Demi Moore Demi Moore (born Demetria Guynes on November 11, 1962 in Roswell, New Mexico) is an American actress with a trademark husky voice. She is of mixed ancestry including French, Welsh, and Cheroke...

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Jennifer Garner Jennifer Anne Garner (born April 17, 1972 in Houston, Texas) is an American film and television actress.   Biography Garner was born to Patricia Ann English (a teacher) and Billy ...

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Rock group. Although many critics of the 1970s dismissed the band as merely a vulgar imitation of the Rolling Stones and other British blues/rock acts, Aerosmith proved one of the most popular acts of the decade and succeeded in conveying their hard-rock style and attitude to a new generation of fans and musicians into the 1980s. Originally labeled rock's "toxic twins", founding members Steven Tyler and Joe Perry defeated alcoholism and drug use in the 1980s while retaining their characteristic anti-establishment charm and attitude. Chris Norris commented in Spin: "Aerosmith is as close to Hollywood as rock-n-roll gets. In their 25 years, the Boston crew of Tyler, Perry, guitarist Brad Whitford, bassist Tom Hamilton, and drummer Joey Kramer have gone from being the definitive 1970s hard-rock band to a textbook on economy, surliness, and soul to the ultimate comeback band brought back almost literally from the dead in the mid-1980s to the most bankable act in popular music." Aerosmith began on the East Coast. Tyler was born Steven Tallarico, son of a second-generation Italian classical musician who played and taught music in Yonkers, New York. The Tallarico family also ran a resort in the Catskills in Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire, where Tyler and Perry, whose family had a summer house there, first met. Tyler formed his first band, The Strangeurs, later changing the band's name to Chain Reaction. In 1966, Tyler recorded two singles with Chain Reaction. Meanwhile, Perry and future Aerosmith bass guitarist Hamilton formed a combo, Pipe Dream (later Jam Band), also in Sunapee. In 1970, Perry, Tyler, and Hamilton (whose family also vacationed in Sunapee), formed Aerosmith, with Perry on guitar, Tyler on vocals, and Hamilton on bass guitar. Tyler commented on Perry's hard-edged guitar playing in a 1975 interview with Circus magazine: "I loved Joe's style. He always played out of tune and real sloppy and I just loved it." In 1971, the trio recruited rhythm guitar player Brad Whitford and drummer Joey Kramer and began playing in the Boston area. The band cultivated a young audience following their first successful appearance at Nipmuc Regional High School in Mendon, Massachusetts. Aerosmith signed with Columbia Records in 1972. The same year the band entered Intermedia Sound Studios to record their debut album, Aerosmith, which was recorded in only two weeks. Although the album garnered little notice and achieved only modest financial success, Aerosmith garnered a generally positive critical response and introduced the band to the American public with their classic single "Dream On." "We weren't too ambitious when we started out," commented Tyler in Aerosmith Unwired. "We just wanted to be the biggest thing that ever walked the planet, the greatest rock band that ever was. We just wanted everything. We just wanted it all." Aerosmith's second album, Get Your Wings, further cemented their growing reputation, but received mixed reviews. The album, like its predecessor, fell short of achieving blockbuster status and provoked sarcastic comparisons to the Rolling Stones. Charley Walters of Rolling Stone, however, asserted that Aerosmith's second album "surges with pent-up fury yet avoids the excesses to which many peers succumb {the album} contains the vital elements of economy and ill-advised solo extravaganzas." Get Your Wings remained on the charts for a total of 86 weeks. Between 1974-76, Aerosmith released many of their biggest hit singles, including "Same Old Song and Dance," "Sweet Emotion," and "Walk This Way." The band toured heavily as their venues became larger and press coverage correspondingly increased. According to Phil Hardy and Dave Laing in their Encyclopedia of Rock, the band's third album, Toys in the Attic, "represented a milestone in the band's career and became their first album to represent the perfect distillation of the Aerosmith sound, a muscular but surprisingly agile rhythm section with the twin guitars howling and snapping around Tyler's vocal lines." Toys in the Attic stayed on the charts for