Agrigento, city, near the southern coast of Sicily, Italy. It lies on a plateau encircled by low cliffs overlooking the junction of the Drago (ancient Hypsas) and San Biagio (Acragas) rivers and is dominated from the north by a ridge with twin peaks. Agrigento was a wealthy ancient city founded

Yemen: Sports and recreation: …and early 21st century; and Isra Girgrah, a female boxer born in Yemen and fighting out of the United States, held several lightweight belts during that same period.

Japan: Commerce, cities, and culture: …works is the idea of giri (“duty”), which is to be understood not so much as feudal morality enforced from above but rather as the traditional consciousness of honor and dignity in one’s motives and of social consciousness in human relations. The compositions of Chikamatsu’s later years seek the motif…

Varahagiri Venkata Giri was a statesman, who served as the president of India from 1969 to 1974. Giri began his education at Khallikote College, Berhampore, and then went to Dublin to study law. There he became engaged in the Sinn Féin (Irish political party) movement and was expelled from Ireland

Harishchandra: His father, Gopalachandra (pen name Giridharadaja), was a poet who composed a considerable amount of traditional Braj Bhasa (a dialect of Hindi) verse of technical virtuosity but with little poetic feeling.

Giridih, city, east-central Jharkhand state, northeastern India. It lies 72 miles (115 km) northeast of Hazaribagh, on both banks of the Usri River. In 1871 a branch line of the Eastern Railway was built to Girdih, primarily to allow mineral resources found in the area to be exploited. That

Caspian Sea, world’s largest inland body of water. It lies to the east of the Caucasus Mountains and to the west of the vast steppe of Central Asia. The sea’s name derives from the ancient Kaspi peoples, who once lived in Transcaucasia to the west. Among its other historical names, Khazarsk and

Russia-Ukraine War: The Russian proxy war and the Poroshenko administration: …the nom de guerre of Igor Girkin, a former colonel with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), who established his headquarters in Slov’yansk. Poroshenko was inaugurated on June 7, and he immediately introduced a proposal to restore peace in separatist-controlled regions. Fighting continued, however, and on June 13 government forces…

Edna O’Brien: Other novels: In 2019 O’Brien published Girl, which was inspired by the Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped by members of Boko Haram.

Naomi Campbell: Personal life and later career: …Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), and Girl 6 (1996).

Pablo Picasso: The 1930s: …colour with flowing forms (Girl Before a Mirror [1932]).

Frank Tashlin: Films of the late 1950s: The Girl Can’t Help It (1956) was an inspired, wildly over-the-top comedy with the statuesque platinum-blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield cast as the girlfriend of a retired gangster (Edmond O’Brien) who hires a press agent (Ewell) to make her a star. Using Mansfield as a kind…

George Gershwin: Popular songs of George Gershwin: …Ethel Merman in the musical Girl Crazy (1930). The following year, Gershwin scored a lengthy, elaborate piano arrangement of the song, and in late 1933 he arranged the piece into a set of variations for piano and orchestra; “I Got Rhythm” Variations has since become one of Gershwin’s most-performed orchestral…

Busby Berkeley: Later films: …Garland and Rooney’s next film, Girl Crazy (1943), for which he had directed only the final musical number.

Norman Taurog: Musical comedies and Boys Town: The Girl Downstairs (1938) had Hungarian import Franciska Gaal as a maid who wins the heart of a playboy (Franchot Tone), and Lucky Night (1939) was a comedy with Myrna Loy and Robert Taylor. After working (uncredited) on The Wizard of Oz (1939), Taurog made…

Stan Getz: …Jobim; for one track, “The Girl from Ipanema,” Gilberto’s wife, Astrud, who had never sung professionally, was a last-minute addition on vocals. Her somewhat naive, blasé delivery suited the tune and complimented Getz’s sax playing perfectly, and the recording became the biggest hit of Getz’s career when it was…

Jack Conway: Heyday of the 1930s: …the actress on the popular The Girl from Missouri (1934). His success continued with Viva Villa! (1934), starring Wallace Beery as the legendary revolutionary Pancho Villa. Conway inherited the biopic after Howard Hawks was fired, and both the film and Ben Hecht’s screenplay were nominated for Academy Awards.

