American humanists

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 216. Chapters: John Dewey, Linus Pauling, Kurt Vonnegut, Frank Zappa, Daniel Handler, Carl Sagan, E. O. Wilson, Thomas Szasz, Erich Fromm, Steven Pinker, Carl Rogers, James Randi, Murray Gell-Mann, Walt Whitman, Gore Vidal, Alice Walker, Roger Ebert, Mordecai Kaplan, Benjamin Spock, Gene Roddenberry, Charles M. Schulz, Margaret Sanger, Steve Allen, Christopher Moore, Joss Whedon, Robert G. Ingersoll, Christopher Hitchens, Jonas Salk, R. Radhakrishnan, Edward Said, Pete Stark, Eleanor Duckworth, Hubert Harrison, Albert Ellis, Michael Shermer, Lewis Gordon, Lester R. Brown, Penn Jillette, Eugenie Scott, Hermann Joseph Muller, Joel Augustus Rogers, Anthony B. Pinn, Abraham Maslow, Noah Chazzman, Neil Postman, Sherwin Wine, Paul Kurtz, Walter J. Ong, Raya Dunayevskaya, Barbara Ehrenreich, Teller, Paul Blanshard, Geoffrey O'Brien, Corliss Lamont, Mary Calderone, Butterfly McQueen, Eric Britton, Greg Epstein, Warren Allen Smith, Vashti McCollum, Lloyd Morain, Rebecca Goldstein, Edwin Kagin, Steve Benson, Ralph Siu, John Miles Foley, Metamotivation, Edmund Blair Bolles, Philip K. Paulson, Chester Wickwire, D. J. Grothe, Mark Lindley, Hisham Sharabi, William Kelly, Thomas Gordon, Fred Edwords, Jonathan Young, Archie John Bahm, Julia Scheeres, Mary Morain, Roy Speckhardt, Morris Berman, Lester Mondale, Thomas W. Flynn, Louis Appignani, Arthur Harkins, Roy Wood Sellars, Edwin H. Wilson, Mel Lipman, Curtis W. Reese, Raymond Bragg. Excerpt: Frank Vincent Zappa ( ; December 21, 1940 - December 4, 1993) was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, electronic, orchestral, and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands-he later switched to electric guitar. He was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. He wrote the lyrics to all his songs, which-often humorously-reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship. Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist and gained widespread critical acclaim. Many of his albums are considered essential in rock and jazz history. He is regarded as one of the most original guitarists and composers of his time. He also remains a major influence on musicians and composers. He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and for mo