Alan Rabinowitz
Alan Robert Rabinowitz (b. December 31, 1953) is an American zoologist, conservationist, and field biologist and the CEO of Panthera, a nonprofit conservation organization devoted to protecting the world's 36 wild cat species. Called the "Indiana Jones of Wildlife Protection" byTime, Rabinowitz has studied jaguars, clouded leopards, Asiatic leopards, tigers, Sumatran rhinos, bears, leopard cats, raccoons, andcivets. Today, Rabinowitz’s work focuses on conserving the world’s largest, most imperiled cats—tigers, lions, jaguars, and snow leopards—and their habitats.
Rabinowitz grew up in New York City and in grade school was placed in a special education class because of a stutter; and he became interested in conservation because of his pet turtle and chameleon, as he states, "They weren’t broken, but people mistreated them because they can’t communicate."
In 1974, Rabinowitz received his bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry from McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland. Rabinowitz later attended the University of Tennessee, receiving his M.S. and Ph.D. in ecology in 1978 and 1981, respectively.
Rabinowitz began working at the Wildlife Conservation Society in 1982 and continued working there in various capaticities for nearly 30 years. In 2008, Rabinowitz joined the Panthera Corporation as president and CEO.
While working in Myanmar's Hukaung Valley in 1997, Rabinowitz discovered four new species of mammals, including the most primitive deer species in the world, Muntiacus putaoensis, or the leaf deer. Rabinowitz also helped the establish of the world's first jaguar sanctuary;the Cockscomb Basin Jaguar Preserve—in Belize and the Tawu Mountain Nature Reserve in Taiwan. In Thailand, he conducted a radio telemetry research on Asiatic leopards, Asian leopard cats, and civets, leading to the designation of the Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary as a UNESCO world biosphere reserve.
In Myanmar, Rabinowitz's work led to the creation of five new protected wildlife areas; Lampi Island National Park, Hkakaborazi National Park, Hukaung Valley Widlife Sanctuary,Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve, and Hponkhan Razi National Park.
Rabinowitz's project to establish a chain of protected tiger habitat across the southern Himalaya was the focus of the BBC Natural History Unit's 2010 documentary series Lost Land of the Tiger. An expedition team spent a month investigating the status of big cats in Bhutan, leading to the discovery of tigers living at much higher altitudes than previously realised.
Today, Rabinowitz oversees Panthera Corporation's rangewide conservation programs focused on tigers, lions, jaguars, and snow leopards and additional projects devoted to the protection of cougars, cheetahs, and leopards.
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic.
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic.
Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (the novels Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and the novella "Rabbit Remembered") which chronicled the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom over the course of several decades, from young adulthood to his death. Both Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit At Rest (1990) received the Pulitzer Prize. He is one of only three authors (the others beingBooth Tarkington and William Faulkner) to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once. Updike published more than twenty novels and more than a dozen short story collections, as well as poetry, art criticism, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in The New Yorker, starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books.
Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class", Updike was well recognized for his careful craftsmanship, his unique prose style, and his prolificness. He wrote on average a book a year. Updike populated his fiction with characters who "frequently experience personal turmoil and must respond to crises relating to religion, family obligations, and marital infidelity." His fiction is distinguished by its attention to the concerns, passions, and suffering of average Americans; its emphasis on Christian theology; and its preoccupation with sexuality and sensual detail. His work has attracted a significant amount of critical attention and praise, and he is widely considered to be one of the great American writers of his time. Updike's highly distinctive prose style features a rich, unusual, sometimes arcane vocabulary as conveyed through the eyes of "a wry, intelligent authorial voice" that extravagantly describes the physical world, while remaining squarely in the realist tradition. Updike famously described his own style as an attempt "to give the mundane its beautiful due."
Updike was the only child of Wesley Russell Updike and Linda Grace Hoyer in Reading, Pennsylvania and grew up in the nearby small town Shillington. The family later moved to theunincorporated village of Plowville. His mother's attempts to be a published writer influenced the young Updike's own aspirations. He later recalled how his mother's writing inspired him as a child. "One of my earliest memories is of seeing her at her desk ... I admired the writer's equipment, the typewriter eraser, the boxes of clean paper. And I remember the brown envelopes that stories would go off in — and come back in."