Mitchell Leisen: Films of the 1950s and ’60s: …Train, The Twilight Zone, and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. Although his career ended unspectacularly, Leisen left a body of work that testified to his deep appreciation for sets and settings of motion pictures and to his subtle understanding of the dynamics of romance.

Beverly Cleary: …published the volumes of memoirs A Girl from Yamhill (1988) and My Own Two Feet (1995).

girl groups, primarily American female vocal groups popular from the early to the mid-1960s, the period between the heyday of early rock and roll and the British Invasion. The girl group era produced a clearly identifiable hybrid of gospel, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, and quirky pop. The

Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, worldwide organizations for girls, dedicated to training them in good citizenship, good conduct, and outdoor activities. Robert (later Lord) Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes Baden-Powell founded the Girl Guides in Great Britain in 1910 in response to the requests of

Mickey Spillane: …the Mike Hammer series with The Girl Hunters (1962). He also wrote the script for and played the role of Hammer in the novel’s film adaptation (1963). Later books in the series include The Killing Man (1989) and Black Alley (1996). In addition to movies, the Mike Hammer character was…

Richard Adams: The novels The Girl in a Swing (1980; film 1988) and Maia (1984) drew attention for their graphic depictions of sexuality. Adams took a different approach to anthropomorphism with Traveller (1988), told from the perspective of Robert E. Lee’s horse. He returned to his intrepid rabbits with…

Louise Brooks: …Hollywood films as Howard Hawks’s A Girl in Every Port (1928) and William Wellman’s Beggars of Life (1928). Her performances attracted the attention of the German director G.W. Pabst, who cast her as the amoral self-destructive temptress Lulu in Die Büchse der Pandora (1929; Pandora’s Box). Brooks’s haunting performance in…

Agnes de Mille: … (1949), Paint Your Wagon (1951), The Girl in Pink Tights (1954), and 110 in the Shade (1963). She also arranged dances for the films Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Oklahoma! (1955), directed plays, and choreographed television programs.

Bobbie Ann Mason: … (1993), An Atomic Romance (2005), The Girl in the Blue Beret (2011), and Dear Ann (2020). Among her other short-story collections were Love Life: Stories (1989), Midnight Magic (1998), and Nancy Culpepper (2006). In 2003 Mason wrote a biography about Elvis Presley. Clear Springs: A Family

Richard Fleischer: Middle years: The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955) is an account of the Evelyn Nesbit scandal; Joan Collins starred as the seductive showgirl whose affair with famed architect Stanford White (Ray Milland) leads her husband, Harry Kendall Thaw (Farley Granger), to fatally shoot him.

Stieg Larsson: The Girl in the Spider’s Web) was based in part on outlined scenarios left by Larsson, who had mapped out some 10 volumes of the series. The novel sets Salander and Blomkvist against an array of adversaries, from malevolent hackers to the U.S. National Security…

John Sturges: Bad, Magnificent, and Great: The Girl in White (1952) was a modest but well-done biography of New York City’s first woman doctor, Emily Dunning, with Allyson as the hard-nosed pioneer who worked in a slum hospital. Sturges was on more-familiar ground with Jeopardy (1953), a thriller that featured Barbara…

Michael Jackson: Thriller: …single on the album, “The Girl Is Mine,” an easygoing duet with Paul McCartney, went to number one on the R&B charts and number two on the pop charts in the fall of 1982. The follow-up single, “Billie Jean,” an electrifying dance track and the vehicle for Jackson’s trademark…

Rihanna: Music career: A Girl Like Me and Good Girl Gone Bad: …soon followed with the album A Girl Like Me (2006), featuring the up-tempo club-oriented “S.O.S.” The song, which was built around a sample of Soft Cell’s 1981 new-wave hit “Tainted Love,” became Rihanna’s first to top the Billboard singles chart.

