• A Confession
• A Letter to a Hindu
• A Lost Opportunity
• A. N. Wilson
• A. S. Neill
• Academy Award
• Agrarianism
• Albert (short story)
• Albert J. Beveridge
• Alexander Drankov
• Alexander Herzen
• Alexandra Tolstaya
• Alyosha the Pot
• Anarchism
• Anarchism in Russia
• Anarchist violence
• Anarcho-pacifist
• Anarcho-primitivism
• Anglosphere
• Anna Karenina
• Anti-consumerism
• Anton Chekhov
• Aparigraha
• Asceticism
• Ashram
• Authority control
• Barter
• Battle of Austerlitz
• Battle of Borodino
• Bohemianism
• Boxer Rebellion
• Boyhood (novel)
• Buddha
• Buddhist
• Burton Holmes
• Car-free movement
• Childhood (novel)
• Christ
• Christian anarchism
• Christopher Plummer
• Confirmation bias
• Confucius
• Cossack
• Count
• Crimean War
• Croesus and Fate
• Cynicism
• Decembrist revolt
• Deep ecology
• Degrowth
• DIY ethic
• Doukhobor
• Downshifting
• Duane Elgin
• Dugald Semple
• E. F. Schumacher
• Ecological footprint
• Ecology movement
• Elisabeth Bohm
• Epic poetry
• Ernest Callenbach
• Esperanto
• Essay
• Excommunication
• Family Happiness
• Family name
• Father Sergius
• Food miles
• Forest gardening
• Francis of Assisi
• Freeganism
• French language
• Frugality
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• George Orwell
• Gift economy
• Global warming
• Great Commandment
• Green anarchism
• Gustave Flaubert
• Hadji Murat (novel)
• Hamlet
• Hans Denck
• Harlan Hubbard
• Helen Mirren
• Henry David Thoreau
• Hindu
• Hippie
• Ilya Repin
• Ilya Tolstoy
• Intentional living
• Internet Archive
• Internet Book List
• Itinerant
• James Joyce
• Jay Parini
• Jesus
• Jesus movement
• Jim Merkel
• Kazan University
• Kholstomer
• King Lear
• Kropotkin
• Leo Tolstoy
• Les Miserables
• Lev Lvovich Tolstoy
• LibriVox
• Literary realism
• Local currency
• Low-technology
• Macbeth
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Marcel Proust
• Master and Man
• Matthew 19 24
• Maxim Gorky
• Mendicant
• Mendicant orders
• Mikhail Bakunin
• Monasticism
• Moral reasoning
• Mother Earth News
• Name Authority File
• Napoleon I of France
• New Monasticism
• Nick Rosen
• No frills
• Nonviolence
• Novel
• Novelist
• Novella
• Off-the-grid
• Pacifism
• Patronymic
• Peace Pilgrim
• Peak oil
• Permaculture
• Peter Kropotkin
• Petr Chelčický
• Plain dress
• Plain people
• Play (theater)
• Playwright
• Pneumonia
• Portal Biography
• Portal Politics
• Portal Russia
• Project Gutenberg
• Promoting a Devil
• Property law
• Property right
• Proudhon
• Public domain
• Quench the Spark
• Realism (arts)
• Repentance (story)
• Resurrection (novel)
• Romeo and Juliet
• Russian Empire
• Russian language
• Russians
• Russo-Japanese War
• Saint Petersburg
• Sakyamuni
• Satish Kumar
• Schopenhauer
• Second lieutenant
• Self-sufficiency
• Sermon on the Mount
• Sevastapol Sketches
• Short story
• Simple living
• Slow Movement
• Small house movement
• Small Is Beautiful
• Social reformer
• Sophia Tolstaya
• Sovremennik
• Soyen Shaku
• State (polity)
• Suelo
• Summerhill School
• Sustainability
• Sustainable living
• Tax resistance
• Temperance (virtue)
• Template Leo Tolstoy
• The Cossacks (novel)
• The Devil (novel)
• The Forged Coupon
• The good life
• The Grain
• The Kreutzer Sonata
• The Last Station
• The Living Corpse
• The New York Times
• The Power of Half
• The Raid (story)
• The Snowstorm
• The Three Questions
• Thomas (activist)
• Thomas Mann
• Three Deaths
• Thrifting
• Tolstoy (family)
• Tolstoyan
• Tolstoyan movement
• Tom Hodgkinson
• Too Dear!
• Transition Towns
• Tula, Russia
• Vasily Botkin
• Veganism
• Vegetarianism
• Vep Tolstoi Lev
• Vicki Robin
• Victor Hugo
• Virginia Woolf
• Vladimir Chertkov
• Vladimir Nabokov
• Voluntary poverty
• Walden
• War and Peace
• Wendell Berry
• What Is Art?
• What Men Live By
• Wikipedia Persondata
• William Faulkner
• William Shakespeare
• Wisdom of Children
• Work–life balance
• WorldCat
• WP IPA for Russian
• WWOOF
• Yasnaya Polyana
• 
  

• 
  Battle of Austerlitz
  The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of Napoleon's greatest victories, where the French Empire effectively crushed the Third Coalition. On 2 December 1805 (20 November Old Style, 11 Frimaire An XIV, in the French Republican Calendar), a French army, commanded by Emperor Napoleon I, decisively defeated a Russo-Austrian army, commanded by Tsar Alexander I and Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, after nearly nine hours of difficult fighting. The battle took place near Austerlitz (Slavkov u Brna) about 10 km (6 mi) south-east of Brno in Moravia, at that time in the Austrian Empire (present day Czech Republic). The battle is often regarded as a tactical masterpiece.
  The French victory at Austerlitz effectively brought the Third Coalition to an end. On 26 December 1805, Austria and France signed the Treaty of Pressburg, which took Austria out of both the war and the Coalition, while it reinforced the earlier treaties between the two powers of Campo Formio and of Lunéville. The treaty confirmed the Austrian cession of lands in Italy and Bavaria to France and in Germany to Napoleon's German allies, imposed an indemnity of 40 million francs on the defeated Habsburgs, and allowed the defeated Russian troops free passage, with their arms and equipment, through hostile territories and back to their home soil. Victory at Austerlitz also permitted the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, a collection of German states intended as a buffer zone between France and central Europe. As a direct consequence of these events, the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist when, in 1806, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II abdicated the Imperial throne, keeping Francis I of Austria as his only official title. These achievements, however, did not establish a lasting peace on the continent. Prussian worries about growing French influence in Central Europe sparked the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806.
  
