Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s “Dear Leader”
Kim Jong Il assumed power a few years after his father suffered a heart attack. The dictator had a reputation as a somewhat erratic...
Peggy Lee, Actress and Award-Winning Jazz-Pop Singer
Peggy Lee was a prolific, Grammy Award-winning vocalist, Academy Award-nominated actress and songwriter. Renowned for her emotive voice and sensual delivery, her most famous...
Anthony Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice
Called someone who “may arguably be the single most influential arbiter of domestic policy in the land,” Justice Anthony Kennedy has relished his role...
Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher
“Nietzsche’s actual thought is a…system, at the beginning of which stands the death of God…the ensuing nihilism, and at its end the self-surmounting of...
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Baroque Painter
Michelangelo Merisi, popularly known as Caravaggio, spearheaded the Baroque movement, and his paintings are acclaimed for their realism and their depiction of the violent,...
Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-Winning Economist
Milton Friedman was inspired by the dire financial circumstances of the Great Depression, and became convinced that economic burdens could be lifted through encouraging...
Abraham Lincoln, “The Great Emancipator”
Abraham Lincoln worked his way from a log cabin to the White House, teaching himself law and earning the faith of the electorate through...
Gwendolyn Brooks, First African-American Pulitzer Prize Winner
Gwendolyn Brooks, renowned poet, was the author of many memorable works centered on the black experience in America and the issues of the Civil...
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Father of Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson—essayist, minister, poet and philosopher from New England—was the founding father of the transcendentalist movement and the creator of many literary works...
Quentin Tarantino, Director of “Pulp Fiction”
A self-taught filmmaker who has nevertheless displayed a profound knowledge of film history, Quentin Tarantino has built an oeuvre upon sharp dialogue, gritty violence...
