Light a Fire

SUMMARY: F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) American novelist.
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Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was named after the author of the United States’ National Anthem “The Star Spangled Banner”. He was born into a Catholic upper-middle class family in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 24, 1896. He was the only son of Edward Fitzgerald and Mary Mollie McQuillan. He had one sister, Annabel, born in 1901. His father Edward tried to start his own business as a manufacturer of wicker furniture in St. Paul, but it didn’t succeed. He then moved the family to Buffalo, in upstate New York where he worked for Procter and Gamble as a salesman. In 1908, he was let go by the company. He moved his family back to St. Paul and with the large inheritance that his wife Mollie received, the family was able to live comfortably.

F. Scott Fitzgerald discovered his passion about writing at an early age. While attending High School, he published some of his detective stories in the school newspapers. In September of 1913, he began his education at Princeton University. He quickly found his place with the triangle club, which puts together a musical every year. He started neglecting his classes focussing more his attention on his writing and in the production of the musical. As a result, his grades suffered and soon he dropped out of Princeton University to join the U.S. army in October of 1917. While serving in the army, he continued writing articles for magazines as well as musical lyrics. At age 21, he submitted his first novel to be published but this was quickly turned down. With perseverance and determination, he again worked on a novel called “The Romantic Egoist” and resubmitted it to be published but again it was rejected. He then stop writing books for a while and turned his attention to advertising in order to support himself.

While stationed in Alabama in 1918 near Montgomery, he met a beautiful 18 year old young woman named Zelda Sayre. He immediately fell in love with her. They were engaged in 1919 after the war ended. Unfortunately his income from advertising didn’t satisfy his bride to be. She grew tired of waiting for him to make his fortune in the field of advertising and eventually called off the engagement. She insisted that he become a successful person first before she could marry him.

F. Scott Fitzgerald decided to return to his hometown in St. Paul Minnesota where he spent the time to rewrite a novel called “This Side of the Paradise”. This would be his third attempt to have the novel published and this time it was a success. In March of 1921, the book was published and F. Scott Fitzgerald became rich and famous. He then married his sweetheart Zelda in April of 1921 soon after the publication of his novel. She became a great influence on his writing, contributing much of the facts for his novels and short stories by his quoting her and using her words as the voice for many of his female characters. The family enjoyed fame and fortune and his novels reflected much of their lifestyle, describing the privilege of being wealthy.

The Fitzgeralds decided to move to France and make a home there. They frequently travelled to Rome, Switzerland and throughout the United States. Three years after the birth of their daughter, Scott decided to write another novel called “The Great Gatsby”. This was his best known work. Their exorbitant way of living soon took its toll on the couple. They both began to drink heavily and Zelda experienced several mental breakdowns. She was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent most of her life in and out of the hospital and finally in 1926, she was admitted in Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina where she resided for the rest of her life.

Now desperately in debt, unable to write a novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald found work in Hollywood as a scriptwriter. In Hollywood, he fell in love with Sheilah Graham, a movie columnist. Their relationship lasted until his death at age 44 in 1940.

SUMMARY: B. F. Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990 American psychologist

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B. F. Skinner was born on March 20, 1904. He was born in the town or Susquehanna in Pennsylvania. His father was one of the best lawyers there were at the time. His mother was a strong and intelligent housewife.

She could cook the best food ever, in B.F. Skinner’s opinion. Both of his parents were old-fashioned hard working people. His parents were very strict they wanted him to succeed, and they were consistent.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was his full birth name but later in life he chose to go by a simpler version of his name. Burrhus Frederic Skinner was a loving out going boy who was very affectionate. He also loved the outdoors, and he loved to take things apart and build them over again. He also loved to go to school and make friends.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner received his BA in English when he was in college. He attended collage at Hamilton college in upstate New York. In college he was kind of a outcast, he didn’t fit in very well.