  wn.com/Battle_of_Austerlitz
• 
  Saint Petersburg
  Saint Petersburg (Russian: Санкт-Петербург, tr. Sankt-Peterburg; IPA: [sankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk] ( listen)) is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. In 1914 the name of the city was changed to Petrograd (Russian: Петроград; IPA: [pʲɪtrɐˈgrat]), in 1924 to Leningrad (Russian: Ленинград; IPA: [lʲɪnʲɪnˈgrat]) and in 1991 back to Saint Petersburg.
  In Russian literature, informal documents, and discourse, the "Saint" (Санкт-) is usually omitted, leaving Petersburg (Петербург, Peterburg). In common parlance Russians may drop "-burg" (-бург) as well, leaving only Peter (Питер, Russian: [ˈpʲitʲɪr]).
  Saint Petersburg was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 27 [O.S. 16] 1703. From 1713 to 1728 and from 1732 to 1918, Saint Petersburg was the Imperial capital of Russia. In 1918 the central government bodies moved from Saint Petersburg (then named Petrograd) to Moscow. It is Russia's second largest city after Moscow with almost 5 million inhabitants. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural center, and also an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
  
  wn.com/Saint_Petersburg
• 
  Yasnaya Polyana
  Coordinates: 54°04′34″N 37°31′34″E / 54.07611°N 37.52611°E / 54.07611; 37.52611
  Yasnaya Polyana (Russian: Я́сная Поля́на, literally: "Clear Glade") was the home of the writer Leo Tolstoy, where he was born, wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and is buried. Tolstoy called Yasnaya Polyana his "inaccessible literary stronghold". It is located 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) southwest of Tula, Russia and 200 kilometers (120 mi) from Moscow.
  In June 1921, the estate was nationalized and formally became his memorial museum. It was at first run by Alexandra Tolstaya, the writer's daughter. The current director of the museum is Vladimir Tolstoy, also one of Tolstoy's descendants. The museum contains Tolstoy's personal effects and movables, as well as his library of 22,000 volumes. The estate-museum contains the writer's mansion, the school he founded for peasant children and a park where Tolstoy's unadorned grave is found.
  The estate of Yasnaya Polyana was originally owned by the Kartsev family. At the end of the 18th century it was purchased by Prince Nikolai Volkonskiy, the grandfather of the writer, who created a formal French garden and an English landscape garden, as well as long alleys of birch and oak trees.
  
  wn.com/Yasnaya_Polyana

• A. N. Wilson
  Andrew Norman Wilson (born 27 October 1950) is an English writer and newspaper columnist, known for his critical biographies, novels, works of popular history and religious views. He is an occasional columnist for the Daily Mail and former columnist for the London Evening Standard, and has been an occasional contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Spectator and The Observer.
  Wilson was educated at Rugby School and New College, Oxford. Destined originally for ordination in the Church of England, Wilson entered St Stephen's House, the High Church theological hall at Oxford, but left at the end of his first year.
  In 1971 he married the Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones. They had two daughters and divorced in 1990.
  In the late 1980s he publicly stated that he was an atheist and published a pamphlet Against Religion in the Chatto & Windus CounterBlasts series; however, religious and ecclesiological themes continue to inform his work. For nearly 30 years he continued to be both a sceptic, and a prominent atheist.
  
  wn.com/A._N._Wilson
• 
  Albert J. Beveridge
  Albert Jeremiah Beveridge (October 6, 1862 – April 27, 1927) was an American historian and United States Senator from Indiana.
  Albert J. Beveridge was born October 6, 1862 in Highland County, Ohio and his parents moved to Indiana soon after his birth. Both of his parents were of English descent. His childhood was one of hard work. Securing an education with difficulty, he eventually became a law clerk in Indianapolis. He was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1887 and practiced law in Indianapolis.
  Beveridge graduated from Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University) in 1885, with a Ph.B. degree. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He was known as a compelling orator, delivering speeches supporting territorial expansion by the U.S. and increasing the power of the federal government.
  Beveridge entered politics in 1884 by speaking on behalf of Presidential candidate James G. Blaine and was prominent in later campaigns, particularly in that of 1896, when his speeches attracted general attention. In 1899, Beveridge was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican and served until 1911. He supported Theodore Roosevelt's progressive views and was the keynote speaker at the new Progressive Party convention which nominated Roosevelt for U.S. President in 1912.
  
  wn.com/Albert_J._Beveridge
• 
  Alexander Drankov
  Alexander Osipovich Drankov (1886–1949) was a Russian photographer, cameraman, film producer, and one of the pioneers of the Russian pre-revolutionary cinematography.
  The exact date of birth and birthplace of Alexander Drankov are unknown. According to some accounts, he was born in southern parts of Russia (possibly in Odessa) in 1886. In the early 20th century, Drankov owned a dancing school in Sevastopol, which fed all of his family. Later on, he took interest in photography and soon became a professional in this craft. Drankov moved to Saint Petersburg, where he would earn fame for his photographic talent and be awarded the title of the Purveyor of the Royal Court of His Imperial Highness for his quality photographs of Nicholas II. Also, Drankov managed to make photographic work much cheaper and open a chain of no less than 50 studios, where they took photos under amplified electric lighting, thus reducing the cost of the whole photographing process. Subsequently, Drankov became a press photographer for The Times and Parisian L'Illustration and obtained a journalist accreditation at the State Duma.
  
  wn.com/Alexander_Drankov
• 
  Alexander Herzen
  Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ива́нович Ге́рцен) (April 6 [O.S. 25 March] 1812 – January 21 [O.S. 9 January] 1870) was a Russian pro-Western writer and thinker known as the "father of Russian socialism", and one of the main fathers of agrarian populism (being an ideological ancestor of the Narodniki, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Trudoviks and the agrarian American Populist Party). He is held responsible for creating a political climate leading to the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. His autobiography My Past and Thoughts, written with grace, energy, and ease, is often considered the best specimen of that genre in Russian literature. He also published the important social novel Who is to Blame? (1845–46).
  Herzen was an illegitimate child of a rich Russian landowner, Ivan Yakovlev, by a young German Protestant woman, Henriette Wilhelmina Luisa Haag from Stuttgart. Yakovlev supposedly gave his son the surname Herzen because he was a "child of his heart" (German Herz).
  He was first cousin to Count Sergei Lvovich Levitsky (1819–1898, Moscow, Russian: Сергей Львович Львов-Левицкий), considered the patriarch of Russian photography and one of Europe's most important early photographic pioneers, inventors and innovators. In 1860, Levitsky would immortalize Herzen in a famous photo capturing the writer's essence and being.
  
  wn.com/Alexander_Herzen
• 
  Alexandra Tolstaya
  Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya (Russian: Александра Львовна Толстая), (July 18, 1884 – September 26, 1979), also known by her nickname Sasha, was the youngest daughter and secretary of the noted Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.
  Although Alexandra Lvovna shared with her father the doctrine of non-violence, she felt it was her duty to take part in the events of World War I. For her courage, the Russian government awarded her three St George Medals and the rank of colonel.
  The Bolsheviks imprisoned Alexandra in 1920, but she was installed as the director of the Tolstoy museum in Yasnaya Polyana the next year. She left Soviet Union in 1929, and settled in the United States, where she founded the Tolstoy Foundation.
  In later years, she helped many Russian intellectuals (notably Vladimir Nabokov and Sergei Rachmaninoff) to escape Bolshevik persecution and to settle in America.
  
  wn.com/Alexandra_Tolstaya
• 
  Anton Chekhov
  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian: Анто́н Па́влович Че́хов, pronounced [ɐnˈton ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ˈtɕexəf]; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practised as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."
  Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text."
  
