Portal:United States/Selected culture biography

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Selected culture biographies list

1-20

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/1

Michael Jordan
NBA Finals MVP awards, and the 1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. He holds the NBA record for highest career regular season scoring average with 30.1 points per game, as well as averaging a record 33.4 points per game in the playoffs. In 1999, he was named the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century by ESPN, and was second to Babe Ruth on the Associated Press
's list of athletes of the century.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/2

Edgar Allan Poe
literary critic, and is considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction
. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/3

Bob Dylan performing at St. Lawrence University in New York, 1963.
Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and swing
.

Since 1994, Dylan has published three books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. As a songwriter and musician, Dylan has

Golden Globe, and Academy Awards; he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2008, a Bob Dylan Pathway was opened in the singer's honor in his birthplace of Duluth, Minnesota. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation
for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/4

Reese Witherspoon
Golden Globe
nomination.

Witherspoon married actor and Cruel Intentions co-star Ryan Phillippe in 1999; they have two children, Ava and Deacon. The couple separated at the end of 2006 and divorced in October 2007. Witherspoon owns a production company, Type A Films, and she is actively involved in children's and women's advocacy organizations. She serves on the board of the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), and was named Global Ambassador of Avon Products in 2007, serving as honorary chair of the charitable Avon Foundation.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/5

Hemingway in 1939
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His distinctive writing style, characterized by economy and understatement, influenced 20th-century fiction, as did his life of adventure and public image. He produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Hemingway's fiction was successful because the characters he presented exhibited authenticity that resonated with his audience. Many of his works are classics of American literature. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works during his lifetime; a further three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction works were published posthumously.

Shortly after the publication of

Key West, Florida, and Cuba during the 1930s and '40s, but in 1959 he moved from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho
, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/6

Jim Thorpe's Track & Field picture.
amateur status
rules).

Thorpe was of mixed

barnstormed
as a professional basketball player with a team composed entirely of Native Americans.

Thorpe was named the greatest athlete of the first half of the twentieth century by the Associated Press (AP) in 1950, and ranked third on the AP list of athletes of the century in 1999. After his professional sports career ended, Thorpe lived in abject poverty. He worked several odd jobs, struggled with alcoholism, and lived out the last years of his life in failing health. In 1983, thirty years after his death, his medals were restored.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/7

Angelina Jolie
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR). She has been cited as one of the world's most attractive people, as well as the world's "most beautiful" woman, titles for which she has received substantial media attention.

Divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton, Jolie currently lives with actor Brad Pitt, in a relationship that has attracted worldwide media attention. Jolie and Pitt have three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, as well as three biological children, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/8

Civil Rights Movement
.

Robinson was also known for his pursuits outside the baseball diamond. He was the first black television analyst in Major League Baseball, and the first black vice-president of a major American corporation. In the 1960s, he helped establish the Freedom National Bank, an African-American-owned financial institution based in Harlem, New York. In recognition of his achievements on and off the field, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/9

Elvis in 1970
halls of fame

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/10

Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1969) is an American R&B/pop singer-songwriter, record producer and actress. She made her recording debut, in 1990, under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola, and became the first recording artist to have her first five singles top the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. Following her marriage to Mottola, in 1993, a series of hit records established her position as Columbia Records' highest-selling act.

In a career spanning over two decades, Carey has sold more than 200 million albums, singles and videos worldwide, according to

power, melismatic style and use of the whistle register
.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/11

William Gibson
information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. He is also credited with predicting the rise of reality television
and with establishing the conceptual foundations for the rapid growth of virtual environments such as video games and the Web.

After expanding on Neuromancer with two more novels to complete the dystopic Sprawl trilogy, Gibson became a central figure to an entirely different science fiction subgenre – steampunk – with the 1990 alternate history novel The Difference Engine, written in collaboration with Bruce Sterling. In the 1990s he composed the Bridge trilogy of novels, which focused on sociological observations of near future urban environments and late-stage capitalism. His most recent novels – Pattern Recognition (2003) and Spook Country (2007) – are set in a contemporary world and have put Gibson's work onto mainstream bestseller lists for the first time.

To date, Gibson has written more than twenty short stories, nine novels (one in collaboration), a nonfiction artist's book, and has contributed articles to several major publications and collaborated extensively with performance artists, filmmakers and musicians.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/12

Bradley Joseph
arranger, and producer of contemporary instrumental music. His compositions include works for orchestra, quartet
, and solo piano, with his musical style ranging from "quietly pensive mood music to a rich orchestration of classical depth and breadth".

Active since 1983, he played various instruments in rock bands throughout the

musical director and lead keyboardist for Sheena Easton, including a 1995 performance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
.

In 1994, Joseph's solo career began when he independently released

Christmas Around the World and One Deep Breath, also held positions on NAV’s Top 100 radio chart. His music is included in numerous various-artist compilation albums, most recently the 2008 release of The Weather Channel Presents: Smooth Jazz II
.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/13

Sandy Koufax in 1965
left-handed former pitcher in Major League Baseball who played his entire career for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, from 1955 to 1966
.

