America’s Teacher: William Holmes McGuffey

American educator William Holmes McGuffey, famous for creating his McGuffey Readers, an influential series of school texts in 19th century America, was born on September 23, 1800 in western Pennsylvania. He received a sparse education in his childhood and youth, but learned enough to eventually teach in the one-room country schools of rural Ohio after…

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Remembering Thomas Berger

The distinguished postwar American novelist Thomas Berger died on July 13, 2014 in Nyack, New York. As this was a great loss for American letters in the past year, I wanted to post an entry on this very unique and gifted writer, who will be featured in the future on this blog. Berger was a…

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Mary Oliver: At Home in the Natural World.

The recent date of September 10, 2014 marks the seventy-ninth birthday of the distinguished poet Mary Oliver, born on September 10, 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. She is one of America’s most popular and best-selling poets, and she has accumulated numerous honors, having won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize,…

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