Yu Qiuyu (余秋雨), born in 1946 in Yuyao, Zhejiang, is one of the well-known contemporary Chinese cultural and literary figures. With an enormous readership in China and overseas, his cultural exploratio…
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's…
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He has published seven books. He is also the host of the podcas…
Daniel Defoe was an English novelist, journalist, merchant, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in …
Walter Isaacson, a professor of history at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He is the author of 'Leonardo da Vinci; The Innovators; Steve Jobs; Einstein: …
Chris Miller teaches International History at Fletcher School at Tufts University. He is also Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Eurasia Research Director of th…
Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, philosopher, and abolitionist who is best known for Walden, a re…
Daron Acemoglu is the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2005 he won the prestigious John Bates Clark medal, awarded to the best econom…
Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He obtained his PhD in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1…
K. Anders Ericsson (born 1947) is a Swedish psychologist and Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University who is internationally recognized as a researcher in the ps…
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short…
William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris in 1874. He spoke French even before he spoke a word of English, a fact to which some critics attribute the purity of his style.
Shi Nai'an (Chinese: 施耐庵; pinyin: Shī Nài'ān, ca. 1296–1372), was a Chinese writer from Suzhou. He was attributed as the first compiler of the Water Margin, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of C…
Luo Ben (c. 1330–1400), better known by his style name Luo Guanzhong (罗贯中) (Mandarin pronunciation: [lwɔ kwantʂʊŋ]), was a Chinese writer who lived during the Yuan Dynasty. He was also known by his ps…
Lu Xun (鲁迅) or Lu Hsün (Wade-Giles), was the pen name of Zhou Shuren (September 25, 1881 – October 19, 1936), a leading figure of modern Chinese literature. Writing in Vernacular Chinese as well as Cl…
Lung Ying-tai (traditional Chinese: 龍應台; simplified Chinese: 龙应台; pinyin: Lóng Yìngtái) (born February 13, 1952 in Kaohsiung) is a Taiwanese essayist and cultural critic. She occasionally writes und…
Cao Wenxuan, author of the acclaimed Bronze and Sunflower, is the recipient of the 2016 Hans Christian Andersen Award. He has also won several of China’s important awards for children’s literature. A …
Qian Zhongshu (Chinese name: 錢鍾書 / 钱钟书) (November 21, 1910 – December 19, 1998) was a Chinese literary scholar and writer, known for his wit and erudition.