Sabrina Carpenter: Childhood and early career: …in the Disney Channel show Girl Meets World, a spinoff of the coming-of-age sitcom Boy Meets World (1993–2000). Carpenter released her debut album, Eyes Wide Open, the following year. The album peaked at number 43 on the Billboard 200. Her next album, EVOLution (2016), peaked at 28 on the charts.…

Giacomo Puccini: Mature work and fame: …La fanciulla del west (1910; The Girl of the Golden West). These four mature works also tell a moving love story, one that centres entirely on the feminine protagonist and ends in a tragic resolution. All four speak the same refined and limpid musical language of the orchestra that creates…

Alicia Keys: Musical success: The Grammy-winning Girl on Fire (2012) featured a roster of guest producers and vocalists that included Nicki Minaj, Dr. Dre, and Keys’s husband, Swizz Beatz. The socially conscious Here (2016) was less popular, however. On Alicia (2020), which was released during the COVID-19 pandemic, Keys continued to…

Emily Blunt: A Quiet Place and Oppenheimer: …may have committed murder in The Girl on the Train, an adaptation of Pamela Hawkins’s best seller. She also did voice work for the animated comedies My Little Pony: The Movie, which was based on the popular TV series, and Animal Crackers (both 2017).

Johannes Vermeer: Artistic training and early influences: …of Vermeer’s earliest genre paintings, Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (c. 1657–59), in which he created a quiet space for the young woman to read her letter. Unlike the characteristically dark interiors of Terborch, however, Vermeer bathed this remarkably private scene in a radiant light that streams…

Girl Scout Cookies, cookies that the members of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA) sell annually from January through April to raise money for their local council and activities. GSUSA troops sell up to 12 varieties of cookies per year, which can include Thin Mints, chocolate

Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, worldwide organizations for girls, dedicated to training them in good citizenship, good conduct, and outdoor activities. Robert (later Lord) Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes Baden-Powell founded the Girl Guides in Great Britain in 1910 in response to the requests of

Ten Sleep: …entrance to the canyon is Nature Conservancy Ten Sleep Preserve (formerly the Girl Scouts National Center West), which harbours populations of mammals and more than 100 bird species. A conservation buffalo herd was begun at a nearby ranch in 1974. The village is a supply point for a livestock and…

Juliette Gordon Low: …had been changed to the Girl Scouts of the United States of America, the movement was formally organized on a national basis, and Low was elected president, a post she retained until 1920. Low traveled throughout the United States, donating and soliciting funds and organizing troops. In 1919 she represented…

Harold Lloyd: …above a city street; in Girl Shy (1924) he took a thrilling ride atop a runaway streetcar; in The Freshman (1925), one of the most successful of all silent pictures, he stood in for the football tackling dummy.

Bobbie Ann Mason: During that time she published The Girl Sleuth: A Feminist Guide (1975), in which she explored various childhood mystery series that feature female protagonists. In 1979 she began writing full-time, eventually publishing stories in The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and elsewhere.

Stieg Larsson: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest), an adrenaline-fueled exploration of institutional corruption—earned similar acclaim. Though some critics charged that the novels’ determined focus on systematic violence against women was complicated by overly graphic depictions of such violence, the trilogy became wildly popular both within…

Stieg Larsson: The Girl Who Lived Twice).

Stieg Larsson: …som lekte med elden (2006; The Girl Who Played with Fire), which delved into the seedy world of sex trafficking, and Luftslottet som sprängdes (2007; “The Air Castle That Blew Up”; Eng. trans. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest), an adrenaline-fueled exploration of institutional corruption—earned similar acclaim. Though some…

Stieg Larsson: The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye) and Hon som måste dö (2019; “She Who Must Die”; Eng. trans. The Girl Who Lived Twice).

James Tiptree, Jr.: In “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973; winner of a Hugo Award for best novella), an ugly homeless girl in a media-saturated future is recruited to remotely control the empty body of a new celebrity. This prophetic story of celebrity worship, product placement, and global…

Cubism: …appear sculptural, as in Picasso’s Girl with a Mandolin (1910). They simplified their color schemes to a nearly monochromatic scale (hues of tan, brown, gray, cream, green, or blue were preferred) in order not to distract the viewer from the artist’s primary interest—the structure of form itself. The monochromatic color…

Girl with a Pearl Earring: …publication of the best-selling novel Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier in 1999. The book fashioned the painting’s subject into a housemaid named Griet who works in Vermeer’s home and becomes his paint mixer. It was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film in 2003 starring Scarlett Johansson as the…

Girl with a Pearl Earring, oil painting on canvas (c. 1665) by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, one of his most well-known works. It depicts an imaginary young woman in exotic dress and a very large pearl earring. The work permanently resides in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. An observant and

Girl with a Pearl Earring: …was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film in 2003 starring Scarlett Johansson as the fictional Griet and Colin Firth as Vermeer.