Updike was the only child of Wesley Russell Updike and Linda Grace Hoyer in Reading, Pennsylvania and grew up in the nearby small town Shillington. The family later moved to theunincorporated village of Plowville. His mother's attempts to be a published writer influenced the young Updike's own aspirations. He later recalled how his mother's writing inspired him as a child. "One of my earliest memories is of seeing her at her desk ... I admired the writer's equipment, the typewriter eraser, the boxes of clean paper. And I remember the brown envelopes that stories would go off in — and come back in." These early years in Berks County, Pennsylvania, would influence the environment of the Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy, as well as many of his early novels and short stories. He graduated from Shillington High School as co-valedictorian and class president in 1950 and subsequently attended Harvard after receiving a full scholarship. At Harvard, he soon became widely known among his classmates as an extremely talented and prolific contributor to the Harvard Lampoon, of which he served as president, before graduating summa cum laude in 1954 with a degree in English.
After graduation, he decided to become a graphic artist and attended The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at the University of Oxford. His early ambition was to be a cartoonist. After returning to the United States, Updike and his family moved to New York, where he became a regular contributor to The New Yorker. This was the beginning of his writing career.
Margaret Drabble
Dame Margaret Drabble Holroyd, DBE (née Drabble; born 5 June 1939), known as Margaret Drabble, is an English novelist, biographer and critic.
Drabble was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, as the second daughter of the advocate and novelist John F. Drabble and the teacher Kathleen Marie, née Bloor. Her elder sister is the novelist and critic A. S. Byatt and their younger sister is the art historian Helen Langdon.
After attending the Quaker boarding-school Mount School at York, where her mother was employed, Drabble received a major scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge where she read English and was awarded a starred first.
She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1960, at one point serving as an understudy for Vanessa Redgrave, before leaving to pursue a career in literary studies and writing.
Her early novels were published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1963–87); more recently, her publishers have been Penguin and Viking. Her third novel, The Millstone (1965), brought her theJohn Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1966, and Jerusalem the Golden won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1967.
A theme of her novels is the correlation between contemporary England's society and its individual members. Her characters' tragic faults reflect the political and economic situation and the restrictiveness of conservative surroundings, making the reader aware of the dark spots of a seemingly wealthy country. Most of her protagonists are women. The realistic descriptions of her figures often owes something to Drabble's personal experiences. Thus, her first novels describe the life of young women during the late 1960s and 1970s, for whom the conflict between motherhood and intellectual challenges is being brought into focus. 1998's The Witch of Exmoor finally shows the withdrawn existence of an old author. Though inspired by her own life, her works are not mainly autobiographical. Fictional conflicts of everyday life, such as unwanted pregnancy in The Millstone, are not shown in a melodramatic and compassionate manner but with the ironic and witty touch of dry British humour. Her syntax contains among other features a subtle and unexpected use of tenses.
Though best known for her novels, Drabble has also written several screenplays, plays and short stories, as well as non-fiction such as A Writer's Britain: Landscape and Literature and biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson. Her critical works include studies of William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy.
Drabble also edited two editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature. In 2011, A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, a collection of Drabble's short stories, was publishedDrabble chaired the National Book League (now Booktrust) from 1980 to 1982.
Drabble was married to actor Clive Swift between 1960 and 1975; they have three children, one of whom is gardener and TV personality Joe Swift, another the academic Adam Swift. In 1982, she married the writer and biographer Michael Holroyd (now Sir Michael); they live in London and Somerset.
Indiana Gregg
Indiana Gregg (born Indiana Melissa in Terre Haute, Indiana) is a singer-songwriter living in Lenzie near Glasgow, Scotland. Her music contains elements of pop, soul and folk. Releases include featured artist on Kool & the Gang's "The Hits Reloaded" where she performed their hit titled "Tonight" and a 2007 debut release of her album "Woman At Work" with singles "Sweet Things", "Love Is Blind" and "One of Us" released from the album in April, June and October 2007 respectively.
Indiana is also founder and director of Kerchoonz.com, a social networking site that pays musicians, bands, artists and songwriters when the public listens to their music. Indiana and co-founder Ian Morrow began developing the site in October 2006 The site went into beta in October 2008 and is scheduled to fully launch in June 2009.
