8 February 1999
* Best Known As: Alzheimer's stricken author of The Sea, The Sea

Irish-English writer Iris Murdoch's long career as a novelist, playwright, critic and philosophy professor came to an end in the 1990s because of Alzheimer's disease. Murdoch was made a fellow in 1948 of St. Anne's College, Oxford, where she taught philosophy until 1963. Her writing career began in earnest after she made a splash with her 1953 study of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. The next year she published Under the Net, the first of more than two dozen novels. From the 1950s through the 1980s she earned a reputation as a prolific writer and deep thinker, cranking out essays on the art of fiction ("Against Dryness") and moral issues (collected in 1967's The Sovereignty of Good and Other Concepts), and achieving success with novels such as A Severed Head (1961), The Sea, The Sea (1978) and The Good Apprentice (1985). Her novels are famously chock full of unlikely incidents and complicated storylines, and reveal a belief in the power of art and mythology as a tool to understand something greater than the self. Celebrated especially in England, Murdoch was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987. In the mid-1990s she began showing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, a development detailed in Elegy for Iris (1998), a book by her husband, writer John Bayley (the book inspired the 2001 film Iris). Her other novels include The Bell (1958), The Black Prince (1973), The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974) and The Green Knight (1994).

The movie Iris (2001) starred both Kate Winslet and Judi Dench as the author.

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Benjamin Spock ( 1903 - 1998 )

* Born: 2 May 1903

* Birthplace: New Haven, Connecticut

* Died: 15 March 1998 (natural causes)

* Best Known As: The author of Baby and Child Care

Dr. Benjamin Spock's book Baby and Child Care was published in 1946, just in time for the post-World War II baby boom, and became a best-selling guide to child rearing. Pediatrician Spock encouraged new parents to use common sense and to treat children with respect. This led some critics to call him the "Father of Permissiveness," in spite of Spock's protests to the contrary. In the 1960s Spock gained new fame as a pacifist and Vietnam War protester.

Spock rowed on Yale's crew team, and with them won a gold medal in the 1924 Olympics... Contrary to popular rumor, Dr. Spock's son did not commit suicide. His grandson Peter did commit suicide in 1983... Spock is occasionally confused with Mr. Spock of the TV show Star Trek.


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