almost two years. "Coming after a brief era when rock-n-roll fans in their adolescence were bombarded with the exaggerated sexual ambiguity of Alice {Cooper}, {David} Bowie, and {Lou} Reed, it must be reassuring to have a band that knows everything we've wanted to know about sex all along: that it's dirty," commented Wayne Robins of Toys in the Attic, in Creem. Toys became the band's first platinum record and spawned several underground classics, including "No More," and the title cut "Toys in the Attic". Tyler reminisced about the album's sweeping success in all media quarters in Aerosmith Unwired: "I remember reading in a newspaper, in like 1976, about how disgusting rock lyrics are, and they used "Walk This Way" as an example of how lyrics should be nice and wholesome. I couldn't believe it. Obviously, they didn't get the meaning of 'you ain't seen nothin' til you're down on your muffin'." Rocks followed the formula of Toys in the Attic, also achieving widespread critical and financial success. "Back in the Saddle," "Sick as a Dog," and "Last Child" remained prominent requests on classic rock stations well into the 1990s. "We were doing a lot of ... drugs by then, but you can hear that whatever we were doing, it was still working for us," Perry mentioned in Aerosmith Unwired. Draw the Line, released on Columbia Records in 1978, went platinum faster than any previous Aerosmith album. The band's Draw The Line Tour lasted through 1978 and early 1979, and their previously hectic recording schedule slowed for the first time in their career. In 1978, Aerosmith released one live album, Live Bootleg, and made their Hollywood debut with an appearance in Robert Stigwood's ill-received film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, in which they covered the Beatles' "Come Together." During the two-year tour that followed Draw the Line, Aerosmith developed a reputation for drug abuse of legendary proportions, and deep personal animosities developed between the primary band members. Tensions between Perry and Tyler escalated, and during the making of 1979's A Night in the Ruts, Perry bowed out to pursue a solo career with his own group, The Joe Perry Project. The band's 1980 debut, Let the Music Do the Talking, garnered Perry a minor hit with its title cut, and Perry did not return. Guitarist Jimmy Crespo replaced Perry and the band continued recording, keeping several tracks that Perry had recorded. However, shortly after A Night in the Ruts was completed, Brad Whitford left the band as well. In 1981, Aerosmith replaced Whitford with Rick Dufay. In late 1981, Tyler was injured in a motorcycle accident in which he had been drinking. The accident took off his heel and put him in a hospital for over six months. By the time Aerosmith's next album, Rock in a Hard Place, appeared in 1982, Tyler found that the band's popularity had been eclipsed by a wide range of second-generation heavy metal bands. In April of 1984, Aerosmith announced to the press that the original band would reunite and tour. "You should have felt the buzz the moment all five of us got together in the same room for the first time again," said Tyler. "We all started laughin, it was like the five years had never passed. We knew we'd made the right move." The band's members took their first steps toward defeating their various drug and alcohol addictions. After auditioning for Geffen Records, the band won a new contract. For their 1986 comeback album, Done with Mirrors, Aerosmith recruited heavyweight producer Ted Templeman, who had worked with Van Halen on its first six albums. Recorded at the Power Station, the album was recorded quickly when, according to Perry, the band went in with some riffs and winged it. Som critics were skeptical about a sober Aerosmith, including a Stereo Review writer who suggested: "A mediocre Aerosmith concert was two hours of imitation Stones. A great Aerosmith concert was a two- minute sound check punctuated by Steve Tyler hurling a bottle of Jack Daniels against Perry's amplifier, followed by ten minutes of pugilism, after which the band would stumble off-stage." Although the album's sales were flat, possibly indicating that Aerosmith's once-loyal audience had lost faith, Aerosmith re-entered the charts for the first time in six years and successfully teamed with Run- DMC for a Rick Rubin-produced re-make of "Walk this Way." The cover was a hit and a new generation of young MTV viewers suddenly became interested in Aerosmith. Robert Christgau of the Village Voice asserted, "Against all odds the old farts light one up: if you can stand the