He never attended the fraternity parties of the football games, and didn’t have many friends or very many acquaintances except the professors. This made him more focused on his goals. He would write the school paper with his spare time.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner believed in the atheist religion by choice. This was very wired in his case because he went to a college that required a class of chapel attendance every day. He had learned about other religion but he wasn’t sure what to believe.

He wanted to be a writer ever since he started writing for the school paper. He tried to get some jobs as a writer by sending in poetry and short stories to people who had ads in the paper but no one hired him.

After Skinner graduated he tried to use his parents’ attic as an office and a place to concentrate. This wasn’t the best place for him to work but it was all that he had. After a wile he realized that it just wouldn’t work for him.

The only work he could find was a newspaper writer. He wrote things mostly about labor problems. Not his choice but he got to do what he loved, so he bargained. He lived for a while in Greenwich Village in New York City as a bohemian.

After Frederic Skinner finished doing some traveling and decided to settle down he decided that now would be the best time to finish school so that he didn’t give up forever and lose the opportunity.

This time Frederic decided to try a different school that he might have a better chance at, so he decided to go to Harvard. Harvard was the best school in the area and close enough that he could walk if he needed to.

In 1930 Burrhus Frederic Skinner got his masters degree in psychology. Than he decided to go on to get his doctorate degree, and he finished with that in 1931. After he finished both the doctorate and psychology degrees he stayed on campus to do research until 1936.

After he finished studying he decided to move to Minneapolis, there he became a professor at the University in Minnesota. There he met a woman and got married. His wife was a young pretty woman by the name of Yvonne Blue.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner and his new wife had two beautiful daughters. Skinner soon became a professor at Harvard and he remained there for the rest of his life where he could do his research and teach. He had a very fulfilling life.

Skinner in a nut shell was a highly influential American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform and poet.

He taught psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.

He invented the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism, and founded his own school of experimental research psychology – the experimental analysis of behavior.

His works are still used and applied today, and he is considered one of most influential psychologist of the 20th century.

He was a prolific author, publishing 21 books and 180 articles, both about psychology and other subjects.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was a very good teacher who had a great and smart mind, and he should be remembered for that.

SUMMARY: Euripides (ca. 480 BC–406 BCE) Greek playright
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Euripides was born between the year of 480 and 485 BC from a wealthy family on the island of Salamis. He was one of Athens greatest classical and tragic writers and poets. He lived the life of a student in the standard Greek methods studying philosophy under Anaxagoras then later with Socrates. However, he was not listed as one of the highest philosophers of his time like Socrates and such. He spent a lot of his time alone outside of Athens. His works were quite popular around his era. Even Socrates, the most famous philosopher of all time enjoyed going to the theatre if a play of Euripides was performed. Euripides started submitting and producing his plays to several competitions. His first play won him a third place prize and four more of his works helped him win first place, and that’s all he won during his entire writing career. Sophocles holds the record with 18 first place awards. He wrote over 90 plays in his lifetime and some of them were about women and mythological themes like “Medea” and “Helen of Troy”.

Euripides ideas and philosophy were often misunderstood and became frequently the object of criticism by Athenian writers of comedy. They repeatedly criticized the bizarreness of his plays simply because he used everyday words for the main characters’ dialogue. Regardless of negative comments and views of his colleagues, his plays gradually became well known and famous throughout Greece. In 409 BC, Euripides decided to leave Athens for the court of Archelaus, King of Macedonia where he spent the remaining of his life until his death in 406 BC. The entire city of Athens was devastated to hear about the death of Euripides and mourned his death. Sophocles had his actors wore mourning clothes during their performance on stage or even in the street to show respect to their most profound writer Euripides. The city of Athens demanded for the body of Euripides for a memorial service and burial. Unfortunately, the Macedonians declined the request. Upon this, the city decided to build an honorable tomb in memory of Euripides on the road to Piraeus with the inscription saying: “All Greece is the monument of Euripides. Macedonian earth covers but his bones”. Another magnificent monument was built by Archelaus in memory of Euripides and it said: “Never, O Euripides, will thy memory be forgotten”. Euripides was buried at Arethusa in Macedonia

The death of Euripides helped his popularity and his plays were often chosen on stage than those of his rivals Sophocles or Eschylus. The French classicists later idolized his work. The comic poet Aristophanes recognizes the greatness of Euripides and often shows it in his plays.