Banksy: Banksy at auction: In late 2018 Girl with Balloon (2006), a canvas version of one of Banksy’s most popular murals, startled onlookers at an auction when the work seemingly self-destructed by partly shredding just after selling for $1.4 million. As speculation about the meaning of the stunt and about the involvement…

David Foster Wallace: Other books: …short stories are collected in Girl with Curious Hair (1989), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999), and Oblivion (2004). He was also an acclaimed nonfiction writer, using his signature digressive, footnote-heavy prose to produce elaborate essays on such seemingly uncomplicated subjects as the Illinois state fair, talk radio, and luxury…

theatre: Reactions to Naturalism: …Frenchman Pierre Quillard’s play The Girl with the Cut-off Hands (1891), the actors intoned their lines behind a gauze curtain, backed by a gold cloth framed with red hangings. In front of the gauze, a girl in a long blue tunic repeated the actors’ lines and commented on their feelings.…

Stieg Larsson: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), which tracked the mismatched protagonists’ investigation into a decades-old disappearance, was swiftly met with praise in Sweden—in particular for Larsson’s indelible characterization of Salander as a surly pixie with a troubled past. Its two sequels—Flickan som lekte med elden…

Nine Inch Nails: …score, and their work on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) was honored with a Grammy. Their score for Gone Girl (2015) was also nominated for a Grammy. The pair later provided the music for the climate-change documentary Before the Flood and the thriller Patriots Day (both 2016) as…

Amy Schumer: Later career: Schumer’s memoir, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo (a play on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the title of a novel by Stieg Larsson), was released in 2016.

Girl with the Red Hat, oil-on-panel painting (c. 1669) by Johannes Vermeer. The painting is from Vermeer’s later and most well-known period, during which he focused on depicting scenes of daily life in interior settings. Although Girl with the Red Hat is Vermeer’s smallest painting (9 × 7.06 inches

Destiny’s Child, American singing-rapping girl group, one of the best-selling female musical groups of all time. In its final form, Destiny’s Child consisted of Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams, who, through their songs and performances, collectively became a symbol of

Jared Leto: Early life and career: …and had major roles in Girl, Interrupted (1999) and American Psycho (2000).

Meridel Le Sueur: …subject of her first novel, The Girl. Although she wrote it in 1939, the novel was not published until 1978. Le Sueur’s short stories, including those collected in Salute to Spring (1940), were widely admired. North Star Country (1945) is a saga about the people of the Midwest told in…

Margaret Atwood: Novels: …a cowinner (with Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other) of the Booker Prize.

Steven Soderbergh: Ocean’s series and Magic Mike: The Girlfriend Experience (2009) featured Sasha Grey, a pornographic actress, as a prostitute. Despite its provocative premise, the drama mainly concerns the character’s quotidian activities. The film was adapted as a television series (2016– ), which Soderbergh executive produced. In 2009 Soderbergh also directed The…

Douglas Coupland: …1998 he published the novel Girlfriend in a Coma and, with Kip Ward, Lara’s Book: Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider Phenomenon, an illustrated tribute to the popularity of the computer game Tomb Raider. Subsequent novels included Miss Wyoming (1999), Hey Nostradamus! (2003), JPod (2006), The Gum Thief

Rashmika Mandanna: Rise to stardom: …release of the year was The Girlfriend, in which she played a young woman trapped in a toxic romantic relationship.

Judd Apatow: …and the HBO TV series Girls (2012–17), both of which he produced, focused primarily on female characters. He both produced and directed Trainwreck (2015), a comedy written by and starring stand-up comedian Amy Schumer. The film concerns an unabashedly promiscuous young woman who, despite her aversion to romance, falls in…

Paul Theroux: Education, Peace Corps experience, and early novels: His early novels—including Girls at Play (1969), Jungle Lovers (1971), and Saint Jack (1973; film 1979)—center on the social and cultural dislocation of Westerners in postcolonial Africa and Southeast Asia.

