It is the rare novelist who can elicit a contract for his death, but Salman Rushdie managed to do precisely that with a Postmodern, playful rumination on religion and politics that made Islamic literalists gnash their teeth and ready their Kalashnikovs. Born on the eve of India's declaration of indep
Salvador Dali was half-artist, half-imp, and all lunatic. Heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud's theories of dream interpretations and the subconscious, Dali sought to depict not visible objects but their associated images and subconscious meanings. For Dali, the life of the mind was life itself, and
Man Ray was born Emmanuel Radnitsky, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who had settled in Philadelphia. In his early twenties he changed his name -- after years of being taunted because of its foreign sound. Ray's talents were obvious even in childhood. He was skilled at building, repairing, in
Born in New York's Harlem in 1915, Arthur Miller was not a good student. After a lackluster high school career, he was ready to join his father's clothing business when he read Dostoyevsky's "Brothers Karamazov." Suddenly, the world changed -- Miller decided to dedicate his life to reading and writin