crunch, you'll find more get-up-and-go on the first side {of Done with Mirrors} than on any dozen random neogarage EP's." In 1987, Aerosmith achieved undeniable success following the release of their album Permanent Vacation. The recording went triple platinum and sold more than two million copies, featuring several blockbuster hits, including "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)," "Rag Doll," and "Angel." The album also signaled Aerosmith's introduction to the video medium, initiating a tradition of releasing some of the most popular videos MTV ever aired. Permanent Vacation drew largely positive comments from music reviewers. Deborah Frost commented in Rolling Stone: "{Aerosmith} has never worked with people so determined to turn it into Bon Jovi, Heart, or Starship. The good news is that it can't be done.... The raw, dirty edges of the Aerosmith of old slash through the power schmaltz.... The band has never sounded better or more charged." Aerosmith continued to build upon their new, younger audience by touring with many of the groups they had helped to inspire, including Dokken, Guns-n-roses, and Poison. From 1987-88 the band produced two live albums, Classics Live! and Classics Live II, as well as a greatest hits compilation, Gems. In 1989, Aerosmith released their second chart-buster of the 1980s Pump, which went multi-platinum and garnered several MTV Awards as well as their first Grammy for "Janie's got a Gun," an uncharacteristically moral (at least in the traditional sense) song about child abuse. Over the next seven years, Aerosmith garnered two more Grammys and many MTV Awards as they achieved increasing respectability for their ability to deliver high-charge rock while avoiding drugs during an era in which many rock stars succumbed to drug-related tragedies. In late 1991, Sony signed Aerosmith away from Geffen, investing an estimated 30 million dollars in the band despite the fact that their contract would not begin until 1997. In 1993, the band released Get a Grip, which sold over five million copies and scored Billboard hits with such singles as "Livin on the Edge," "Cryin," "Crazy," and "Amazing." The video "Crazy" especially dominated the MTV airwaves. Produced by Bruce Fairburn, Get a Grip featured several songs written with outside collaborators and featured the mixing talents of Atlanta-based producer Brendan O'Brien, who had formerly worked with the Black Crowes. Nine Lives, Aerosmith's 1997 release for Sony, appeared amidst public allegations of drug relapse and a flurry of personnel changes. The trouble first started when the band fired their producer, John Kalodner, and replaced him with Glen Ballard, who had initially been hired as a songwriter. Next, drummer Joey Kramer temporarily left following his father's death. Kramer was replaced by studio drummer Steve Ferrone. Well into the recording process, Sony communicated its dissatisfaction with the rough cuts of Nine Lives. "I think they were right," commented Whitford. "I was listening to them and I just thought, Huey Lewis." Aerosmith replaced Ballard with producer Kevin Shirley of Silverchair and Journey fame. Tyler commented of Ballard's release from the band: "the general consensus of the band and the corporation was that, mixed with the fact Joey wasn't down there when we did it, it might be to our advantage to re-record it with someone who has a little more of a rock head and is into the Aerosmith that we all know and love." Norris characterized Nine Lives as "a rawly produced assertion of hard-rock supremacy, an attempt to fuse Aerosmith's 70s ragged glory with its 90s pop craft." The album failed to achieve the notoriety of previous major releases, but attracted some airplay with several cuts, including "Kiss Your Past Goodbye" and "Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)." "The group certainly hasn't lost any of its bite on Nine Lives," Gary Graff said in his Mr. Show Biz interview. "From the eastern touches of "Taste of India" to the industrial clangor of "Something's Gotta Give," and the flick-your-Bic power balladry of "Ain't That a Bitch" and "Fallen Angels," Nine Lives is a consistently strong effort and a message that those who wonder if the band is losing its edge can, well, dream on." Since the release of Nine Lives, the band has produced yet another greatest-hits compilation A Little South of Sanity (1998). Their latest album, Just Push Play, appeared in 2001. As a testament to Aerosmith's enduring popularity, the album and subsequent tour were linked with a highly publicized promotional deal with DaimlerChrysler.