In 1997, archaeologists discovered what they believed to be one of the caves where Euripides often used for some of the inspiration for his writings. They found objects like a pot in the cave with inscription of the first six letters of Euripides’ name. The archaeologists believe that Euripides’ fans added the inscription on the pot later.
Euripides is considered by many to be the founder of the modern European dramatic sensibility and his writings have become a benchmark for several of the most important western writers.

SUMMARY: Dr. Seuss (March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991) American writer and cartoonist
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Theodore Seuss Geisel was a brilliant American author, talented artist and a child at heart. He was better known to the world under his “pen name” Dr. Seuss and was extremely famous for his collection of children’s books. Even though he wrote several most loved children’s books, Dr. Seuss never had any children of his own.

Dr. Seuss was born in Springfield, Massachusetts on March 2, 1904 to wealthy parents Theodore Robert Geisel and Henrietta Seuss Geisel, both German immigrants. Dr. Seuss’ father and grandfather were successful brewmasters in the city where he grew up. Even though the family enjoyed financial success for many years, the beginning of World War I and prohibition caused them to face both financial and social challenges. Along with other Germans, they started to be targets for many insults regarding their background and livelihoods. In spite of what the family had gone through, they continued to work hard and again became wealthy. Dr. Seuss and his sister Marnie grew up in a fairly happy home and enjoyed every moment of their childhood.

After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1925, Dr. Seuss’ father Theodore Robert Giesel sent him to Oxford University in England with the intent of him earning a doctorate in literature to become a professor. At Oxford, he met a fellow American student Helen Palmer who recommended that he pursue his drawing career instead of becoming a professor. He eventually married Helen Palmer in 1927 and left England to look for work in the United States. He eventually found a job in advertising for Standard Oil where he devoted 15 years of his life. He also worked as a cartoonist and submitted humorous articles for different magazines. Some of the bigger publications such as Life, Vanity Fair and Liberty magazine found his unique and humorous work very enjoyable. His many published cartoons in various well-known magazines got him a job creating ads for an insecticide company. One of his ads for a product called “flit” soon became famous and gained him national exposure. While still working in the advertising industry, he also started writing and illustrating in his spare time an alphabet book for children. Unfortunately, many publishers didn’t think the book was an eye popping book and turned him down. Discouraged and frustrated, he decided to stop writing for a while.

In 1936, he decided to take the pen once more and wrote his very first book called “To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”. Many publishers declined printing the book but eventually in 1937, the book was published. After the War, he and his wife Helen moved to La Jolla, California where he began writing children’s books including “ If I Ran the Zoo” in 1950 “Scramble Eggs Super!” in 1953 “If I Ran The Circus” in 1956 and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” also in 1956. In 1954, He read a report in “Life” magazine about the illiteracy in schools. It was documented that most children were not learning to read because most books in school were hard and boring to read. With his publisher’s help, Dr. Seuss wrote the “Cat in The Hat” which only contains 220 words, followed by “Green Eggs and Ham” which has only 50 words. Both of these two books are still the most favorite books for children who are beginning to read.

In 1967, Dr Seuss’ wife Helen committed suicide. A few months later, he married one of his close friends Audrey Stone Diamond. At age 87, Dr Seuss passed away in his sleep in his home in La Jolla California on September 24th, 1991. His body was cremated as he wished.

