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Jaroslav Kořán
Jaroslav Kořán (17 January 1940 – 2 June 2017) was a Czech translator, actor, writer, screenwriter, and politician. A dissident and signatory of Charter 77 during Czechoslovakia's Communist era, Kořán translated over seven dozen books, mostly by American writers, from English into Czech, including major works by Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Miller, Roald Dahl, Ken Kesey, Charles Bukowski, John Kennedy Toole, and John Wyndham. Kořán was one of the co-founders of the Civic Forum (OF) political movement in November 1989. In February 1990, Kořán was elected Mayor of Prague, becoming the city's first non-Communist since 1948. He served as mayor until September 1991. Biography Kořán studied drama and film at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He then wrote documentary screenwriter and radio plays before transitioning to television journalism. However, in 1973, he and several friends were arrested for singing anti-Russian songs at a restaurant. Kořán was sentenced to on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Mayors Of Prague
The office of Mayor of Prague was established in 1784. In that year, under Joseph II Joseph II (German: Josef Benedikt Anton Michael Adam; English: ''Joseph Benedict Anthony Michael Adam''; 13 March 1741 – 20 February 1790) was Holy Roman Emperor from August 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg lands from November 29, 1780 un ..., the four previously independent neighbouring communities of Malá Strana, Nové Město, Staré Město, and Hradčany were merged into a single entity. Since 1945, the mayor resides and presides in the New City Hall (on Mariánské Square), completed in 1911. Burgomasters of the Royal City of Prague (1784–1882) Mayors of the Royal City of Prague (1882–1918) Mayors of Prague (1918–present) References External links *{{Commons category-inline, Mayors of Prague ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Kennedy Toole
John Kennedy Toole (; December 17, 1937 – March 26, 1969) was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana whose posthumously published novel, ''A Confederacy of Dunces'', won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981; he also wrote ''The Neon Bible''. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected during his lifetime. Due in part to these failures, he suffered from paranoia and depression, dying by suicide at the age of 31. Toole was born to a middle-class family in New Orleans. From a young age, his mother, Thelma, taught him an appreciation of culture. She was thoroughly involved in his affairs for most of his life, and at times they had a difficult relationship. With his mother's encouragement, Toole became a stage performer at the age of 10 doing comic impressions and acting. At 16 he wrote his first novel, ''The Neon Bible'', which he later dismissed as "adolescent". Toole received an academic sch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pavel Kohout
Pavel Kohout (born 20 July 1928) is a Czech and Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, a Prague Spring participant and dissident in the 1970s until he was not allowed to return from Austria. He was a founding member of the Charter 77 movement. Biography He was still a devoted communist upon graduating from secondary school in 1947, and graduated from Charles University in 1952, with a degree in theater and aesthetics. He then became a member of the Central Committee of the , serving until 1960. It was during this period that he began writing plays and poetry. He was also a member of the . In 1956, he was briefly employed by Czechoslovak Television as a reporter and commentator. From 1963 to 1966, he was the dramaturge at Vinohrady Theatre. While there, he became attracted to the reform movement and resigned from the Union of Writers due to questions concerning his "cultural-political orientation". In 1967, following a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Václav Havel
Václav Havel (; 5 October 193618 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and former dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992 and then as the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003 and was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays, and memoirs. His educational opportunities having been limited by his bourgeois background, when freedoms were limited by the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Havel first rose to prominence as a playwright. In works such as '' The Garden Party'' and ''The Memorandum'', Havel used an absurdist style to criticize the Communist system. After participating in the Prague Spring and being blacklisted after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, he became more politically active and helped found several dissident ini ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slaughterhouse-Five
''Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death'' is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut. It follows the life and experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, to his time as an American soldier and chaplain's assistant during World War II, to the post-war years, with Billy occasionally traveling through time. The text centers on Billy's capture by the German Army and his survival of the Allied firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war, an experience which Vonnegut himself lived through as an American serviceman. The work has been called an example of "unmatched moral clarity"Powers, Kevin"The Moral Clarity of ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ at 50" The New York Times, March 23, 2019, ''Sunday Book Review'', p. 13. and "one of the most enduring anti-war novels of all time". Plot The story is told in a non-linear order by an unreliable narrator (he begins the novel by telling the reader, "All of this happ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Literature