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Click to see a photo gallery of Pamela Anderson.

Pamela Anderson's nine-week marriage was officially annulled Monday (March 24, 2008), according to documents filed in Superior Court.

The former "Baywatch" star filed for divorce from Rick Salomon in the Los Angeles Superior Court on Dec. 14, citing irreconcilable differences.

Several celebrity Web sites then reported that Pam and Rick had reconciled and called the divorce is off, saying the couple had a huge fight, but then made up.

Anderson was previously married to Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee (1995-98) and singer Kid Rock for three months in 2006.

Salomon, known for making a sex videotape with then-girlfriend Paris Hilton, was previously married to actress Shannen Doherty for nine months.

She was born Pamela Denise Anderson on July 1, 1967 on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. One of the most prominent sex symbols of the 1990s, Anderson was responsible for the popular success of the syndicated television series Baywatch. In its day, Baywatch was the most popular show in the world.

Anderson was born to a working class family in British Columbia . After high school, she worked as a fitness instructor until she was “discovered� at a Canadian football game. Anderson , wearing a form-fitting Labatt's tee shirt, was broadcast over the stadium's giant screen. She was then hired by Labatt's to appear in their advertisements.

An offer from Playboy soon followed. She would go on to appear in five more issues of the magazine. Anderson parleyed her modeling success into a series of bit parts on television programs. She got her first big break in 1991 as the “Tool Time Girl� on the sitcom Home Improvement. While there, she attracted the attention of casting agents from Baywatch, who were looking to replace Erika Elaniak, the shows then-current blonde bombshell. The hour-long show portraying the lives of Malibu lifeguards was a nearly plotless vehicle for semi-nude video montages and the critics panned it accordingly.

However, fueled by frequent shots of the voluptuous Anderson, the show became the highest rated program worldwide.

Anderson's television success did not transfer well to the big screen. Despite mass publicity, including an appearance by Anderson at the Cannes Film Festival clad in a skintight cat suit, her first effort, Barb Wire, was both a critical and commercial failure.

In 1998, Anderson returned to television as the executive producer and star of V.I.P, in which she plays the owner of a bodyguard agency staffed exclusively by models. The series remains a success in syndication.

Anderson's 1995 marriage to Motley Crue rocker Tommy Lee captured persistent media attention. They couple had two children, Brandon Thomas and Dylan Jagger. However, the marriage was continually fraught with controversy, including an incident in which stolen honeymoon tapes of the couple having sex were broadcast over the Internet. The marriage ended in divorce in 1998 after Lee was arrested and convicted for spousal abuse.

In March of 2002, Anderson went public with the news that she has hepatitis-C. She claimed she contracted the disease by sharing a tattoo needle with Lee. The personal tragedy failed to derail Anderson's year-long romance with rapper Kid Rock (a.k.a. Robert Ritchie). The two married on July 29, 2006, on a yacht near St. Tropez France.

In November 2006, it was announced that Anderson miscarried. Seventeen days later, she filed for divorce from Kid Rock, citing irreconcilable differences. Ten months later, Anderson announced she was engaged to Rick Salomon.

© 2007 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved

Two days after the Dec. 14 filing, Anderson was spotted shopping with Salomon. And then on Dec. 17, she posted a brief note on her Web site, saying “P.S. We're working things out.�

But petitions filed later by each both side cited fraud as the reason for the marriage's breakdown. Court papers entered March 21 showed that Salomon agreed to a filing by Anderson on Feb. 22 requesting that the marriage should be voided. No spousal support was included.

The couple was married in Las Vegas on October 6 between shows of Hans Klok's The Beauty of Magic at Planet Hollywood resort, where Anderson was working as a magician's assistant.

"Hello, I just got married ... I did,� Anderson told the magic show audience after the later show. “I'm distracted. It's a big day. A big day at the office."

A month later, Anderson said she was deeply in love with Salomon and looking forward to settling down with the 39-year-old.

"I'm the happiest I've ever been," Anderson told USA Today in an interview about her latest husband. "We're good for each other."