  wn.com/Anton_Chekhov
• 
  Buddha
  Gautama Buddha or Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम बुद्ध; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. The word Buddha is a title for the first awakened being in an era. In most Buddhist traditions, Siddhartha Gautama is regarded as the Supreme Buddha (P. sammāsambuddha, S. samyaksaṃbuddha) of our age, "Buddha" meaning "awakened one" or "the enlightened one." Gautama Buddha may also be referred to as Śākyamuni (Sanskrit: शाक्यमुनि "Sage of the Śākyas"). The Buddha found a Middle Way that ameliorated the extreme asceticism found in the Sramana religions.
  The time of Gautama's birth and death are uncertain: most early 20th-century historians dated his lifetime as c. 563 BCE to 483 BCE, but more recent opinion dates his death to between 486 and 483 BCE or, according to some, between 411 and 400 BCE. UNESCO lists Lumbini, Nepal, as a world heritage site and birthplace of Gautama Buddha. There are also claims about birth place of Gautama Buddha to be Kapileswara, Orissa or Kapilavastu at Piprahwa, Uttar Pradesh He later taught throughout regions of eastern India such as Magadha and Kośala.
  
  wn.com/Buddha
• 
  Buddhist
  Buddhism is a religion and philosophy indigenous to the Indian subcontinent and encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs, and practices largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, who is commonly known as the Buddha (meaning "the awakened one" in Sanskrit and Pāli). The Buddha lived and taught in the eastern part of Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He is recognized by Buddhists as an awakened or enlightened teacher who shared his insights to help sentient beings end ignorance (avidyā), craving (taṇhā), and suffering (dukkha), by recognizing dependent origination and sunyata, and attain Nirvana.
  Two major branches of Buddhism are recognized: Theravada ("The School of the Elders") and Mahayana ("The Great Vehicle"). Theravada has a widespread following in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Mahayana is found throughout East Asia and includes the traditions of Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Shingon, Tiantai (Tendai) and Shinnyo-en. In some classifications, Vajrayana—practiced mainly in Tibet and Mongolia, and adjacent parts of China and Russia—is recognized as a third branch, while others classify it as a part of Mahayana. There are other categorisations of these three Vehicles or Yanas.
  
  wn.com/Buddhist
• 
  Burton Holmes
  Burton Holmes (1870–1958) was an American traveler, photographer and filmmaker, who coined the term "travelogue".
  Travel stories, slide shows, and motion pictures were all in existence before Holmes began his career, as was the profession of travel lecturer; but Holmes was the first person to put all of these elements together into documentary travel lectures.^{[citation needed]}
  Burton Holmes was born into a middle-class Chicago family, the son of a banker. His interest in travel was sparked at the age of nine when his grandmother took him to hear a then-famous travel lecturer, John L. Stoddard (whom Holmes was to meet on a subsequent trip abroad). In 1890, Holmes accompanied his grandmother on a trip to Europe and when he returned showed slides of his trip at the Chicago Camera Club, of which he was a member. Holmes wrote of this event: "To take the edge off the silence, to keep the show moving, I wrote an account of my journey and read it, as the stereopticon man changed slides."
  Despite the success of this event, which grossed $350 for the club, it wasn't until several years later that Holmes decided to set himself up as a travel lecturer. In 1893, after sending out 2000 invitations to a select group of Chicagoans, Holmes gave two sold-out talks about a recent trip to Japan.
  
  wn.com/Burton_Holmes
• 
  Christopher Plummer
  Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer, CC (born December 13, 1929) is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. He made his film debut in 1958's Stage Struck, and notable early film performances include The Night of the Generals, The Return of the Pink Panther, and The Man Who Would Be King.
  In a career that spans seven decades and includes substantial roles in each of the dramatic arts, Plummer is probably best known to audiences as the autocratic widower Captain Georg Ludwig von Trapp in the hit 1965 musical film The Sound of Music alongside Julie Andrews. Plummer has also ventured into various television projects, including the legendary miniseries The Thorn Birds.
  His most recent film roles include the The Insider as Mike Wallace, the Disney-Pixar 2009 film Up as Charles Muntz, the Shane Acker production 9 as 1, The Last Station as Leo Tolstoy, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as Doctor Parnassus, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as Henrik Vanger, and Beginners as Hal.
  Plummer has won numerous awards and accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a SAG Award, and a BAFTA Award. With his win at the age of 82 in 2012 for Beginners, Plummer is the oldest actor ever to win an Academy Award.
  
  wn.com/Christopher_Plummer
• 
  Confucius
  Confucius (551–479 BC) was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period of Chinese history.
  The philosophy of Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, and sincerity. His followers competed successfully with many other schools during the Hundred Schools of Thought era only to be suppressed in favor of the Legalists during the Qin Dynasty. Following the victory of Han over Chu after the collapse of Qin, Confucius's thoughts received official sanction and were further developed into a system known as Confucianism.
  Confucius is traditionally credited with having authored or edited many of the Chinese classic texts including all of the Five Classics, but modern scholars are cautious of attributing specific assertions to Confucius himself. Aphorisms concerning his teachings were compiled in the Analects, but only many years after his death.
  Confucius's principles had a basis in common Chinese tradition and belief. He championed strong family loyalty, ancestor worship, respect of elders by their children (and in traditional interpretations of husbands by their wives), and family as a basis for ideal government. He espoused the well-known principle "Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself", an early version of the Golden Rule.
  
  wn.com/Confucius
• 
  Duane Elgin
  Duane Elgin is an American author, speaker, educator, consultant, and trans-partisan media activist.
  Duane Elgin was born in 1943 and grew up on a family farm a few miles from the small town of Wilder, Idaho. Helping his family grow an apple orchard as well as diverse row crops kept him busy working with the land until he was 23. He attended the Sorbonne in Paris for one semester (1963) and graduated with a liberal arts BA from the College of Idaho in 1966. He then received an MBA from the Wharton School of Business in 1968, and an MA in economic-history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969.
  In the early 1970s, Elgin worked as a senior staff member of a joint “Presidential-Congressional Commission on Population Growth the American Future” in Washington, D.C. The task of the Commission was to look ahead from 1970 to 2000 and explore challenges of urbanization and population growth.
  Elgin then moved to California and worked as a senior social scientist with the “futures group” at the major think-tank, the Stanford Research Institute (later to become SRI International). There he co-authored numerous studies of the long-range future for clients ranging from foundations and key government agencies to major corporations; for example, Anticipating Future National and International Problem Areas (for the President’s Science Advisor), Alternative Futures for Environmental Policy Planning (for the Environmental Protection Agency), and Limits to the Management of Large, Complex Systems (for the President’s Science Advisor). (See citations below in writing section.)
  
