Curated playlist
Writers about activism and social change
- Mahatma GandhiOn the day India won freedom, Gandhi refused to celebrate. He fasted and spun cloth in Calcutta, pleading for peace.
- VoltaireThe line Voltaire is most quoted for was written in 1906, long after he died.
- Charles DickensAt twelve, Charles Dickens pasted labels on boot blacking pots in a rat-infested warehouse.
- Stephen KingA minivan hit Stephen King on a Maine road in June 1999. A dog in the back distracted the driver.
- George OrwellGeorge Orwell was a pen name, chosen from a shortlist in 1932. He was born Eric Arthur Blair in British India.
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway, only 18, carried Italian soldiers to safety despite being seriously wounded by mortar fire.
- Herman MelvilleHerman Melville's death notice misspelled his great novel as "Mobie Dick."
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot compared an evening sky to a patient on a surgical table.
- Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf's father let her read whatever she liked in his vast library.
- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheWhen French soldiers broke into Goethe's home in 1806, his companion Christiane Vulpius defended it.
- Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden by hiding in an underground meat locker.
- Jean-Jacques RousseauRousseau refused a king's pension after Louis XV loved his opera. Friends were exasperated by his choice.
- René DescartesRené Descartes had three dreams in a heated room in 1619. He believed they revealed a new philosophy to him.
- Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy spent his last hours on a train, preaching non-violence to strangers.
- Victor HugoVictor Hugo asked for a pauper's funeral and got the largest in French history.
- Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was rejected twice by Vienna's art academy. He later became dictator of Germany.
- Karl MarxKarl Marx left an estate valued at just 250 pounds when he died in 1883. He died stateless in London at 64.
- Ezra PoundEzra Pound cut T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land by about half. Eliot called the edits proof of Pound's critical genius.
- John MiltonJohn Milton sold Paradise Lost for five pounds. The blind poet handed it to a publisher in April 1667.
- Peter GabrielOn the 19th of June 1971, Peter Gabriel took a running jump off a stage and expected the audience to catch him. They moved aside instead. He landed on the floor and broke his ankle, then performed the next several Genesis shows with a…
- Arthur MillerArthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in less than six weeks. He finished the first act in less than a day.
- Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky wrote his first article at age 10, about the fall of Barcelona.
- Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard dropped his script and wrote dialogue day by day for the film Breathless.
- Friedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels rode with an aristocratic fox hunt while funding Karl Marx.
- Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died in 2009, and for four days the world did not know.
- Max WeberMax Weber died in 1920 with his major book unfinished on his desk. His widow spent two years preparing it.
- David AttenboroughAt 11, David Attenborough sold newts to a university for three pence each.
- Maxim GorkyWriter Maxim Gorky visited a Soviet labor camp that had been staged for him, and he did not notice.