American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition thus is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also includes literature of other traditions produced in the United States and in other immigrant languages. Furthermore, a rich tradition of oral storytelling exists amongst Native American tribes. The American Revolutionary Period (1775–1783) is notable for the political writings of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. An early novel is William Hill Brown's ''The Power of Sympathy'' published in 1791. Writer and critic John Neal in the early-mid nineteenth century helped advance America's progress toward a unique literature and culture, by criticizing predecessors like Washington Irving for imitating their British counterparts and influencing others like Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe took American p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sewer System
Sewerage (or sewage system) is the infrastructure that conveys sewage or surface runoff ( stormwater, meltwater, rainwater) using sewers. It encompasses components such as receiving drains, manholes, pumping stations, storm overflows, and screening chambers of the combined sewer or sanitary sewer. Sewerage ends at the entry to a sewage treatment plant or at the point of discharge into the environment. It is the system of pipes, chambers, manholes, etc. that conveys the sewage or storm water. In many cities, sewage (or municipal wastewater) is carried together with stormwater, in a combined sewer system, to a sewage treatment plant. In some urban areas, sewage is carried separately in sanitary sewers and runoff from streets is carried in storm drains. Access to these systems, for maintenance purposes, is typically through a manhole. During high precipitation periods a sewer system may experience a combined sewer overflow event or a sanitary sewer overflow event, which force ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Television Journalism
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports. Television became available in crude experimental forms in the late 1920s, but only after several years of further development was the new technology marketed to consumers. After World War II, an improved form of black-and-white television broadcasting became popular in the United Kingdom and the United States, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses, and institutions. During the 1950s, television was the primary medium for influencing public opinion.Diggs-Brown, Barbara (2011''Strategic Public Relations: Audience Focused Practice''p. 48 In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the U.S. and most other developed countries. The availability of various types of archival storag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio Play
Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story: "It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension." Radio drama includes plays specifically written for radio, docudrama, dramatized works of fiction, as well as plays originally written for the theatre, including musical theatre, and opera. Radio drama achieved widespread popularity within a decade of its initial development in the 1920s. By the 1940s, it was a leading international popular entertainment. With the advent of television in the 1950s radio drama began losing its audience. However, it remains popular in much of the world. Recordings of OTR (old-time radio) survive today in the audio archives of collectors, libraries and museums, as well a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Civic Forum
The Civic Forum (Czech: ''Občanské fórum'', OF) was a political movement in the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, established during the Velvet Revolution in 1989. The corresponding movement in Slovakia was called Public Against Violence ( Slovak: ''Verejnosť proti násiliu'' - VPN). The Civic Forum's purpose was to unify the dissident forces in Czechoslovakia and to overthrow the Communist regime. In this, they succeeded when the Communists gave up power in November 1989 after only 10 days of protests. Playwright Václav Havel, its leader and founder, was elected president on December 29, 1989. Although the Forum did not have a clear political strategy beyond the June 1990 elections, it campaigned successfully in March and April 1990 during the first free elections in Czechoslovakia since 1946. Those elections garnered Civic Forum 36 percent of the vote, the highest that a Czechoslovakian party ever obtained in a free election. This netted it 68 seats in the Chamber of Deputie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television are named), it remains the most-read daily newspaper in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. It had the sixth-highest circulation for American newspapers in 2017. In the 1850s, under Joseph Medill, the ''Chicago Tribune'' became closely associated with the Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln, and the Republican Party's progressive wing. In the 20th century under Medill's grandson, Robert R. McCormick, it achieved a reputation as a crusading paper with a decidedly more American-conservative anti-New Deal outlook, and its writing reached other markets through family and corporate relationships at the ''New York Daily News'' and the ''Washington Times-Herald.'' The 1960s saw its corporate parent owner, Tribune Company, rea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