  wn.com/Duane_Elgin
• E. F. Schumacher
  Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher (16 August 1911 – 4 September 1977) was an internationally influential economic thinker, statistician and economist in Britain, serving as Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board for two decades. His ideas became popularized in much of the English-speaking world during the 1970s. He is best known for his critique of Western economies and his proposals for human-scale, decentralized and appropriate technologies. According to The Times Literary Supplement, his 1973 book Small Is Beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered is among the 100 most influential books published since World War II. and was soon translated into many languages, bringing him international fame. Schumacher's basic development theories have been summed up in the catch-phrases Intermediate Size and Intermediate Technology. In 1977 he published A Guide For The Perplexed as a critique of materialist scientism and as an exploration of the nature and organization of knowledge. Together with long-time friends and associates like Professor Mansur Hoda, Schumacher founded the Intermediate Technology Development Group (now Practical Action) in 1966.
  
  wn.com/E._F._Schumacher
• 
  Elisabeth Bohm
  Elisabeth Bohm or Elisaveta Merkuryevna Bem (Russian: Елизавета Меркурьевна Бём; 1843-1914) was a Russian painter, the most successful prominent author of postcards in 19th century Russia.
  Elisabeth was born in Saint Petersburg to a noble Russian family of Endaurov (Эндауров) that had a Tatar origin. She spent her childhood in the estate of her parents: village Schiptsy, Poshekhonsky uezd, Yaroslavl Governorate. At the age of 14 she entered the School of Painting at the Society for Promotion of Artists (Школа Поощрения Художеств) there she studied under Ivan Kramskoi and Pavel Chistyakov. In 1865 she graduated from the school with the Large Silver Medal. She took private lessons from Kramskoi and studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts there she was awarded a Large Encouragement Medal for her animal paintings.
  Elisabeth married a prominent Russian-Hungarian violinist Ludwig Bohm, professor of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Elisabeth painted many watercolors, illustrated children books of the Folk Library (Народная библиотека) series there she was introduced by Leo Tolstoy. She also experimented with glass and ceramics. For her Silhouettes, Etchings and works of glass she received medals of the World Fairs in Chicago of 1893, Paris of 1900, Munich of 1902 and Milan of 1906 (gold medal).
  
  wn.com/Elisabeth_Bohm
• 
  Ernest Callenbach
  Ernest Callenbach (April 3, 1929 – April 16, 2012) was an American writer and simple living adherent.
  Born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, he attended the University of Chicago, where he was drawn into the then 'new wave' of serious attention to film as an art form. After six months in Paris at the Sorbonne, watching four films a day, he returned to Chicago and earned a Master’s degree in English and Communications.
  Callenbach then moved to California. From 1955 to 1991, he was on the staff of the University of California Press (Berkeley). A general copywriter for a number of years, he edited the Press's Film Quarterly from 1958 until 1991. He also occasionally taught film courses at U.C. and at San Francisco State University.
  For many years Callenbach edited the Natural History Guides at the U.C. Press. He began to take environmental issues and their connections to human value systems, social patterns, and lifestyles just as seriously as he had taken film. He was heavily influenced by Edward Abbey. He is therefore known as an author of green books, namely as author of the ecological utopias Ecotopia (1975) and Ecotopia Emerging (1981). (While his novel popularized the term "ecotopia," it was actually coined by the ethnographer E. L. Anderson.)
  
  wn.com/Ernest_Callenbach
• 
  Francis of Assisi
  Saint Francis of Assisi (born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone; 1181/1182 – October 3, 1226) was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher. He founded the men's Franciscan Order, the women’s Order of St. Clare, and the lay Third Order of Saint Francis. St. Francis is one of the most venerated religious figures in history.
  Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant in Assisi, and he lived the high-spirited life typical of a wealthy young man, even fighting as a soldier for Assisi. While going off to war in 1204, Francis had a vision that directed him back to Assisi, where he lost his taste for his worldly life. On a pilgrimage to Rome, he begged with the beggars at St. Peter's. The experience moved him to live in poverty. Francis returned home, began preaching on the streets, and soon amassed a following. His order was endorsed by Pope Innocent III in 1210. He then founded the Order of Poor Clares, which was an enclosed order for women, as well as the Third Order of Brothers and Sisters of Penance. In 1219, he went to Egypt in an attempt to convert the Sultan. By this point, the Franciscan Order had grown to such an extent that its primitive organizational structure was no longer sufficient. He returned to Italy to organize the order. Once his organization was endorsed by the Pope, he withdrew increasingly from external affairs. In 1223, Francis arranged for the first Christmas manger scene. In 1224, he received the stigmata, making him the first recorded person to bear the wounds of Christ's Passion. He died in 1226 while preaching Psalm 141.
  
  wn.com/Francis_of_Assisi
• 
  Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (Russian: Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский; IPA: [ˈfʲodər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj] ( listen); 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881) sometimes translated as Dostoevsky, was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. A Slavophile, nationalist and monarchist, he criticised the bourgeois, pre-materialist West and nihilism in many of his works. Although Dostoyevsky wrote books in the mid-1850s which were influenced by realist and romanticist writers, most notably by Dickens, Gogol and Balzac, his best remembered work was done in his last years, including such masterpieces as Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoyevsky overall wrote 11 complete novels, 3 novellas, 17 short novels and 3 essays. He is often acknowledged by critics as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature.
  
  wn.com/Fyodor_Dostoyevsky
• 
  George Orwell
  Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a belief in democratic socialism.
  Considered perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945), which together have sold more copies than any two books by any other 20th-century author. His book Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, is widely acclaimed, as are his numerous essays on politics, literature, language and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
  Orwell's influence on popular and political culture endures, and several of his neologisms, along with the term Orwellian—a byword for totalitarian or manipulative social practices—have entered the vernacular.
  
  wn.com/George_Orwell
• 
  Gustave Flaubert
  Gustave Flaubert (French pronunciation: [ɡystav flobɛʁ]) (December 12, 1821 – May 8, 1880) was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.
  Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime department of Upper Normandy, in northern France. He was the second son of Achille-Cléophas Flaubert (1784–1846), a surgeon, and Anne Justine Caroline (née Fleuriot) (1793–1872). He began writing at an early age, as early as eight according to some sources.
  He was educated at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen. and did not leave until 1840, when he went to Paris to study law. In Paris, he was an indifferent student and found the city distasteful. He made a few acquaintances, including Victor Hugo. Toward the close of 1840, he traveled in the Pyrenees and Corsica. In 1846, after an attack of epilepsy, he left Paris and abandoned the study of law.
  
  wn.com/Gustave_Flaubert
• 
  Hans Denck
  Hans Denck (c. 1495 – November 27, 1527) was a German theologian and Anabaptist leader during the Reformation.
  Denck was born in 1495 in the Bavarian town of Habach. After a classical education, he became headmaster at the St. Sebaldus school in Nuremberg in 1523. He became involved in the trial of the artist brothers Sebald and Barthel Beham, who were expelled from the city in 1524 at the instigation of Andreas Osiander.
  In 1525 he went to Augsburg and from there he fled to Strasbourg in 1526 where he stayed with Ludwig Haetzer, a like-minded Anabaptist. He was also expelled from there, and after a long time of wandering in Southern Germany and Switzerland he found refuge with Johannes Oekolampad in Basel. After attending the Martyrs' Synod in Augsburg, he returned to Basel where he died in 1527 of bubonic plague. In his writings he fiercely attacked the reformers; together with Haetzer he translated The Prophets into German (Worms 1527).
  For Denck the living, inner word of God was more important than the letters of the Scripture. He thought of the Bible as a human product, the individual books being different witnesses of one truth. He did not value the scripture as the source of all true religious knowledge, but also the spirit that spoke from within each person. For Denck the sacraments were only symbols: baptism was a sign of commitment, communion a ceremony of remembrance.
  