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Illusionist. Illusianist. Born Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos on December 19, 1967 in East Meadow, New York. Beginning when he was six years old, Criss Angel immersed himself in a multitude of art forms, exploring different types of creative endeavors from performance artist and musician to mystifier and provocateur. One of his greatest influences in the realm of magic is Harry Houdini. A relentless work ethic combined with enormous talent, skill and vision propelled Criss Angel into the spotlight - he is now recognized as one of the most provocative artists of our day. From creator, producer and performer in his television series and specials to his live shows, soundtracks, other music and book, he has redefined the term artist for the 21st century. After studying the art of mysticism, music, martial arts, and dance as an adolescent, he acquired state and federal pyrotechnic licenses at 18 and 21, the youngest ages allowed to carry such permits. In 1994, Criss Angel made his prime-time television debut in a featured appearance that captivated audiences in the ABC one-hour special titled "Secrets." In 1998, Criss Angel: World of Illusion headlined Madison Square Garden's annual Halloween spectacle. Criss Angel has received numerous awards throughout his career and is the first three-time recipient of the coveted Magician of the Year Award (2001, 2004 & 2005). He is the only magician ever to appear on both covers of Magic magazine (October 2003) and Genii magazine (December 2003) almost simultaneously. Both Magic and Genii hold reputations as the most popular and most respected magic magazines worldwide. He was also unanimously selected as the recipient of the 22nd Louie Award for outstanding achievement in the art of magic. Along with his successes in magic, Criss Angel also has made many achievements as a musician and composer. He wrote, produced and performed the music currently available on four CDs from APITRAG Records entitled Criss Angel: System 1, 2, 3 In The Trilogy and the Mindfreak soundtrack. And in 2004 and 2005, Criss created and designed much of the visual effects for the $105 million production of Le Reve, the show created and directed by Franco Dragone for Steve Wynn's new $2.6 billion casino resort named Wynn, which opened in Las Vegas in April of 2005. In July of 2005, Criss Angel opened a new chapter when A&E Network premiered "Criss Angel Mindfreak." Each episode captivates audiences with several extraordinary elements: reality, focusing on Angel's street demonstrations and the way people are mentally affected; surreality, a look into Angel's mind's eye as he contemplates his upcoming feats; and behind-the-scene glimpses-a candid and captivating look into Criss' secret world and the trials and tribulations Criss and his team face from the moment he conceives of impossible, death-defying stunts to the actual performances of those stunts. For more information, visit CRISS ANGEL on A & E

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Newspaper owner, politician. Born on March 31, 1848, in New York, New York. As the great-grandson of John Jacob Astor, the successful fur trader and founder of the Astor family fortune, William Waldorf was born into a life of privilege. He studied abroad in Germany and Italy before returning the United States to earn a law degree at Columbia University. Astor achieved some minor success with a political career, winning a seat in the New York State Assembly in 1877 and a seat in the New York State Senate in 1879. But he failed in his bid to become a U.S. senator. During and even after his unsuccessful senatorial campaign, Astor found himself the target of numerous media attacks. He was criticized for his aloof nature, abundant wealth, and his family's history as landlords of tenement buildings. A dedicated Republican, Astor received a reprieve from the press in the form of an appointment by President Chester Arthur to serve as the minister to Italy, a post he held from 1882 to 1885. Around this time, Astor tried his hand at writing, producing two novels—Valentino (1884) and Sforza: A Story of Milan (1889). Neither literary effort was well received. Astor had married Mary Dahlgren Paul in 1878 and the couple had five children: William Waldorf (often referred to as simply Waldorf), Pauline, John Rudolph (who died shortly after birth), John Jacob, and Gwendolyn. After his father's death in 1890, Astor decided to make a fresh start abroad and moved his family to England. He bought the Pall Mall Gazette, a daily newspaper, in 1892, and later bought the London weekly, The Observer. He published Pall Mall Magazine, a literary publication, for a number of years. The magazine featured stories from some of the emerging writers of the day, including H. G. Wells. During the World War I, Astor supported the British cause, donating substantial sums to the Red Cross and other war-related charities. In part for his efforts, he was made a baron in 1916 and then a viscount the next year. Besides his charitable activities and newspaper interests, Astor kept a low profile, trying to avoid the intense media scrutiny he had experienced in the United States. He and his family spent a lot of their time at two estates, Cliveden and Hever Castle. Astor died of heart failure on October 18, 1919, in Brighton, England. He had been ill in his later years and chose to spend his final days in seclusion in the coastal resort town of Brighton. By relocating his family to England, Astor created a new branch of the family and one that became as socially connected and affluent as the American Astors. © 2006 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.