SUMMARY: Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) American author, poet, critic, screenwriter
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Dorothy Parker was born into a very wealthy family in the West End village of Long Branch New Jersey on August 22, 1893. She was the youngest of four children. Her parents were Jacob Henry Rothschild and Annie Eliza Maston. A month before she turned five in July 1898, her mother passed away due to illness. Two years later after the passing of her mother, Dorothy’s father fell in love once more and married Eleanor Francis Lewis in January of 1900. While being raised by her father and stepmother, Dorothy never learned to love her stepmother and absolutely refused to even call her mother or stepmother. She only referred to her as Mrs. Rothschild or “the housekeeper”. She made life very difficult for her father and stepmother. Her childhood was an unhappy one. She attended the Roman Catholic Academy Elementary School for a while and then stopped her education at about age 13. When Dorothy was nine yeas old, her stepmother also died. She would be followed in death by her father on December 28, 1913. Dorothy was then about 20 years old. Before the death of her father, she also experienced the passing of her brother Henry aboard the Titanic, which sank in 1912

Following the death of her father in 1913, Dorothy, a highly intelligent you woman, moved to New York City where she started her magnificent writings during the day and played the piano at night in a dancing school to support herself. A year later in 1914, Dorothy sold her first poem to Vanity Fair magazine. Some time in 1915, she was offered a very prominent job working for Vogue magazine as an editorial assistant. While working there, she continued to write poems for newspapers and magazines. In 1917, she changed companies and decided to work for Vanity Fair magazine as a staff writer. In that same year of 1917, she met a young man named Edwin Pond Parker who was a stockbroker. She immediately fell in love with Eddie and decided to marry him after a very short period of courtship. Not long after they were married. Eddie was shipped overseas for World War I.

In 1919, Dorothy Parker was invited to the Algonquin Hotel and met with various well known writers such as Robert Benchley, Robert Sherwood, James Thurber and many others. This was the beginning of the famous Algonquin Round Table, an intellectual literacy circle where Dorothy was the only female founding member. After the War, Eddie Parker came home from the war but the marriage only lasted a short time mostly due to Dorothy’s big commitment to the Algonquin Round Table and due to her husband’s heavy drinking problem and addiction to morphine drugs. She divorced her husband Edwin P. Parker in 1928 but kept her married name and was known as Dorothy Rotschild Parker. Dorothy spent most of her time in New York City, no longer writing reviews for the Vanity Fair magazine. She started doing theater reviews and spending time with her Algonquin friends.

She continued to publish poems and short stories and won the national O. Henry Prize in 1929 for one of her stories called “Big Blonde”. This was just a debut to her writing career. She later married her second husband, Alan Campbell who was also a writer, in 1934. She was then 40 years old and he was only 29. In 1930, Dorothy took her husband’s advice and moved to Hollywood with him where they started writing screenplays as a team. They became very successful and received screen credits for at least fifteen films for which one of them was called “A star was born” which was nominated for an academy award and received an Oscar for best original story. Hollywood brought her fame, money and a successful career. Nevertheless her drinking addiction, among other spending would have her call some of her friends to help financially. Her relationship with her husband was very complicated. She divorced him in 1947, remarried him again in 1950, separated in 1953, reunited and decided to stay together until his death in 1963. She returned to New York City where she spent the remaining of her life in her New York hotel room. She lived alone and died on June 7, 1967 at age 73. Time magazine dedicated an entire full page to her obituary, which was speculated to be an amazing tribute. Her entire estate was left to Martin Luther King and the NAACP.

SUMMARY: Dave Barry (b. July 3, 1947) American humorist, author
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Dave Barry has been delighting people with his humor for years. He wrote a nationally syndicated column for the Miami Herald for 22 years. He has also written over a dozen books. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. He has brought his good natured humor to many people around the globe with his books, newspaper columns, and even movies and Television shows.

Dave was born in Armonk, New York on July 3, 1947. His father was a Presbyterian minister. Not surprisingly he was voted class clown in 1965 at Pleasantville High School in New York. He then attended Haverford College, a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.