  wn.com/Hans_Denck
• Harlan Hubbard
  Harlan Hubbard (January 4, 1900 - January 16, 1988) was an American artist and author who lived a simple life that Henry David Thoreau only experimented with.
  Hubbard was born in Bellevue, Kentucky. His father died when Harlan was only seven. Soon thereafter, his mother moved him to New York City to be with his two older brothers who were living there at the time. (One of his brothers, Lucien Hubbard (1888-1971), became a famous Hollywood screenwriter.) Hubbard attended Childs High School in the Bronx and received his art education from New York's National Academy of Design and the Art Academy of Cincinnati. In 1919, he returned with his mother to northern Kentucky and settled in Fort Thomas, Kentucky.
  As a young man, Hubbard saw the industrial development in America as a threat to the natural world and he thoroughly rejected consumer culture. In 1929 he started keeping a journal into which he poured his thoughts on society. In 1943, he married Anna Eikenhout (she died May 3, 1986). The following year they built a shantyboat at Brent, Kentucky and traveled down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, ending their journey in the Louisiana bayous in 1951. His book Shantyboat recounts the eight-year journey from Brent to New Orleans. His book Shantyboat in the Bayous, which was published in 1990, completes the story.
  
  wn.com/Harlan_Hubbard
• 
  Helen Mirren
  Dame Helen Mirren, DBE (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; 26 July 1945) is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.
  Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Chiswick, West London. Her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov (1913–1980), was of Russian origin, and her mother, Kitty (née Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda Rogers; 1909–1996), was English. Mirren's paternal grandfather, Colonel Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov, was in the Tsarist Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. He later became a diplomat, and was negotiating an arms deal in Britain, when he and his family were stranded during the Russian Revolution. The former diplomat became a London cab driver to support his family.
  His son, Helen Mirren's father, changed the family name to the Scottish-sounding Mirren in the 1950s and became known as Basil Mirren. He played the viola with the London Philharmonic before World War II, and later drove a cab and was a driving-test examiner, before becoming a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport. Mirren's mother was from West Ham, East London, and was the 13th of 14 children born to a butcher whose father had been the butcher to Queen Victoria. Mirren considers her upbringing to have been "very anti-monarchist".
  
  wn.com/Helen_Mirren
• 
  Henry David Thoreau
  Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
  Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.
  
  wn.com/Henry_David_Thoreau
• 
  James Joyce
  James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominently the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.
  Joyce was born to a middle class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College Dublin. In his early twenties he emigrated permanently to continental Europe, living in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal."
  
  wn.com/James_Joyce
• Jay Parini
  Jay Parini (born 1948) is an American writer and academic. He is known for novels and poetry, biography and criticism.
  He was born in Pittston, Pennsylvania, and brought up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Lafayette College in 1970 and was awarded a doctorate by the University of St. Andrews in 1975. He taught at Dartmouth College from 1975 to 1982, and has taught since 1982 at Middlebury College, where he is the D.E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College, a liberal arts college in Savannah that was founded in February, 2010. He is married to the writer and psychologist Devon Jersild; they have three sons.
  He is a regular contributor to various journals and newspapers, including The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Guardian (U.K.). In 1976, he co-founded New England Review with Sydney Lea. In 1995 he was appointed literary executor for Gore Vidal.
  Parini's 1990 novel The Last Station was adapted into a film that was released in December 2009.
  
  wn.com/Jay_Parini
• 
  Jesus
  Jesus ( /ˈdʒiːzəs/; Greek: Ἰησοῦς; 7–2 BC/BCE to 30–36 AD/CE), also referred to as Jesus Christ or simply Christ, is the central figure of Christianity and most Christian denominations venerate him as God the Son incarnated. In Islam, Jesus (in Arabic: عيسى‎ in Islamic usage, commonly transliterated as Isa) is considered one of God's important prophets.
  Most modern historians agree that Jesus existed and was a Jewish teacher from Galilee in Roman Judaea, who was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate. Scholars have offered competing descriptions and portraits of Jesus, which at times share a number of overlapping attributes, such as a rabbi, a charismatic healer, the leader of an apocalyptic movement, a self-described Messiah, a sage and philosopher, or a social reformer who preached of the "Kingdom of God" as a means for personal and egalitarian social transformation. Scholars have correlated the New Testament accounts with non-Christian historical records to arrive at an estimated chronology of Jesus' life.
  
  wn.com/Jesus
• 
  Kropotkin
  Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (Russian: Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин; 9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geographer, writer, and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists.
  Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between workers. He wrote many books, pamphlets and articles, the most prominent being The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories and Workshops, and his principal scientific offering, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. He also contributed the article on anarchism to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition.
  Peter Kropotkin was born in Moscow, into the highest level of the Russian aristocracy. His mother was the daughter of a Cossack general. His father, Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, was a prince in Smolensk, of the Rurik dynasty which had ruled Russia before the rise of the Romanovs. Kropotkin's father owned large tracts of land and nearly 1200 male serfs in three provinces.
  
  wn.com/Kropotkin
• 
  Leo Tolstoy
  Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й, pronounced [lʲev nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj] ( listen); known in the Anglosphere as Leo Tolstoy) (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.
  His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
  
  wn.com/Leo_Tolstoy
• 
  Lev Lvovich Tolstoy
  Lev Lvovich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Львович Толстой 1869 Yasnaya Polyana-1945 Sweden) was a son of Leo Tolstoy and a Russian writer.
  Lev L’vovich, whom his father once called “Leo Tolstoy, Junior”, was a fairly well known and respected belletristic author and playwright in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Although he had enjoyed good relations with his parents, by the 1890s Lev L’vovich had come to doubt his father’s religious and moral teachings, eventually becoming an ardent monarchist and Russian patriot.
  While living in exile after the Russian Revolution in Sweden, he became a vocal and sometimes harsh critic of his father’s teachings. He continued to write there, but also received attention as an artist and sculptor: he participated in numerous exhibits, where his busts of his father, Benito Mussolini and Herbert Hoover brought renown.
  He died in Helsingborg, Sweden on October 18, 1945.
  
