American writer, best-selling author of more than 100 books, most of which were formula westerns that were highly popular because of their well-researched portrayals of frontier life.
city, capital of Abruzzi region, central Italy. It is situated on a hill above the Aterno River, northeast of Rome. The area was settled by the Sabini, an ancient Italic tribe, after their town Amiternum was destroyed by the Romans ...
American author of imaginative juvenile literature that was often concerned with such themes as the conflict of good and evil, the nature of God, individual responsibility, and family life.
one of the earliest of English journalists and pamphleteers, an ardent supporter of the Royalist cause during the English Civil Wars and Commonwealth period (1649-60), who was eventually rewarded for his loyalty by being appointed surveyor of the imprimery. In ...
statesman, lawyer, and humanist who, as chancellor of France from 1560 to 1568, was instrumental in the adoption by the French government of a policy of toleration toward the Huguenots.
French physician and botanist whose Stirpium adversaria nova (1570; written in collaboration with Pierre Pena) was a milestone in modern botany. It argued that botany and medicine must be based on thorough, exact observation.
fashionable resort, Loire-Atlantique departement, Bretagne region, France. It lies along the Atlantic coast near the mouth of the Loire River, west of Saint-Nazaire. Facing south and protected from the north wind by 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of dune-stabilizing maritime pines, ...
tar (Spanish brea) pits, in Hancock Park (Rancho La Brea), Los Angeles, California, U.S. The area was the site of "pitch springs" oozing crude oil that was used by local Indians for waterproofing. Gaspar de Portola's expedition ...
French satiric moralist who is best known for one work, Les Caracteres de Theophraste traduits du grec avec Les Caracteres ou les moeurs de ce siecle (1688; The Characters, or the Manners of the Age, with The ...
author of sentimental, adventurous, pseudohistorical romances that were immensely popular in 17th-century France. To this rambling and diffuse genre he imparted vigour through swift-moving plots.
French magistrate who led the Breton Parlement (high court of justice) in a protracted legal battle against the authority of the government of King Louis XV. The struggle resulted in the purging and suspensions (1771-74) of the Parlements.
cave site near the village of La Chapelle-aux-Saints in central France where the bones of an adult Neanderthal male were found in 1908. Studies of the remains published in 1911-13 by French anthropologist Marcellin Boule became the classic early 20th-century ...
French playwright who created the comedie larmoyante ("tearful comedy"), a verse-drama form merging tearful, sentimental scenes with an invariably happy ending. These sentimental comedies, which were precursors of Denis Diderot's drames bourgeois, were psychologically superficial and rhetorically exaggerated and were ...
city, seat (1851) of La Crosse county, western Wisconsin, U.S. It lies along the Mississippi River at the influx of the La Crosse River, about 130 miles (210 km) northwest of Madison. The settlement developed around a trading post (1841) ...
American anthropologist, short-story writer, and novelist who acted as a spokesman for the American Indian through his political actions and his fiction.
paleoanthropological site in the Dordogne region of France where Neanderthal fossils were found in a rock shelter between 1909 and 1921. Though the first report was made in 1934, investigation of the remains was not completed until 1982. The oldest ...
U.S. ethnologist and champion of the rights of American Indians who wrote a book of general literary interest about his experiences as a student in a mission school in the 1860s. This memoir, The Middle Five (1900, new edition 1963), ...
U.S. leader of the Progressive Movement, who as governor of Wisconsin (1901-06) and U.S. senator (1906-25) was noted for his support of reform legislation. He was the unsuccessful presidential candidate of the League for Progressive Political Action (i.e., the Progressive ...
painter whose decorative historical and allegorical murals, while continuing a variant of the stately French Baroque manner of the 17th century, began to develop a lighter, more brightly coloured style that presaged the Rococo painting of the 18th century.
city, seat (1905) of Union county, northeastern Oregon, U.S., between the Blue Mountains (west) and Wallowa Mountains (east), on the Grande Ronde River. The region was once roamed by Umatilla Indians. The city was founded in 1864 as a way ...
river in Nord-du-Quebec region, north-central Quebec province, Canada. Rising from Nichicun Lake in the Otish Mountains of central Quebec, it descends 1,737 feet (529 m) in its westward journey to James Bay, which forms part of Hudson Bay. For most ...
region and southernmost district of Fribourg canton, western Switzerland. La Gruyere lies along the middle reach of La Sarine (Saane) River, on the edge of the Vaudois uplands and the Bernese Oberland (highland), south of Fribourg. The name is derived ...
city, northern distrito federal ("federal district"), northern Venezuela. One of the nation's leading seaports, La Guaira lies in the narrow, arid coastal zone along the Caribbean at the foot of the central highlands. Although the city dates to 1577, extremely ...
black novelist of South Africa in the 1960s whose characteristically brief works (e.g.,A Walk in the Night [1962], The Stone-Country [1965], and In the Fog of the Season's End [1972]) gain power through his superb eye for detail, allowing ...
provincia, west-central Cuba, bounded on the north by the Straits of Florida and by Ciudad de la Habana provincia; on the south by the Gulf of Batabano, an inlet of the Caribbean Sea; and on the east and west, respectively, ...
city, Orange county, southern California, U.S. The city lies just north of Fullerton and southeast of Los Angeles. Its name derives from the Spanish abra ("pass"), with reference to an opening in the nearby Puente Hills. A ...
Swiss political leader and Vaudois patriot, tutor and confidant to Tsar Alexander I of Russia and a central figure in the creation of the Helvetic Republic (1798).
French soldier and writer who explored parts of what are now Canada and the United States and who prepared valuable accounts of his travels in the New World.
city, seat (1889) of Otero county, southeastern Colorado, U.S. It lies along the Arkansas River at the northern edge of the Comanche National Grassland, at an elevation of 4,052 feet (1,235 metres). Founded in 1875, it was first called Otero, ...
city, southwestern El Salvador. Its open roadstead port as well as its location south of San Salvador encouraged La Libertad's development in the 19th century as a shipping outlet for balsam produced in Peru-a variety of balsam yielded from El ...
departamento (formed 1821) and region, northern Peru. It stretches from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Cordillera Central of the Andes in the east. The northward-flowing Maranon River has cut a narrow canyon between the cordilleras Occidental and ...
town, Cadiz provincia, in the comunidad autonoma ("autonomous community") of Andalusia, southwestern Spain. It lies along the Bay of Gibraltar, between San Roque and the British colony of Gibraltar. The name is derived from the linea, or boundary, dividing Spanish ...
town, Hainaut province, southwestern Belgium, on the Central Canal, about 11 miles (17 km) east of Mons. It has been a centre of coal mining since the 14th century. La Louviere is also a major centre of steel manufacturing and ...
barren, elevated plateau (2,000 ft [610 m]) of central Spain, stretching between the Montes (mountains) de Toledo and the western spurs of the Cerros (hills) de Cuenca, and bounded on the south by the Sierra Morena and on the north ...