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Actress. Born Kathleen Doyle on June 28, 1948, in Memphis, Tennessee. Bates graduated from Southern Methodist University with a degree in theater, and after stints as a cashier at New York's Museum of Modern Art and a singing waitress in a Catskill resort, she distinguished herself in 1983's 'Night Mother, for which she earned a Tony nomination; as Lenny McGrath in Beth Henley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Crimes of the Heart, and as the abused waitress Frankie in Terence McNally's Off-Broadway play Frankie and Johnny at the Clair de Lune -- a part which was written especially for Bates and won her a prestigious Obie award. Until the 1990s, Bates had only minor parts in TV series such as Love Boat (her television debut), All My Children, St. Elsewhere, and China Beach, as well as lackluster films like Taking Off (1971), Straight Time (1978) and Arthur 2: On the Rocks (1988). But with the critical and popular success of Misery, Bates' film career hit an upswing. She won a Best Actress Oscar for her role opposite James Caan in Misery, followed by a Golden Globe for her role as the comically emancipated housewife in Fried Green Tomatoes (1992). She had prominent roles in Dolores Claiborne (1994), Diabolique (1996), Titanic (1997), The Waterboy (1998), and Primary Colors (1998) for which she received another Oscar nomination. Her other projects include Bruno (2000), costarring Shirley MacLaine (who also directed) and Gary Sinise, Love Liza, and About Schmidt. She has directed episodes of the hit TV dramas Homicide, NYPD Blue, and Oz. She also directed A&E's Dash and Lilly (1999), starring Sam Shepard, Judy Davis, and Bebe Neuwirth.