  wn.com/Lev_Lvovich_Tolstoy
• 
  Mahatma Gandhi
  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (pronounced: [ˈmoːɦənd̪aːs ˈkərəmtʃənd̪ ˈɡaːnd̪ʱi]; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was the preeminent leader of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India. Employing non-violent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for non-violence, civil rights and freedom across the world.
  Son of a senior government official, Gandhi was born and raised in a Hindu Bania community in coastal Gujarat, and trained in law in London. Gandhi became famous by fighting for the civil rights of Muslim and Hindu Indians in South Africa, using the new techniques of non-violent civil disobedience that he developed. Returning to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants to protest excessive land-taxes. A lifelong opponent of "communalism" (i.e. basing politics on religion) he reached out widely to all religious groups. He became a leader of Muslims protesting the declining status of the Caliphate. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, increasing economic self-reliance, and above all for achieving Swaraj—the independence of India from British domination.
  
  wn.com/Mahatma_Gandhi
• 
  Marcel Proust
  Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (French pronunciation: [maʁsɛl pʁust]; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past). It was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.
  Proust was born in Auteuil (the southern sector of Paris' then-rustic 16th arrondissement) at the home of his great-uncle, two months after the Treaty of Frankfurt formally ended the Franco-Prussian War. His birth took place during the violence that surrounded the suppression of the Paris Commune, and his childhood corresponds with the consolidation of the French Third Republic. Much of In Search of Lost Time concerns the vast changes, most particularly the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the middle classes that occurred in France during the Third Republic and the fin de siècle.
  Proust's father, Achille Adrien Proust, was a prominent pathologist and epidemiologist, responsible for studying and attempting to remedy the causes and movements of cholera through Europe and Asia; he was the author of many articles and books on medicine and hygiene. Proust's mother, Jeanne Clémence Weil, was the daughter of a rich and cultured Jewish family from Alsace. She was literate and well-read; her letters demonstrate a well-developed sense of humour, and her command of English was sufficient for her to provide the necessary assistance to her son's later attempts to translate John Ruskin. Proust was raised in his father's Catholic faith. He was baptized (on August 5, 1871, at the church of Saint-Louis d'Antin) and later confirmed as a Catholic, but he never formally practiced that faith.
  
  wn.com/Marcel_Proust
• 
  Maxim Gorky
  Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), primarily known as Maxim Gorky (Russian: Макси́м Го́рький), was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.
  Gorky was born in Nizhny Novgorod and became an orphan at the age of nine. In 1880, at the age of twelve, he ran away from home in an effort to find his grandmother. Gorky was brought up by his grandmother. Her death deeply affected him, and after an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing.
  As a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida). The name is suggestive of "cloak-and-dagger" by the similarity to the Greek chlamys, "cloak"). He began using the pseudonym Gorky (literally "bitter") in 1892, while working in Tiflis for the newspaper Кавказ (The Caucasus). The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky's first book Очерки и рассказы (Essays and Stories) in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalization, but also their inward spark of humanity.
  
  wn.com/Maxim_Gorky
• 
  Mikhail Bakunin
  Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (Russian: Михаи́л Алекса́ндрович Баку́нин; IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil ˌbaˈkunʲin]; 30 May [O.S. 18 May] 1814 – 1 July 1876) was a well-known Russian revolutionary and philosopher, theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up in Premukhino, a family estate near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists, leading to enthusiasm for the philosophy of Fichte. From Fichte, Bakunin went on to immerse himself in the works of Hegel, the most influential thinker among German intellectuals at the time. That led to his wholehearted embrace of Hegelianism, as he became bedazzled by Hegel's famous maxim; "Everything that exists is rational". In 1840 Bakunin traveled to St. Petersburg and Berlin, preparing himself for a professorship in philosophy or history at the University of Moscow.
  Bakunin moved from Berlin, in 1842, to Dresden. Eventually he arrived in Paris, where he met George Sand, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx. He was eventually deported from France for speaking against Russia's oppression of Poland. In 1849 he was apprehended in Dresden for his participation in the Czech rebellion of 1848. He was turned over to Russia where he was imprisoned in Peter-Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg. He remained there until 1857, when he was exiled to a work camp in Siberia. Escaping to Japan, the USA and finally ending up in London for a short time, he worked with Herzen on the journal Kolokol ("The Bell"). In 1863, he left to join the insurrection in Poland, but he failed to reach his destination and spent some time in Switzerland and Italy. Despite his criminal status, Bakunin gained great influence with the youth in Russia, and all of Europe. In 1870, he was involved in the insurrection in Lyon, which foreshadowed the Paris Commune.
  
  wn.com/Mikhail_Bakunin
• 
  Napoleon I of France
  Napoleon Bonaparte (French: Napoléon Bonaparte [napoleɔ̃ bɔnɑpaʁt]) (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the latter stages of the French Revolution. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815. His legal reform, the Napoleonic Code, has been a major influence on many civil law jurisdictions worldwide, but he is best remembered for his role in the wars led against France by a series of coalitions, the so-called Napoleonic Wars. He established hegemony over most of continental Europe and sought to spread the ideals of the French Revolution, while consolidating an imperial monarchy which restored aspects of the deposed Ancien Régime. Due to his success in these wars, often against numerically superior enemies, he is generally regarded as one of the greatest military commanders of all time and his campaigns are studied at military academies throughout much of the world.
  Napoleon was born in Corsica to parents of noble Genoese ancestry, and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France. He rose to prominence under the French First Republic and led successful campaigns against the First and Second Coalitions arrayed against France. In 1799, he staged a coup d'état and installed himself as First Consul; five years later the French Senate proclaimed him emperor. In the first decade of the 19th century, the French Empire under Napoleon engaged in a series of conflicts—the Napoleonic Wars—involving every major European power.
  
  wn.com/Napoleon_I_of_France
• Nick Rosen
  Nick Rosen is an author, campaigner and award-winning documentary-maker. His latest book Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America is published by Penguin Books and was released July 27, 2010.
  His series of short films about Chinese Billionaires went out on BBC World, and is on the BBC web site at bbc.com/oneinabillion
  His book How To Live Off-Grid, published by Doubleday June 2007, is a guide to escaping the rat race; part of an ecological campaign to change the rules on planning permission via his website Off-Grid.net started in 1996.
  He is making a documentary series based on both the books, featuring off-grid households around the US and the UK.
  In the early nineties, Nick became a freelance journalist, primarily writing for The Times and The Guardian. It was during this period that he met Katharine Hamnett and co-founded the short lived eco magazine TOMORROW.
  In 1992, Rosen formed a TV production company, Vivum, and began to make documentaries for the ITV First Tuesday series. In 1992-3 he produced Brezhnev's Daughter, a documentary about the way the Nomenklatura were coming to terms with the new order in Russia. It won Best International Production prize at the NY Film and TV Festival.
  
  wn.com/Nick_Rosen
• 
  Peace Pilgrim
  Peace Pilgrim (July 18, 1908 – July 7, 1981) born Mildred Lisette Norman, was an American pacifist, vegetarian, and peace activist. In 1952, she became the first woman to walk the entire length of the Appalachian Trail in one season. Starting on January 1, 1953, in Pasadena, California, she adopted the name "Peace Pilgrim" and walked across the United States for 28 years.
  A transcript of a 1964 conversation with Peace Pilgrim from a broadcast on KPFK radio in Los Angeles, California, was published as "Steps Toward Inner Peace". She stopped counting miles in that year, having walked more than 40,000 km (25,000 mi) for peace.
  Mildred Norman Ryder was born on a poultry farm in Egg Harbor City, New Jersey, in 1908, the oldest of three children. Her mother, Josephine Marie Ranch, was a tailor, and her father, Ernest Norman, a carpenter. Although poor, the family were well-thought-of in a community of German immigrants, whose relatives originally settled the area after escaping Germany in 1855.
  