He was married twice. With his first wife Beth he had a son in 1980 named Robert. Beth and Dave divorced in 1993. He remarried in 1996 to a sportswriter for the Miami Herald named Michelle. They have a daughter together named Sophie who was born in 2000. Dave’s family is very much a part of his books and columns. Dave does joke however that his family does not think he is particularly funny.

After his graduation his journalism career began as a reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Dave covered various meetings that he jokes may still be going on today. He left the Daily Local News and began working for a consulting firm in 1975. His job was to teach effective writing skills to business people. He also jokes that this was a hard job in teaching the business people how not to write things such as: ‘Enclosed please find the enclosed enclosures’. He spent eight years at this job. In 1983 he landed his job as a humor columnist for the Miami Herald. His job at the Miami Herald earned him national syndication of his humor columns and in 1988 awarded him the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

In October of 2004, after 21 years for the Miami Herald, Dave announced that he would be taking a leave of absence from his column to spend more time with his family. Then in 2005 he announced that he would not be retuning to his daily column again. He does however still contribute some of his more famous features including his yearly gift guide, year in review, his weblog and an occassional article or column. Dave continues to write his books for both humor and children.

From the years 1993 to 1997 Dave’s World was shown on CBS. This was a tv show based on Dave’s books Dave Barry Turns 40 and Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits. Big Trouble was Dave’s first novel and was later turned into a motion picutre starring Tim Allen and Rene Russo. He also a member of the band formed for charity called TheRock Bottom remainders. Others notable people in this band include Stephen King, Amy Tan, Mitch Albom, and Matt Groenig. As Dave says they “are not musically skilled, but they are extremely loud”. The band became the subject of his book Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America with Three Chords and an Attitude.

Dave Barry is a very humorous writer. He has brought joy to many people with his articles which have appeared in Reader’s Digest and the Chicken soup for the Soul books. He has started many mock campaigns for President beginning in 2000. On his website you can find humor in ‘would be a good name for rock band’ area these include names like “The Phlegmtones” or “Three Fatty Acid Radicals”. He writes a blog filled with acronyms and states he is not making this up. Dave can find humor in just about anything. He is truly a modern day humorist.

SUMMARY: C. S. Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) Irish novelist, scholar
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Clive Staples Lewis better known as C.S. Lewis or Jack was the author of the widely popular series The Chronicles of Narnia. He lived from the years 1898 to 1963. His early years were spent in Ireland and his later years in England. He was a very influential person in the literary world and in Christianity.

C.S. Lewis came by the nickname of Jack when he was four years old. His beloved dog Jacksie was hit by a car and died shortly after. Lewis then announced that he would be called Jacksie from then on and did not respond to anything else. In later years it was shortened to Jack and what many of his friends and family called him.

In 1908 his mother died of cancer. This is also the year that Lewis began attending private schools, before then he had been tutored. He first attended Wynyard and after the closing of this school attended Campbell College but had respiratory problems. He was then sent to Malvern, Worcestershire a type of health-resort town where he attended the preparatory school called Cherbourg House or Chartres by Lewis himself.

At the age of fifteen until the age of thirty one Lewis was an atheist. He was raised in the Church of Ireland but soon came to see his religion as a chore and a duty. The writings of George MacDonald, a Christian fantasy writer, were so influential on Lewis that he rediscovered his own Christianity. It is very surprising to some people that he was an atheist for so long given the Christian symbolism of his writings in The Chronicles of Narnia.

When Lewis was nineteen he fought in World War I on the frontlines as an officer in the third Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry. It was during training that Lewis became good friends with another cadet named “Paddy” Moore. Here they formed a pact to take care of eachother’s families if anything happened to the other. In 1918 Paddy was killed in action and Lewis kept his promise. He became the caretaker and friend of Paddy’s mother Jane King Moore. He came to introduce her as his mother since losing his at such a young age. He took care of her until her hospitalization for dementia in the 1940’s, she passed away in 1951. He has accredited her with teaching him to be generous.