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(born March 18, 1782, Abbeville district, S.C., U.S.—died March 31, 1850, Washington, D.C.) American political leader who was a congressman, secretary of war, seventh vice president (1825–32), senator, and secretary of state. He championed states' rights and slavery and was a symbol of the Old South. Early years Calhoun was born to Patrick Calhoun, a well-to-do Scots-Irish farmer, and Martha Caldwell, both of whom had recently migrated from Pennsylvania to the Carolina Piedmont. Two years after enrolling in a local academy at age 18, he entered the junior class at Yale College, where he graduated with distinction. After a year at a law school and further study in the office of a prominent member of the Federalist Party in Charleston, S.C., he was admitted to the bar but abandoned his practice after his marriage in 1811 to his cousin, Floride Bonneau Calhoun, an heiress whose modest fortune enabled him to become a planter-statesman. An ardent Jeffersonian Republican who called for war with Britain as early as 1807, Calhoun was elected to South Carolina's state legislature in 1808 and to the United States House of Representatives in 1811. There he functioned as a main lieutenant of Speaker Henry Clay, and, in his capacity as chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, he introduced the declaration of war against Britain in June 1812. His service as majority floor leader during the War of 1812 led a colleague to call him the “young Hercules who carried the war on his shoulders.� Political career In the postwar session he was chairman of the committees that introduced bills for the second Bank of the United States, a permanent road system, and a standing army and modern navy; he also vigorously supported the protective tariff of 1816. Thus, during this period, Calhoun was the major intellectual spokesman of American nationalism. In 1817 President James Monroe appointed Calhoun secretary of war, and his distinguished performance in that post, as well as his previous legislative prominence, led his friend John Quincy Adams, then secretary of state, to declare that his Carolina colleague “is above all sectional and factious prejudices more than any other statesman of this Union with whom I have ever acted.� Calhoun won rapid recognition for his parliamentary skill as one of the leaders of the Republican Party (the old Democratic-Republican Party; later the Democratic Party), yet his eagerness for personal advancement, his glib exuberance in debate, and his egotism aroused an undercurrent of distrust. Commenting on Calhoun's nomination for president in 1821 by a rump group of Northern congressmen, a former secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, called him “a smart fellow, one of the first among second-rate men, but of lax political principles and a disordinate ambition not over-delicate in the means of satisfying itself.� To a degree not exceeded by that of any of his contemporaries, Calhoun was consumed by a burning passion to achieve the presidency. He vigorously sought the office three times. During each attempt, an anonymous eulogistic biography appeared in print; these works were in fact autobiographies written in the third person. Champion of states' rights Calhoun was elected vice president in 1824 under John Quincy Adams and was reelected in 1828 under Andrew Jackson. In the 1830s Calhoun became as extreme in his devotion to strict construction of the United States Constitution as he had earlier been in his support of nationalism. In the summer of 1831 he openly avowed his belief in nullification, a position that he had anonymously advanced three years earlier in the essay South Carolina Exposition and Protest. Each state was sovereign, Calhoun contended, and the Constitution was a compact among the sovereign states. Therefore, any one state (but not the United States Supreme Court) could declare an act of Congress unconstitutional. The proponents of the nullified measure, according to the theory, would then have to obtain an amendment to the Constitution—which required a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states—confirming the power of Congress to take such action. Although the tariff was the specific issue in the nullification crisis of 1832–33, what Calhoun was actually fighting for was protection of the South's “peculiar institution,� slavery, which he feared someday might be abolished by a Northern majority in Congress. The tariff, Calhoun put forth in one of his public letters, is “of vastly inferior importance to the great question to which it has given rise…the right of a state to interpose, in the last resort, in order to arrest an unconstitutional act of the General Government.� To Calhoun's chagrin, a majority of the Southern states formally and vehemently rejected his doctrine of nullification. Even Jefferson Davis, who later served as president of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, denied the right of a state to nullify a congressional act. A genius unto himself, Calhoun lacked the capacity for close friendship and eventually drove most of his associates into active enmity, not least among them President Jackson. His banishment by Jackson was, however, mainly a matter of bad luck. No one did more to make Jackson president than Calhoun, and his prospects in 1828 were most promising. “I was a candidate for reelection (as vice president) on a ticket with General Jackson himself,� he wrote later, “with a certain prospect of the triumphant success of the ticket, and a fair prospect of the highest office to which an American citizen can aspire.