As a child, Indiana's mother taught dance and her father worked in the aluminium industry. Her musical introductions stemmed from a rather rigid religious upbringing, because of this there are obvious gospel influences in her music today. Indiana suffered from a strong speech impediment in her youth. She underwent years of speech therapy where her therapist would ask her to write poems at home for her to practice singing to help overcome this condition. Indiana claims that her therapist encouraged her to become involved in music and is responsible for her development as a songwriter and an artist. This is where her love of songwriting began and developed. As a youngster, she taught herself to play her grandmother's old upright piano by ear. Between the ages of 12-16, she wrote and recorded hundreds of songs on a Panasonic tape-deck with a friend. The Sunday Herald quotes Indiana saying, "I was five when I wrote my first song, about my cat, Herbert, who was hit by a train".
At university, Indiana studied music and physiotherapy. In 1991, she won an all-American title and National Dance Association dance championship in Dallas, Texas.
The roots and beginnings of Indiana's professional career began in 1994 when she moved to southern France and lived there for 12 years (amongst other countries such as Germany,Finland and England). During her time in France, she worked in various bands exploring progressive rock, jazz, and dance music. She recorded several studio demos at Marilyn Studios, Cagnes-sur-Mer over a period of three years revealing the songwriter's deeper retreat into her music exploring jazz and soul music and penning a number of songs. In 2003, she joined a progressive rock band and the musical influences turned to a more aggressive tone mixed with both alternative and gospel influences.
In 2004, she was invited to appear on the track Tonight from Kool and the Gang's album, The Hits Reloaded, other artists appearing on that album include Angie Stone, Beverley Knight, Lisa Stansfield, Big Brovaz, Jamiroquai, Tony Hadley. In 2005, she formed a Scottish-based independent record label called Gr8pop with her later-to-become husband Ian Morrow.Venture Capital Trust and Scottish Enterprise supported the project alongside the Gr8pop investors. Her debut album, Woman at Work, was released to the UK in April 2007. The diversity of her music has been explained as an artistic well or "stew": "It's like a stew that has been cooking for a long while: well blended and tasty. Ms. Gregg has achieved a rare feat in the world of music outside of jazz: she has created something organic. And it didn't happen overnight."
In 2005 two of her songs, "Sweet Things" and "For Life", made it to the top finalists in the Pop category (56 finalists out of the 4000 songs entered) of The UK Songwriting Contest. These two songs were later also released on her 2007 album titled Woman at Work. In 2005, Indiana also did a supporting tour with Wet Wet Wet. Five additional songs by Gregg made the semi-finalist category in the same year: "Something like me", "Crazy", "How Many Tears", "Love is Blind", and "Oh Me Oh My" all of which were also included on her debut album "Woman At Work".
In 2005, the demo album "Something like me" had a limited release on the independent label Onestone Music. Later that year, Onestone Music did a deal with Scottish label Gr8pop Ltd. In 2006, Gr8pop ltd. did a deal with Ingenious VCT with a view to release Gregg's debut album in 2007.
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was one of the first science fiction writers to break into mainstream magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. He was one of the best selling science fiction novelists for many decades. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.
Heinlein was a notable writer of science-fiction short stories, and he was one of a group of writers who came to prominence under the editorship of John W. Campbell, Jr. in his Astounding Science Fiction magazine—though Heinlein himself denied that Campbell influenced his writing to any great degree.
Within the framework of his science fiction stories, Heinlein repeatedly addressed certain social themes: the importance of individual libertyand self-reliance, the obligation individuals owe to their societies, the influence of organized religion on culture and government, and the tendency of society to repress non-conformist thought. He also examined the relationship between physical and emotional love, explored various unorthodox family structures, and speculated on the influence of space travel on human cultural practices. His approach to these themes led to wildly divergent opinions on what views were being expounded via his fiction. The 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land is viewed by many as his seminal work, incorporating many of the aforementioned themes found in his literature. It also contains perhaps the clearest explication of Heinlein's metaphysical, and possibly spiritual, philosophy; encapsulated in the iconic phrase "Thou art god". This philosophy resonated greatly with readers in the counterculture at the time. Since its publicationStranger in a Strange Land has been a classic among counterculture readers. It has enjoyed widespread success; being one of the most popular science fiction books of all time, and is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.
