Curated playlist
Columbia University alumni
- Alexander HamiltonAlexander Hamilton was still a teenager in 1771 when the owner of Beekman and Cruger, an import-export firm on the island of Saint Croix, sailed away and left him running the place for five months. The young man had been born out of…
- Lauryn HillLauryn Hill stood at the 41st Annual Grammy Awards and said, "This is crazy. This is hip-hop!" She had just become the first woman to win five Grammys in a single night. Her wins spanned album, song, vocal performance and best new artist,…
- Nur Muhammad TarakiAfghanistan's Nur Muhammad Taraki was smothered with pillows on orders of the man who built his cult.
- John A. GarratyHistorian John A. Garraty let his subject's grandson argue back in the footnotes.
- Simon P. KeefeSimon P. Keefe wrote four Mozart books on his own between 2001 and 2017. He also edited eight more volumes.
- Alicia KeysAlicia Keys was fifteen years old when Columbia Records tried to win her signature with a $26,000 white baby grand piano. She took the deal. It began a long struggle over who would decide what her music sounded like. Years later she summed…
- William Barrett (philosopher)William Barrett started college at City College of New York at fifteen. He later wrote philosophy for general readers.
- Upton SinclairUpton Sinclair aimed his novel The Jungle at the public's heart and hit its stomach instead. Meat sales fell by half.
- Bruria KaufmanBruria Kaufman spent five years working alongside Albert Einstein in Princeton. She co-wrote two articles with him.
- Lin CarterLin Carter printed about 3,000 copies of his fanzine Kadath, and most were thrown away.
- C. Vann WoodwardC. Vann Woodward argued that Jim Crow was chosen late, not inherited from Southern tradition.
- B. R. AmbedkarB. R. Ambedkar said he would be the first to burn India's Constitution. He had chaired the committee that drafted it.
- Henry Steel OlcottHenry Steel Olcott was the first well-known American of European ancestry to formally convert to Buddhism.
- Anthony PerkinsAnthony Perkins was born on the 4th of April 1932 in Manhattan and died on the 12th of September 1992. When Fear Strikes Out reached theaters in 1957, The Hollywood Reporter wrote of his performance: "Every recent young star has been…
- Fergus BordewichFergus Bordewich toured Native American reservations as a boy with his mother. She led a Native American advocacy group.
- Theodosius DobzhanskyTheodosius Dobzhansky went from collecting butterflies in Kiev to writing a landmark book on evolution.