Danica McKellar: …X: Algebra Exposed! (2010), and Girls Get Curves: Geometry Takes Shape (2012). The popular books were written in the style of a teen magazine and contained examples that were chosen to be accessible and appealing to many girls. McKellar also published Goodnight, Numbers (2017), Ten Magic Butterflies (2018), and Bathtime…

Jack Arnold: …juvenile-delinquent genre of that decade, Girls in the Night (1953). Telling, as its tagline put it, the “Tense, Terrifying Truth About the Big City’s Delinquent Daughters,” it never rose above its B-film budget and cast, but it did help pave the way for now-canonical films in the genre, The Wild…

Edna O’Brien: The Country Girls Trilogy: …The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964), by which time both have settled in London and have become disillusioned with marriage and men in general.

Texas Woman’s University, public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Denton, Texas, U.S. It focuses on liberal arts and professional studies. Texas Woman’s University is divided into the University General Divisions, the Institute of Health Sciences, and the Graduate School. The

“Weird Al” Yankovic: Career: …to Have Lunch” (after “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper). That same year, he released a mock documentary, or mockumentary, home video, The Compleat Al, as well as a book, The Authorized Al, both of which offered humorous, semi-fictional accounts of his life.

The Girls of Slender Means, novel by Muriel Spark, published in a shortened version in 1963 in The Saturday Evening Post and published in book form later that year. The novel, set primarily in London during World War II, focuses on the inhabitants of a residential club for unmarried women and on

Dawn French: …Comic Strip productions and the Girls on Top series, which French cowrote. In 1987 the duo began writing and starring in French and Saunders, a comedy sketch show.

Paul Anka: …aimed at teenage audiences, including Girls Town (1959) and Look in Any Window (1961). He played a U.S. Army Ranger in the war film The Longest Day (1962), for which he also wrote the theme music. As young people’s taste in popular music began to turn toward rock and roll…

Mariah Carey: Other acting roles and music projects: …Daniels’ The Butler (2013) and Girls Trip (2017). She also lent her voice to All I Want for Christmas Is You (2017), an animated film inspired by her hit song. Carey also had cameos in such films as Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) and the music industry-based TV series…

Norman Taurog: Elvis movies: …“Can’t Help Falling in Love”; Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), which featured “Return to Sender”; and It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963), with Presley performing at the Seattle World’s Fair. Although they were box-office successes, critics derided the films as formulaic and musically uninspired.

Sara Bareilles: Theater work and later activities: …Dawn in the NBC sitcom Girls5Eva. The parody focuses on a fictional girl group from the 1990s that attempts a comeback 20 years after breaking up. Girls5Eva was canceled after two seasons, but in 2022 it was revived by Netflix.

Henry de Montherlant: …of the tetralogy was entitled The Girls: A Tetralogy of Novels.) This sardonic and misogynistic work describes the relationship between a libertine novelist and his adoring women victims. It exalts the pleasures of the body and of artistic creation while scornfully rejecting feminine possessiveness and sentiment. A similar arrogantly virile…

Gir Range: …because of the ancient Jaina temple of Girnar (historically called Raivata or Ujjayanta) situated on one of the hills; the temple is a major place of pilgrimage.

Girnar Hills, physiographic region on the Kathiawar Peninsula, Gujarat state, west-central India. At the foot of one of the hills is a rock bearing one of the rock edicts of Ashoka (3rd century bce). The same rock bears an inscription referring to the construction of a lake, called Sudarshana, in

Kyrenia, city, situated along the northern coast of Cyprus, in the Turkish Cypriot-administered area. Founded by the Achaeans, ancient Greek colonists, and fortified by the Byzantines, Franks, and Venetians, the city was the administrative headquarters of the Kyrenia district of the Republic of

cycling: Modern sport racing: …three-week tours of Italy (the Giro d’Italia) and Spain (the Vuelta a España). Usually, the Giro is held in May and June, the Tour de France in July, the Vuelta in September, and the World Championships in October. Prizes in these races are substantial, amounting to $2.5 million in the…

Antonio Vivaldi: Life: In 1726 the contralto Anna Girò sang for the first time in a Vivaldi opera. Born in Mantua about 1711, she had gone to Venice to further her career as a singer. Her voice was not strong, but she was attractive and acted well. She became part of Vivaldi’s…