Heinlein won Hugo Awards for four of his novels; in addition, fifty years after publication, three of his works were awarded "Retro Hugos"—awards given retrospectively for years in which Hugo Awards had not been awarded. He also won the first Grand Master Award given by theScience Fiction Writers of America for his lifetime achievement. In his fiction, Heinlein coined words that have become part of the English language, including "grok" and "waldo", and popularized the term "TANSTAAFL".
Heinlein (pronounced Hine-line) was born on July 7, 1907, to Rex Ivar Heinlein (an accountant) and Bam Lyle Heinlein, in Butler, Missouri. His childhood was spent in Kansas City, Missouri. The outlook and values of this time and place (in his own words, "The Bible Belt") had a definite influence on his fiction, especially his later works, as experiences from his childhood were heavily drawn upon both for setting and for cultural atmosphere in Time Enough for Love and To Sail Beyond the Sunset, among others. However, he often broke with many of its values and mores — especially those concerning morality as it applies to issues such as religion and sexuality — both in his writing and in his personal life.
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22 March 1948) is an English composer of musical theatre.
Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre, and has been referred to as "the most commercially successful composer in history." Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, aGolden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006. Several of his songs, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals.
His company, the Really Useful Group, is one of the largest theatre operators in London. Producers in several parts of the UK have staged productions, including national tours, of the Lloyd Webber musicals under licence from the Really Useful Group.
Andrew Lloyd Webber was born in Kensington, London, the elder son of William Lloyd Webber (1914–1982), a composer, and Jean Hermione (née Johnstone; 1921–1993), a violinist and pianist. His younger brother, Julian Lloyd Webber, is a renowned solo cellist.
Lloyd Webber started writing his own music at a young age, a suite of six pieces at the age of nine. He also put on "productions" with Julian and his Aunt Viola in his toy theatre (which he built at the suggestion of Viola, of whom he was fond). Later, he would be the owner of a number of West End theatres, including the Palace. His aunt Viola, an actress, took him to see many of her shows and through the stage door into the world of the theatre. He also claims that he had originally set music to Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats at the age of fifteen.
Lloyd Webber was a Queen's Scholar at Westminster School and studied history for a time at Magdalen College, Oxford, although he abandoned the course to study at the Royal College of Music and pursue his interest in musical theatre.
Dominick Dunne
Dominick John Dunne (October 29, 1925 – August 26, 2009) was an American writer and investigative journalist, whose subjects frequently hinged on the ways in which high society interacts with the judicial system. He was a movie producer in Hollywood and was also known for his frequent appearances on television.
Dunne, the second of six children, was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Dorothy Frances (née Burns) and Richard Edwin Dunne, a hospital chief of staff and prominent heart surgeon. His Irish Catholic family was wealthy; his maternal grandfather, Dominick F. Burns, founded the Park Street Trust Company. However, from his earliest days, Dunne recalled feeling like an outsider in the predominantlyWASPish West Hartford.
As a boy, he was known as Nicky. After attending the Kingswood School and Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut, he attendedWilliams College and then served in World War II, including the Battle of the Bulge, where he received the Bronze Star for heroism, and the Battle of Metz.
In September 2008, Dunne disclosed his treatment for bladder cancer. He was working on Too Much Money, his final book, at the time of his death. On September 22, 2008, Dunne complained of intense pain, and was taken by ambulance to Valley Hospital. Dunne died on August 26, 2009, at his home in Manhattan. However, news coverage of his death was overshadowed by that of Ted Kennedy, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, who had died the day before.
In September 2008, Dunne disclosed his treatment for bladder cancer. He was working on Too Much Money, his final book, at the time of his death. On September 22, 2008, Dunne complained of intense pain, and was taken by ambulance to Valley Hospital. Dunne died on August 26, 2009, at his home in Manhattan. However, news coverage of his death was overshadowed by that of Ted Kennedy, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, who had died the day before. On October 29, 2009 (what would have been Dunne's 84th birthday), Hollywood friends and some reporter friends, along with new Hollywood figures, gathered at the Chateau Marmont to celebrate Dominick Dunne's life. Vanity Fair magazine paid tribute to Dunne's life and extensive contributions to the magazine in its November 2009 issue.
Dominick Dunne was the brother of author John Gregory Dunne; the writer Joan Didion was his sister-in-law. He was married to Ellen Beatriz Griffin (1954–1965). He was the father of Alexander Dunne and the actors Griffin Dunne and Dominique Dunne, as well as two daughters who died in infancy.
