The Learning Channel's Great Books
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The Learning Channel's Great Books
''Great Books'' is an hour-long documentary and biography program that aired on The Learning Channel. The series was a project co-created by Walter Cronkite and television producer Jonathan Ward under a deal they had with their company Cronkite Ward, The Discovery Channel, and The Learning Channel. Premiering on September 8, 1993, to coincide with International Literacy Day, the series took in-depth looks at some of literature's greatest fiction and nonfiction books, along with the authors who created them. Most of the narration was provided by Donald Sutherland. Episodes feature insights from historians, scholars, novelists, artists, writers, and filmmakers who were directly influenced by the books showcased and discussed. __TOC__ List of episodes Spin-off ''Grandes Livros'' premiered in 2009 and was a multi-platform release of Portuguese literature that involves a series of 12 documentaries. Each episode was a biography and documentary at 50-minutes each, narrated by Dio ...
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Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the ''CBS Evening News'' for 19 years (1962–1981). During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll. Cronkite reported many events from 1937 to 1981, including bombings in World War II; the Nuremberg trials; combat in the Vietnam War; the Dawson's Field hijackings; Watergate; the Iran Hostage Crisis; and the assassinations of Assassination of John F. Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy, civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King Jr., and The Beatles, Beatles musician Murder of John Lennon, John Lennon. He was also known for his extensive coverage of the U.S. space program, from Project Mercury to the Apollo program, Moon landings to the Space Shuttle. He was the only non-NASA recipient of an Ambassador of Exploration award. Cronkite is known for his departing catchphrase, "And ...
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Betty T
Betty or Bettie is a name, a common diminutive for the names Bethany and Elizabeth. In Latin America, it is also a common diminutive for the given name Beatriz, the Spanish and Portuguese form of the Latin name Beatrix and the English name Beatrice. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was more often a diminutive of Bethia. Notable people Athletes * Betty Cuthbert (1938–2017), Australian sprinter and Olympic champion * Betty Jameson (1919–2009), American Hall-of-Fame golfer and one of the founders of the LPGA * Betty McKilligan (born 1949), Canadian pairs figure skater * Betty Nuthall (1911–1983), English tennis player * Betty Pariso, American bodybuilder * Betty Stöve (born 1945), Dutch tennis player * Betty Ann Grubb Stuart (born 1950), American tennis player * Betty Uber (1906–1983), English badminton and tennis player Journalists and media personalities * Betty Elizalde (1940–2018), Argentine journalist and broadcaster * Betty Kennedy (1926–2017), Canadian broadcas ...
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The War Of The Worlds
''The War of the Worlds'' is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells, first serialised in 1897 by ''Pearson's Magazine'' in the UK and by ''Cosmopolitan (magazine), Cosmopolitan'' magazine in the US. The novel's first appearance in hardcover was in 1898 from publisher William Heinemann of London. Written between 1895 and 1897, it is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between mankind and an Extraterrestrials in fiction, extra-terrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of both an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and of his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martian (The War of the Worlds), Martians. The novel is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction Western canon, canon. The book's plot was similar to numerous works of invasion literature which were published around the same period, and has been variously interpreted as a commentary on the theory of evolution, British Empire, British colonia ...
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Morton N
Morton may refer to: People * Morton (surname) * Morton (given name) Fictional * Morton Koopa, Jr., a character and boss in ''Super Mario Bros. 3'' * A character in the '' Charlie and Lola'' franchise * A character in the 2008 film '' Horton Hears a Who'' * Morton Slumber, a funeral director who assists the diamond smuggling ring in '' Diamonds Are Forever'' * Morton "Mort" Rainey, an author and the main character of the 2004 film ''Secret Window'' Places Canada * Rural Municipality of Morton, Manitoba, a former rural municipality * Morton, Ontario, a community in Rideau Lakes England * Morton, Carlisle, a place in Carlisle, Cumbria * Morton, Eden, Cumbria * Morton, Derbyshire * Morton, Gloucestershire * Morton, Isle of Wight * Morton, a village in Morton and Hanthorpe parish, Lincolnshire * Morton by Gainsborough, Lincolnshire * Morton Hall, Lincolnshire * Morton, Norfolk (or Morton on the Hill) * Morton, Nottinghamshire * Morton-on-Swale, North Yorkshire * Morton ...
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Grace Slick
Grace Slick (born Grace Barnett Wing; October 30, 1939) is an American singer-songwriter, artist, and painter. Slick was a key figure in San Francisco's early psychedelic music scene in the mid-1960s. With a music career spanning four decades, she first performed with the Great Society, but is best known for her work with Jefferson Airplane and the subsequent successor bands Jefferson Starship and Starship. Slick and Jefferson Airplane first achieved fame with their 1967 album '' Surrealistic Pillow'', which included the top-ten ''Billboard'' hits "White Rabbit" and " Somebody to Love". She provided the lead vocals on both tracks. With Starship, she sang co-lead for two number one hits, "We Built This City" and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now". She also released four solo albums. Slick retired from music in 1990, but continues to be active in the visual arts field. Slick was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 as a member of Jefferson Airplane. Early life Grace Ba ...