  wn.com/Peace_Pilgrim
• 
  Peter Kropotkin
  Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (Russian: Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин; 9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geographer, writer, and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists.
  Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between workers. He wrote many books, pamphlets and articles, the most prominent being The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories and Workshops, and his principal scientific offering, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. He also contributed the article on anarchism to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition.
  Peter Kropotkin was born in Moscow, into the highest level of the Russian aristocracy. His mother was the daughter of a Cossack general. His father, Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, was a prince in Smolensk, of the Rurik dynasty which had ruled Russia before the rise of the Romanovs. Kropotkin's father owned large tracts of land and nearly 1200 male serfs in three provinces.
  
  wn.com/Peter_Kropotkin
• 
  Petr Chelčický
  Petr Chelčický (Czech pronunciation: [ˈpɛtr̩ ˈxɛltʃɪtskiː]) (c. 1390 – c. 1460) was a Christian and political leader and author in 15th century Bohemia (now the Czech Republic).
  Petr Chelčický is thought to have been born in Chelčice, southern Bohemia in about 1390, although one theory puts his birth as early as 1374. Very little is known about his personal history. Different historians have called him a serf, an independent farmer, a squire, a nobleman, a cobbler, a priest, and a Waldensian. On one occasion, Chelčický called himself a peasant, but this description is at odds with his ability to live in Prague from 1419–1421, his rudimentary knowledge of Latin, and the time he was able to devote to literary, political, and religious pursuits. It is certain that he was unusually literate for a medieval man without a regular academic education. After 1421 he lived and farmed in his native village of Chelčice, near Vodňany. He produced 56 known works, but the majority remain unpublished and inaccessible except in the original manuscripts. His thinking was influenced by Thomas of Štítný, John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, and the Waldensian tradition. He died around 1460.
  
  wn.com/Petr_Chelčický
• 
  Proudhon
  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ ʒɔzɛf pʁudɔ̃]; 15 January 1809 – 19 January 1865) was a French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism. After the events of 1848 he began to call himself a federalist.
  Proudhon, who was born in Besançon, was a printer who taught himself Latin in order to better print books in the language. His best-known assertion is that Property is Theft!, contained in his first major work, What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and Government (Qu'est-ce que la propriété? Recherche sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement), published in 1840. The book's publication attracted the attention of the French authorities. It also attracted the scrutiny of Karl Marx, who started a correspondence with its author. The two influenced each other: they met in Paris while Marx was exiled there. Their friendship finally ended when Marx responded to Proudhon's The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty with the provocatively titled The Poverty of Philosophy. The dispute became one of the sources of the split between the anarchist and Marxist wings of the International Working Men's Association. Some, such as Edmund Wilson, have contended that Marx's attack on Proudhon had its origin in the latter's defense of Karl Grün, whom Marx bitterly disliked but who had been preparing translations of Proudhon's work.
  
  wn.com/Proudhon
• 
  Sakyamuni
  Gautama Buddha or Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम बुद्ध; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. The word Buddha is a title for the first awakened being in an era. In most Buddhist traditions, Siddhartha Gautama is regarded as the Supreme Buddha (P. sammāsambuddha, S. samyaksaṃbuddha) of our age, "Buddha" meaning "awakened one" or "the enlightened one." Gautama Buddha may also be referred to as Śākyamuni (Sanskrit: शाक्यमुनि "Sage of the Śākyas"). The Buddha found a Middle Way that ameliorated the extreme asceticism found in the Sramana religions.
  The time of Gautama's birth and death are uncertain: most early 20th-century historians dated his lifetime as c. 563 BCE to 483 BCE, but more recent opinion dates his death to between 486 and 483 BCE or, according to some, between 411 and 400 BCE. UNESCO lists Lumbini, Nepal, as a world heritage site and birthplace of Gautama Buddha. There are also claims about birth place of Gautama Buddha to be Kapileswara, Orissa or Kapilavastu at Piprahwa, Uttar Pradesh He later taught throughout regions of eastern India such as Magadha and Kośala.
  
  wn.com/Sakyamuni
• 
  Schopenhauer
  Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal world.
  Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation, claimed that the world is fundamentally what humans recognize in themselves as their will. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fully satisfied. The corollary of this is an ultimately painful human condition. Consequently, he considered that a lifestyle of negating desires, similar to the ascetic teachings of Vedanta, Buddhism and the Church Fathers of early Christianity, was the only way to attain liberation.
  Schopenhauer's metaphysical analysis of will, his views on human motivation and desire, and his aphoristic writing style influenced many well-known thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche,Richard Wagner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein,Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, and Jorge Luis Borges.
  
  wn.com/Schopenhauer
• 
  Soyen Shaku
  Soyen Shaku (釈 宗演, January 10, 1860 – October 29, 1919, Kamakura, Japan; written in modern Japanese Sōen Shaku or Kōgaku Sōen Shaku) was the first Zen Buddhist master to teach in the United States. He was a Roshi of the Rinzai school and was abbot of both Kencho-ji and Engaku-ji temples in Kamakura, Japan. Shaku was a disciple of Imakita Kosen.
  Soyen Shaku was an exceptional Zen monk. He studied for three years at Keio University. In his youth, his master, Kosen, and others had recognized him to be naturally advantaged. He received dharma transmission from Kosen at age 25, and subsequently became the superior overseer of religious teaching at the Educational Bureau, and patriarch of Engaku temple at Kamakura. In 1887, Soyen traveled to Ceylon to study Pali and Theravada Buddhism and lived the wandering life of the bhikkhu for three years. Upon his return to Japan in 1890, he taught at the Nagata Zendo. In 1892, upon Kosen's death, Soyen became Zen master of Engakuji.
  In 1893 Shaku was one of four priests and two laymen, representing Rinzai Zen, Jodo Shinshu, Nichirin, Tendai, and Esoteric schools, composing the Japanese delegation that participated in the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago organized by John Henry Barrows and Paul Carus. He had prepared a speech in Japan, and had it translated into English by his (then young and unknown) student D. T. Suzuki. It was read to the conference by Barrows. The subject was "The Law of Cause and Effect, as Taught by Buddha." Subsequently, Shaku delivered "Arbitration Instead of War".
  