Koufax's career peaked with a run of six outstanding seasons, before

MVP in 1963, and won the 1963, 1965, and 1966 Cy Young Awards by unanimous votes. He was the first major leaguer to pitch more than three no-hitters (including a perfect game
).

Among NL pitchers with at least 2,000 innings pitched who have debuted since 1913, he has the highest career winning percentage (.655) and had the lowest career ERA (2.76) until surpassed by Tom Seaver. His 2,396 career strikeouts ranked 7th in major league history upon his retirement. Retiring at the peak of his career, he became the youngest player ever elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Koufax is also known as one of the outstanding

Jewish athletes of his era in American professional sports. His decision not to pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because game day fell on Yom Kippur
, the Jewish Day of Atonement, garnered national attention as an example of conflict between social pressures and personal beliefs.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/14

Roman Vishniac, 1977
Holocaust
.

Vishniac was an extremely diverse photographer, an accomplished

time-lapse photography. Vishniac was very interested in history, especially that of his ancestors. In turn, he was strongly tied to his Jewish roots and was a Zionist
later in life.

Roman Vishniac won international acclaim for his photography: his pictures from the shtetlach and Jewish ghettos, celebrity portraits, and images of microscopic biology. He is known for his book A Vanished World, published in 1983, which was one of the first such pictorial documentations of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe from that period and also for his extreme humanism, respect and awe for life, sentiments that can be seen in all aspects of his work.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/15

I. M. Pei in Luxembourg, 2006
Chinese-American architect, often called a master of modern architecture. Born in Canton, China and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the gardens at Suzhou. In 1935 he moved to the United States and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school, but quickly transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was unhappy with the focus at both schools on Beaux-Arts architecture, and spent his free time researching the emerging architects, especially Le Corbusier. After graduating, he joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and became friends with the Bauhaus architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer
. In 1939, he married Eileen Loo, who had introduced him to the GSD community. They have been married for over seventy years, and have six children, including architect C.C. "Didi" Pei.

Pei has won a wide variety of prizes and awards in the field of architecture, including the

Pritzker Prize, sometimes called the Nobel Prize
of architecture.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/16

Pitt at 2008 premiere of Burn After Reading
Golden Globe Award
nominations, winning one. He has been described as one of the world's most attractive men, a label for which he has received substantial media attention.

Following a high-profile relationship with actress

relationship that has generated wide publicity. He and Jolie have six children—Maddox, Zahara, Pax, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne. Since beginning his relationship with Jolie, he has become increasingly involved in social issues both in the United States and internationally. Pitt owns a production company named Plan B Entertainment, whose productions include the 2007 Academy Award winning Best Picture, The Departed
.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/17

Davis in Now, Voyager (1942)
period films and occasional comedies, though her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas
.

Davis was the co-founder of the

greatest female stars of all time
.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/18

Grammy Awards and a Special Tony Award
.

Despite her professional triumphs, Garland battled personal problems throughout her life. Insecure about her appearance, her feelings were compounded by film executives who told her she was unattractive and manipulated her on-screen physical appearance. Garland was plagued by financial instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. She married five times, with her first four marriages ending in divorce. Garland died of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 47, leaving children Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft and Joey Luft.

In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a

greatest female stars in the history of American cinema
.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/19

Zappa performing in Ekeberghallen, Oslo, on January 16, 1977
Frank Vincent Zappa (/ˈzæpə/; December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, electronic, orchestral, and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist.

Zappa was married to Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman from 1960 to 1964. In 1967, he married Adelaide Gail Sloatman, with whom he remained until his death from prostate cancer in 1993. They had four children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen. Gail Zappa manages the businesses of her late husband under the name the Zappa Family Trust.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/20

CM Punk as one half of the World Tag Team Champions
Nexus
.

Punk initially came to prominence through his career on the professional wrestling independent circuit, primarily as a member of the Ring of Honor (ROH) roster, where he won the ROH Tag Team Championship, ROH World Championship, and was the first head trainer of the ROH wrestling school. In 2005, Punk signed a contract with WWE and was sent to its developmental promotion, Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW), where he won every championship available in the promotion.

Throughout his career, Punk has consistently used the

gimmick of being straight edge, a lifestyle he follows in real life. Depending on Punk's alignment as a crowd favorite or villain, he emphasizes different aspects of the culture to encourage the desired audience reaction
.

21-40

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/21

Jackson at the White House in 1984
philanthropist. Referred to as the King of Pop, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. His contribution to music, dance and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades. The eighth child of the Jackson family, he debuted on the professional music scene along with his brothers as a member of The Jackson 5
in the mid-1960s, and began his solo career in 1971.

Aspects of Jackson's personal life, including his changing

Sony Music Entertainment signed a US$
250 million deal with Jackson's estate to retain distribution rights to his recordings until 2017, and to release seven posthumous albums over the decade following his death.

Portal:United States/Selected culture biography/22

Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964
Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he expanded American values to include the vision of a color-blind society, and established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history. In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and stopping the Vietnam War. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday
in 1986.

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