He was married once to Joy Gresham, a Jewish writer who also had been an atheist at one time. They were mainly friends at first and only became married in a civil union to keep her in England. After Joy was diagnosed with bone cancer the couple sought a Christian marriage. Joy had two sons from a previous marriage that Lewis continued to care for after her death in 1956. His book A Grief Observed is mostly about the aftermath of her death. He wrote the book as N.W. Clerk so no one would see his private bereavement. After many friends referred this book to him he came clean that he had actually wrote the book.

His life came to an end one week before his sixty fifth birthday on November 22, 1963. The same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. His works include poetry, many works of non-fiction and fiction including his most popular The Chronicles of Narnia series. His legacy lives on in biographies that others write about him which a few of his close friends themselves have written. There is a statue of his alter ego Diggory Kirke from The Magicians Nephew in his hometown of Belfast, Ireland. He has also been the inspiration for many modern day writers including J.K. Rowling and Daniel Handler, a.ka. Lemmony Snicket. His works have been translated into more then 30 languages and sell more then a million copies a year. He was a great literary scholar.

SUMMARY: Confucius (551 BCE – 479 BCE) Chinese philosopher
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One of the most prominent people in shaping the lives of the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese people in their thoughts and way of life would be the great philosopher Confucius. He was a Chinese thinker and philosopher whose teachings are still found in parts of the modern world.

He was born in 551 BC according to the tradition at the beginning of the Hundred Schools of Thought philosophical movement. He is said to have been born in what is now the Shandong Province into a noble family that had fallen on hard times and was very poor. In the Records of the Grand Historian compiled four centuries later it is written that his parents marriage was an illicit union because his father was old and past a proper marrying age while his mother was still in her teens. His father died when he was only three and he continued to be raised in poverty. However because of his social background he was linked to the class of shì. This class had a status between the old nobility and the common people. It was comprised of men who sought social position because of their talents and skill and not heredity.

He married at nineteen and had a child Kong Li at the age of twenty. His mother passed away when he was only twenty three and he then went into three years of mourning. He is rumored to have worked as a Justice minister in Lu at the age of fifty three. Not all historians agree on this. He was said to leave Lu because of a disappointment in the leader and he then began his travels or journeys around the small kingdoms of Northeast and Central China.

While on these travels he is said to have talked of his political beliefs but he never saw them implemented. At the age of sixty eight it is believed that he returned home and taught to his disciples. He began transmitting the old wisdom by a set of texts called the Five Classics. These are books that are said to have been written or edited by Confucius himself as the basis of his studies. Confucius died in 479 BC at the age of seventy three and was preceded in death by beloved disciples and son.

The studies of Confucius have the greatest emphasis on the importance of study. Because of this he is seen by the Chinese people as the greateset master. Confucius wanted his disciples to think deeply for themselves and to study the outside world relentlessly. He wanted to restore the Mandate of Heaven (or a unification of the world) during times of chaos and endless wars between the feudal states.

The moral teachings of Confucius seem to emphasize the self-cultivation and the attainment of skilled judgment rather than knowledge of rules. Confucius’s ethics may be considered as virtue ethics. His teachings did not rely on argument but on the showing of his ideals. His teachings were so broad that they need to be studied fully to be understood properly.

Confucius can be thought of as an example of human excellence because of his pursuit of ethical self-improvement. Because of this ideal his teachings maybe considered a Chinese example of humanism. His most famous teaching on this ethical self-improvement would be the Golden Rule which states “do no harm” or simply as to treat others as you would like to be treated. This phrase has become a part of the hippocratic oath and used many times in medical discussions.
The teachings of Confucius have been tried and tested through many centuries. He was a true visionary for the modern world. Confucius made a positive and lasting legacy on China and the world. To this day you still hear references to his teachings and philosophyof life. It has become the basis for so many things in this life that the world would truly feel an emptiness had he not been the great philosopher he is accredited with