  wn.com/Soyen_Shaku
• 
  Thomas Mann
  Thomas Mann (6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, from where he returned to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur.
  Mann was born Paul Thomas Mann in Lübeck, Germany, and was the second son of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann (a senator and a grain merchant), and his wife Júlia da Silva Bruhns (a Brazilian of partial German ancestry who emigrated to Germany when seven years old). His mother was Roman Catholic, but Mann was baptised into his father's Lutheran faith. Mann's father died in 1891, and his trading firm was liquidated. The family subsequently moved to Munich. Mann attended the science division of a Lübeck Gymnasium (school), then spent time at the Ludwig Maximillians University of Munich and Technical University of Munich where, in preparation for a journalism career, he studied history, economics, art history and literature.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Mann
• Tom Hodgkinson
  Tom Hodgkinson (born 1968) is a British writer and the editor of The Idler, which he established in 1993 with his friend Gavin Pretor-Pinney. His philosophy, in his published books and articles, is of a relaxed approach to life, enjoying it as it comes rather than toiling for an imagined better future. His philosophy of the Idle Parent is very much in tune with Carl Honore's Slow parenting, although with a more light-hearted self interest in drinking and sex.
  Hodgkinson was born in Newcastle, England, and educated at Westminster School and Jesus College, Cambridge, during which time he played the bass guitar in the Stupids-influenced thrash band Chopper. He currently lives in North Devon.
  Hodgkinson has contributed articles to The Sunday Telegraph, The Guardian and The Sunday Times as well as being the author of the Idler spin-offs, How To Be Idle, How To Be Free and The Idle Parent. In 2006 he created National Unawareness Day, to be celebrated on 1 November.
  ‎
  
  
  
  wn.com/Tom_Hodgkinson
• 
  Victor Hugo
  Victor-Marie Hugo (French pronunciation: [viktɔʁ maʁi yɡo]) (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist^{[citation needed]} and exponent of the Romantic movement in France.
  In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (also known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame).
  Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism^{[citation needed]}, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthéon.
  Hugo was the third, illegitimate, son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo (1774–1828) and Sophie Trébuchet (1772–1821); his brothers were Abel Joseph Hugo (1798–1855) and Eugène Hugo (1800–1837). He was born in 1802 in Besançon (in the region of Franche-Comté) and lived in France for the majority of his life. However, he decided to live in exile as a result of Napoleon III's Coup d'état at the end of 1851.
  
  wn.com/Victor_Hugo
• 
  Virginia Woolf
  Adeline Virginia Woolf (/ˈwʊlf/; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
  During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
  Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London in 1882 to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson).
  Virginia's father, Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), was a notable historian, author, critic and mountaineer. He was the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, a work that would influence Woolf's later experimental biographies.
  Virginia's mother Julia Stephen (1846–1895) was a renowned beauty, born in India to Dr. John and Maria Pattle Jackson. She was also the niece of Julia Margaret Cameron née Pattle, the famous photographer. Julia moved to England with her mother, where she served as a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones.
  
  wn.com/Virginia_Woolf
• 
  Vladimir Chertkov
  Vladimir Grigoryevich Chertkov (Russian: Влади́мир Григо́рьевич Чертко́в; also transliterated as Chertkoff, Tchertkoff or Tschertkow (3 November [O.S. 22 October] 1854 – November 9, 1936) was the editor of the works of Leo Tolstoy, and one of the most prominent Tolstoyans.
  Chertkov was born in 1854 in St. Petersburg, Russia into a wealthy and aristocratic family. His mother (to whom he felt especially close), Elizaveta Ivanovna, born Countess Chernysheva-Kruglikova, was known among her circle in St. Petersburg society for her beauty, intellect, authoritativeness and tact. His father, Grigorii Ivanovich, was aide-de-camp under Nikolai I, Adjutant-General under Alexander II and Alexander III, known in military circles for his front-line service and military bearing. The couple enjoyed imperial favour so much that Alexander II and Alexander III visited their home.
  Describing his parents in one of his diary entries, he wrote: “That's how I grew up, assured of my own innate advantage over other people, proud of the dignity of my parents, their relatives and friends, entourage of servants, rising from their seats in the ante-room when I passed from my rooms into my parents’ part of the house, swimming in all kinds of luxury and almost not knowing rejection in satisfaction of my desires.”
  
  wn.com/Vladimir_Chertkov
• 
  Vladimir Nabokov
  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков, pronounced [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr nɐˈbokəf] ( listen); 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1899^c – 2 July 1977) was a multilingual Russian novelist, poet and short story writer. Nabokov's first nine novels were in Russian. He then rose to international prominence as a writer of English prose. He also made serious contributions as a lepidopterist and chess composer.
  Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as among his most important novels and is his most widely known, exhibiting the love of intricate word play and synesthetic detail that characterised all his works. The novel was ranked at No. 4 in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels.Pale Fire (1962) was ranked at No. 53 on the same list. His memoir, Speak, Memory, was listed No. 8 on the Modern Library nonfiction list.
  Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899 (10 April 1899 Old-Style), in Saint Petersburg,^b to a wealthy and prominent Saint Petersburg family of the minor nobility. He was the eldest of five children of liberal lawyer, statesman, and journalist Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov and his wife, Elena Ivanovna née Rukavishnikova. His cousins included the composer Nicolas Nabokov. He spent his childhood and youth in St. Petersburg and at the country estate Vyra near Siverskaya, south of the city.
  
  wn.com/Vladimir_Nabokov
• 
  Wendell Berry
  Wendell Berry (born August 5, 1934 Henry County, Kentucky) is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is also an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012.
  Berry is the first of four children born to John Marshall Berry, a lawyer and tobacco farmer in Henry County, and Virginia Erdman Berry. The families of both of his parents have farmed in Henry County for at least five generations. Berry attended secondary school at Millersburg Military Institute, then earned a B.A. and M.A. in English at the University of Kentucky, where in 1956 he met another Kentucky writer-to-be, Gurney Norman. In 1957, he completed his M.A. and married Tanya Amyx. In 1958, he attended Stanford University's creative writing program as a Wallace Stegner Fellow, studying under Stegner in a seminar that included Edward Abbey, Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, Ernest Gaines, Tillie Olsen, and Ken Kesey. Berry's first novel, Nathan Coulter, was published in April 1960. A Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship took Berry and his family to Italy and France in 1961, where he came to know Wallace Fowlie, critic and translator of French literature. From 1962 to 1964, he taught English at New York University's University College in the Bronx. In 1964, he began teaching creative writing at the University of Kentucky, from which he resigned in 1977. During this time in Lexington, he came to know author Guy Davenport, as well as author Thomas Merton and photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard.
  
  wn.com/Wendell_Berry
• 
  William Faulkner
  William Cuthbert Faulkner (born Falkner, September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career. He is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a setting Faulkner created based on Lafayette County, where he spent most of his childhood, and Holly Springs/Marshall County.
  Faulkner is one of the most important writers of the Southern literature of the United States, along with Mark Twain, Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Harper Lee and Tennessee Williams. Though his work was published as early as 1919, and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers (1962) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
  
  wn.com/William_Faulkner
• 
  William Shakespeare
  William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
  Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
  
  wn.com/William_Shakespeare

Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1997)

"Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1997)" Actors

"Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1997)" Director

• timeline:
• 2012
• 2011
• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003
• 2002
• 2001

• timeline:
• 2012
• 2011
• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003
• 2002
• 2001