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Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ''Through the Looking-Glass'' (1871). He was noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy. His poems ''Jabberwocky'' (1871) and ''The Hunting of the Snark'' (1876) are classified in the genre of literary nonsense. Carroll came from a family of high-church Anglicanism, Anglicans, and developed a long relationship with Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived for most of his life as a scholar and teacher. Alice Liddell, the daughter of Christ Church's dean Henry Liddell, is widely identified as the original inspiration for ''Alice in Wonderland'', though Carroll always denied this. An avid puzzler, Carroll created the word ladder puzzle (which he then called "Doublets"), which he published in his weekly column for ''Vanity Fair ( ...
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Alice In Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre. The artist John Tenniel provided 42 wood-engraved illustrations for the book. It received positive reviews upon release and is now one of the best-known works of Victorian literature; its narrative, structure, characters and imagery have had widespread influence on popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre. It is credited as helping end an era of didacticism in children's literature, inaugurating a new era in which writing for children aimed to "delight or entertain". The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. The titular character Alice shares her given name with Alice Liddell, a girl Carroll knew. ...
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John Maynard Smith
John Maynard Smith (6 January 1920 – 19 April 2004) was a British theoretical and mathematical evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Originally an aeronautical engineer during the Second World War, he took a second degree in genetics under the well-known biologist J. B. S. Haldane. Maynard Smith was instrumental in the application of game theory to evolution with George R. Price, and theorised on other problems such as the evolution of sex and signalling theory. Biography Early years John Maynard Smith was born in London, the son of the surgeon Sidney Maynard Smith, but following his father's death in 1928, the family moved to Exmoor, where he became interested in natural history. Quite unhappy with the lack of formal science education at Eton College, Maynard Smith took it upon himself to develop an interest in Darwinian evolutionary theory and mathematics, after having read the work of old Etonian J. B. S. Haldane, whose books were in the school's library despite the ...
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Jerry Falwell
Jerry Laymon Falwell Sr. (August 11, 1933 – May 15, 2007) was an American Baptist pastor, televangelism, televangelist, and conservatism in the United States, conservative activist. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia. He founded Lynchburg Christian Academy (now Liberty Christian Academy) in 1967, founded Liberty University in 1971, and co-founded the Moral Majority in 1979. Early life and education Falwell and his twin brother Gene were born in the Fairview Heights area of Lynchburg, Virginia, on August 11, 1933, the sons of Helen Virginia (''née'' Beasley) and Carey Hezekiah Falwell. His father was an entrepreneur and one-time Rum-runner, bootlegger who was agnostic who shot and killed his own brother Garland and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1948 at the age of 55. His paternal grandfather was a staunch atheist. Falwell was a member of a group in Fairview Heights known to the police as "the Wall Gang" because ...
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James Moore (biographer)
James Moore is a historian of science at the Open University and the University of Cambridge and visiting scholar at Harvard University, is noted as the author of several biographies of Charles Darwin. As a Cambridge research scholar and a member of the teaching staff at the Open University, he has studied and written about Darwin since the 1970s, co-authoring with Adrian Desmond the major biography ''Darwin'', and also writing ''The Darwin Legend,'' ''The Post-Darwinian Controversies,'' and many articles and reviews. Publications *James Moore. (1979). ''The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900'', Cambridge University Press * * * Notes References * Adrian Desmond and James Moore, ''Darwin'', London: Michael Joseph, the Penguin Group, 1991, * ''The Darwin Legend'', Hodder & Stoughton Religious, 1995, External linksSOF: Evolution and Wonder - Understanding Charles Darwin (Speaking ...
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Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr (; 5 July 1904 – 3 February 2005) was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned Taxonomy (biology), taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, Philosophy of biology, philosopher of biology, and History of science, historian of science. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the Modern synthesis (20th century), modern evolutionary synthesis of Gregor Mendel, Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Charles Darwin, Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the Species, biological species concept. Although Charles Darwin and others posited that multiple species could evolve from a single common ancestor, the mechanism by which this occurred was not understood, creating the ''species problem''. Ernst Mayr approached the problem with a new definition for species. In his book ''Systematics and the Origin of Species'' (1942) he wrote that a species is not just a group of Morphology (biology), morph ...
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Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An atheist, he is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book ''The Selfish Gene'', which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term '' meme''. With his book ''The Extended Phenotype'' (1982), he introduced into evolutionary biology the influential concept that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, for example, when a beaver builds a dam. His 2004 The Ancestor's Tale set out to make understanding evolution simple for the general public, by tracing common ancestors back from humans to the origins of life. Over time, numerous religious people challenged th ...
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