- Industry: Printing & publishing
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Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
(1907 – 1964) Carson published Silent Spring in 1962. The book reoriented American environmental thinking away from conserving wild lands and toward the modern study of complex ecosystems. A professional biologist, Carson worked for many years in research and administration at the US Fish and Wildlife Service before writing her book. Silent Spring documented the impact of pesticides, especially the immensely popular DDT, on wildlife and public health. Carson was attacked by pesticide manufacturers as unpatriotic, unscientific and unfeminine, but her meticulous research persuaded President John Kennedy to order a federal investigation into pesticide use.
Industry:Culture
(1907 – 1979) John “Duke” Wayne embodied a conservative, Cold War, patriotic heroism during his forty-year reign as one of Hollywood’s most popular stars. In the mythical westerns and Hollywood wars he inhabited, Wayne cut a forthright, paternal, but occasionally violent, figure. Director John Ford made Wayne a star in Stage Coach (1939), and both Ford and Howard Hawks used Wayne to good advantage in several films, including Hawks’ Red River (1948). During the Vietnam War, Wayne codirected and starred in the pro-war The Green Berets (1968). Ironically Wayne assiduously avoided seeing action during the Second World War and Korea.
Industry:Culture
(1907 – 1997) Novelist whose first book, Tales of the South Pacific (1946), earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 at age forty. Tales drew on Michener’s experience during the Second World War as a naval officer posted to the region. In 1949 the work was converted into the Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway musical, South Pacific, and ran for 1,925 performances. After this first publication, Michener covered much of the world with his stories—Hawaii (1959), Iberia (1967), Chesapeake (1978), Alaska (1985) and Caribbean (1989)—and even reached the final frontier, Space (1982). Part of Michener’s appeal lies in the way he combines fact and fiction to condense complex and sometimes unsettling histories into singular and monumental narratives.
Industry:Culture
(1908 – 1960) After a difficult childhood described in his auto-biography Black Boy (1945), Wright moved from Tennessee to Chicago, IL in 1927 hoping to become a writer. In the Depression he belonged to the Communist Party; in 1935, he also joined the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration. By 1937 he moved away from the Communist Party and Chicago, resettling in Harlem, NY. In 1938 Wright published Uncle Tom’s Children. Two years later, Native Son, comparable in impact to Ellison’s Invisible Man, cemented Wright’s international reputation, especially in Europe. His study of Kwame Nkrumah (Black Power, 1954) contributed to his influence among Pan-Africanists and provided a term for American black militants when the Civil Rights movement began to falter.
Industry:Culture
(1908 – 1965) One of the most respected and influential American radio and television journalists.
Joining the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1935, he went to London to direct their European Bureau two years later, vividly reporting the rise of the Nazis and the Battle of Britain. Translating his CBS radio series Hear it Now to a new medium, he defined quality television news through his investigative magazine See It Now (1951–5). Here, his reputation for accuracy and objectivity were crucial when he exposed Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist tactics in 1954. Murrow’s later Person to Person (CBS, 1953–61), where he interviewed celebrities in their homes, launched another tradition of infotainment.
Industry:Culture
(1908 – 1972) Civil rights leader and clergyman, elected to the House of Representatives for eleven terms. In the late 1930s, while assisting his father in his pastorate at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, Powell began to organize anti-discrimination demonstrations and campaigns for jobs in New York City. In 1941 he was elected to the New York city council, and four years later was elected to Congress as a representative for Harlem.
While in Congress he spoke in support of the sit-ins, sponsored civil-rights legislation as well as bills comprising part of Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.”.
Industry:Culture
(1908 – 1973) Elected vice-president in 1960, Lyndon Baines Johnson became president when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX on November 22, 1963. Combining his legislative experience with public sympathy for the slain Kennedy, Johnson successfully guided many of Kennedy’s legislative programs through Congress in 1964 and 1965, such as tax cuts for both individuals and corporations. Legislation passed during this period also marked the beginning of Johnson’s “Great Society” programs. Early legislation included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, anti-discrimination legislation introduced by the Kennedy administration, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Paralleling Johnson’s accomplishments with domestic legislation was the United States’ growing involvement in Vietnam. North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin in early August 1964 and, Johnson believed, launched another assault two days later. While the attack was never confirmed, Johnson asked Congress for the authority to take military action against North Vietnam. Congress approved these powers in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which provided the legal foundation for American involvement in the Vietnam War.
With Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey as his running-mate, Johnson won the 1964 presidential election in a landslide, getting over 61 percent of the vote against Republican nominee and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. In 1965 and 1966, Johnson continued to pass “Great Society” programs. These included Medicare and Medicaid, which provided healthcare for the country’s senior citizens and for the poor. Two others, the Higher Education Act and the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965, gave aid to schools. Johnson labeled these programs the War on Poverty.
As Johnson’s domestic legislative successes increased, so did US engagement in the Vietnam War. In 1965 Johnson ordered American combat troops to South Vietnam. By 1968 there were over 500,000 US troops in South Vietnam, up from the approximately 16,000 military advisers there when Johnson became president.
From 1966 to 1968, Johnson continued his procivil-rights agenda. He appointed Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court, making Marshall the first African American to serve on the high court. However, Johnson faced heightened conflict at home as well as abroad. Opposition to the Vietnam War and racial unrest culminated in urban riots in slum areas of many American cities. To determine the causes of the riots, Johnson appointed a special commission, which issued its conclusions in the Kerner Commission Report. The report contended that the United States was moving towards two societies: black and white, separate and unequal.
The Tet Offensive in January 1968 revealed that an end to the Vietnam War was not imminent, and Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy’s strong finish against Johnson in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary showed the president’s political weakness. Johnson surprisingly withdrew from the race in a televised address on March 31, 1968. On November 1, 1968, Johnson halted bombing on North Vietnam, temporarily spurring peace talks.
Industry:Culture
(1908 – 1989) A grande dame of bitchiness, Davis brought intelligence and skill rather than beauty to her roles as a powerful woman whose goals conflict with social codes, whether in antebellum New Orleans, LA (Jezebel, 1938, Oscar) or twentieth-century Boston, MA (Now Voyager, 1942). While popular with female fans, Davis ran afoul of studios, suing Warner Brothers in 1936 for an unjust contract, which she lost. The studio, however, treated her with more respect, and put her in demanding roles. There were striking gaps in her career as she matured, despite her success as an older actor in All About Eve (1951) and her reinvention as an even older matriarch of horror (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, 1962), as well as in Disney fantasies. Davis’ unique voice, artful gestures (especially with a cigarette) and indomitable roles made many of her lines proverbial references among generations of American filmgoers, while her style created iconic status among gay commentators as well.
Industry:Culture
(1908 – 1993) Civil-rights leader and Supreme Court justice. During his distinguished career directing the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (1939–61), Marshall argued many landmark decisions in civil rights and the fight against segregation and other forms of discrimination, capped by the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954. President Kennedy appointed him to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1961; in 1965 Marshall became solicitor-general. Appointed to the Supreme Court by President Johnson in 1967 as the first African American justice, Marshall served until 1991. A liberal voice amidst a predominantly conservative court, his opposition to decisions of an increasingly conservative court with regard to the death penalty which he opposed, as well as his civil-rights interests led to his nickname “the great dissenter.”
Industry:Culture
(1908 – 1997) Actor. A quintessentially nice guy, whether in Frank Capra classics like It’s a Wonderful Life (1939) or Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), where he epitomized ambivalent virtue within moral dilemmas beyond his control. Stewart’s Midwestern drawl and gawky presence nonetheless became the stuff of a Second World War pilot and a leading man for over four decades, until the 1970s. He won an Oscar for Philadelphia Story (1940) and for lifetime achievement (1985), as well as tributes by the American Film Institute and the Kennedy Center, and the Medal of Freedom (1985). The Los Angeles, CA airport is named after him.
Industry:Culture