Anne-Louis Girodet was a painter whose works exemplify the first phase of Romanticism in French art. Girodet began to study drawing in 1773. He later became a student of the Neoclassical architect Étienne-Louis Boullée, with whose encouragement he joined the studio of Jacques-Louis David in late

Anne-Louis Girodet was a painter whose works exemplify the first phase of Romanticism in French art. Girodet began to study drawing in 1773. He later became a student of the Neoclassical architect Étienne-Louis Boullée, with whose encouragement he joined the studio of Jacques-Louis David in late

Maurice Girodias was a French publisher of banned books, including many classics of modern literature. As a young man Girodias worked closely with his father, Jack Kahane, whose Obelisk Press published such classics of erotica as Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Frank Harris’s My Life and

Juan de Padilla: …field by replacing Padilla with Don Pedro Girón, an important nobleman. After Charles’s troops had recovered Tordesillas (December 5) and Girón had defected, the Junta Santa recalled Padilla. Padilla’s reappointment was received with a great outpouring of popular enthusiasm. He occupied Torrelobatón on February 28, 1521. Seven weeks later, however,…

Girona, city, capital of Girona provincia (province), in the Catalonia comunidad autónoma (autonomous community), northeastern Spain. It lies on the Oñar River in the foothills of the Los Ángeles Mountains, a short distance inland from a Mediterranean coastal resort area known as the Costa Brava.

Girona, provincia (province) in the Catalonia comunidad autónoma (autonomous community), northeastern Spain. Girona is the northeasternmost province of the autonomous community and of Spain. It is bounded by France and the Pyrenees to the north, by the Mediterranean Sea to the east and southeast,

Gironde, estuary on the Bay of Biscay, in Gironde département, Aquitaine région, southwestern France, formed by the confluence of the Garonne and Dordogne rivers (qq.v.). It trends from southeast to northwest for about 45 miles (72 km) and is navigable for oceangoing vessels, although it has

Aquitaine: …the southwestern départements of Dordogne, Gironde, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne, and Pyrénées-Atlantiques. In 2016 the Aquitaine région was joined with the régions of Poitou-Charentes and Limousin to form the new administrative entity of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. The present-day région of Nouvelle-Aquitaine roughly matches the western half of the historical region of Aquitaine.

Girondin, a label applied to a loose grouping of republican politicians, some of them originally from the département of the Gironde, who played a leading role in the Legislative Assembly from October 1791 to September 1792 during the French Revolution. Lawyers, intellectuals and journalists, the

Oliverio Girondo was an Argentine writer, painter, and poet known for his involvement with Ultraism, a movement in poetry characterized by avant-garde imagery and symbolism as well as metrical complexity. Born to a well-to-do family, Girondo traveled extensively across Europe and other parts of the

Italian literature: Poetry: …on a single character in Girone il cortese (1548; “Girone the Courteous”) and Avarchide (1570), an imitation of the Iliad of Homer. Giambattista Giraldi, while more famous as a storyteller and a tragic playwright, was a literary theorist who tried to apply his own pragmatic theories in his poem Ercole…

José María Gironella was a Spanish author best remembered for his long historical novel Los cipreses creen en Dios (1953; The Cypresses Believe in God), in which the conflicts within a family portrayed in the novel symbolize the dissension that overtook the people of Spain during the years

José María Gironella was a Spanish author best remembered for his long historical novel Los cipreses creen en Dios (1953; The Cypresses Believe in God), in which the conflicts within a family portrayed in the novel symbolize the dissension that overtook the people of Spain during the years

Thomas Kinkade was an American artist who built a successful industry on his light-infused paintings of tranquil idyllic scenes. Kinkade studied art history and took studio classes for two years at the University of California, Berkeley, before transferring to the Art Center College of Design in

Nikolay Karlovich Giers was a statesman and foreign minister of Russia during the reign of Alexander III (ruled 1881–94). He guided Russia into a rapprochement with France and thereby formed the basis of the Russo-Franco-British alliance that fought against the Central Powers in World War I. Having

Lagash, one of the most important capital cities in ancient Sumer, located midway between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southeastern Iraq. The ancient name of the mound of Telloh was actually Girsu, while Lagash originally denoted a site southeast of Girsu, later becoming the name of the whole