� But Calhoun joined his wife and the wives of other cabinet members in a social boycott of Peggy Eaton, the wife of the secretary of war, for her alleged adultery. Jackson leapt to the defense of Eaton and eventually fired his entire Cabinet and broke with the vice president. Late in 1832 Calhoun resigned the vice presidency, was elected to the Senate, and vainly debated Daniel Webster in defense of his cherished doctrine of nullification. He spent the last 20 years of his life in the Senate working to unite the South against the abolitionist attack on slavery, and his efforts included opposing the admittance of Oregon and California to the Union as free states. His efforts were in vain, however, and his exuberant defense of slavery as a “positive good� aroused strong anti-Southern feeling in the free states. Assessment Certainly the American Civil War was too vast an event to be the responsibility of any one man, but it can be argued that Calhoun contributed as much to its coming as did abolitionist crusader William Lloyd Garrison and President Abraham Lincoln. The man himself was an enigma. A staunch nationalist during the first half of his public life, one who told the son of Alexander Hamilton in 1823 that his father's attempt to create a strong federal government “as developed by the measures of Washington's administration is the only true policy for this country,� in the latter part of his career Calhoun became an unwavering champion of states' rights. Yet he said shortly before his death, “If I am judged by my acts, I trust I shall be found as firm a friend of the Union as any man in it.…If I shall have any place in the memory of posterity it will be in consequence of my deep attachment to it.� After Calhoun's death, his protégé, James H. Hammond, said that pre-eminent as he was intellectually above all the men of this age as I believe, he was so wanting in judgment in the managing of men, was so unyielding and unpersuasive, that he never could consolidate sufficient power to accomplish anything great, of himself and [in] due season . . . and the jealousy of him—his towering genius and uncompromising temper, has had much effect in preventing the South from uniting to resist [evil]. Calhoun's two books on government, published posthumously, and his many cogent speeches in Congress have gained him a reputation as one of the country's foremost original political theorists. He has been credited with preceding Karl Marx in advancing an economic interpretation of history, yet most of his basic ideas, particularly that of nullification, were acquired from James Madison, who was 30 years his senior. Although Calhoun is remembered as the defender of minorities, he had no use for any minority—certainly not labourers or abolitionists—except the Southern one. His solution to the problem of the preservation of the Union was to give the South everything it demanded. He was truly devoted both to the Union and to the South, and death took him before he had to choose between them. But with rare insight, in 1850 he told a friend that the Union was doomed to dissolution: “I fix its probable occurrence within twelve years or three Presidential terms.� In his thinking Calhoun worked backward, as if from the answer at the end of a mathematics primer. With his objective in mind, he chose a seemingly innocuous premise and then proceeded with hard logic to the desired conclusion. The historian William P. Trent said in the 1890s that he “started with the conclusion he wanted and reasoned back to the premises....Calhoun led thought rather than men, and lacking imagination, he led thought badly.� Calhoun's life was a tragedy in both the Greek and the Shakespearean senses. The gods thirsted after him, but he helped them along. Almost his last words were “The South! The poor South!� The poet Walt Whitman heard a Union soldier say shortly after the surrender of Confederate forces at Appomattox Court House that the true monuments to Calhoun were the wasted farms and the gaunt chimneys scattered over the South. Gerald M. Capers Copyright © 1994-2008 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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(born Nov. 7, 1913, Mondovi, Alg.—died Jan. 4, 1960, near Sens, France) French novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known for such novels as L'Étranger (1942; The Stranger), La Peste (1947; The Plague), and La Chute (1956; The Fall) and for his work in leftist causes. He received the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature. Early years Less than a year after Camus was born, his father, an impoverished worker of Alsatian origin, was killed in World War I during the First Battle of the Marne. His mother, of Spanish descent, did housework to support her family. Camus and his elder brother Lucien moved with their mother to a working-class district of Algiers, where all three lived, together with the maternal grandmother and a paralyzed uncle, in a two-room apartment. Camus's first published collection of essays, L'Envers et l'endroit (1937; “The Wrong Side and the Right Side�), describes the physical setting of these early years and includes portraits of his mother, grandmother, and uncle. A second collection of essays, Noces (1938; “Nuptials�), contains intensely lyrical meditations on the Algerian countryside and presents natural beauty as a form of wealth that even the very poor can enjoy. Both collections contrast the fragile mortality of human beings with the enduring nature of the physical world. In 1918 Camus entered primary school and was fortunate enough to be taught by an outstanding teacher, Louis Germain, who helped him to win a scholarship to the Algiers lycée (high school) in 1923. (It was typical of Camus's sense of loyalty that 34 years later his speech accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature was dedicated to Germain.) A period of intellectual awakening followed, accompanied by great enthusiasm for sport, especially football (soccer), swimming, and boxing. In 1930, however, the first of several severe attacks of tuberculosis put an end to his sporting career and interrupted his studies. Camus had to leave the unhealthy apartment that had been his home for 15 years, and, after a short period spent with an uncle, Camus decided to live on his own, supporting himself by a variety of jobs while registered as a philosophy student at the University of Algiers. At the university, Camus was particularly influenced by one of his teachers, Jean Grenier, who helped him to develop his literary and philosophical ideas and shared his enthusiasm for football. He obtained a diplôme d'études supérieures in 1936 for a thesis on the relationship between Greek and Christian thought in the philosophical writings of Plotinus and St. Augustine. His candidature for the agrégation (a qualification that would have enabled him to take up a university career) was cut short by another attack of tuberculosis. To regain his health he went to a resort in the French Alps—his first visit to Europe—and eventually returned to Algiers via Florence, Pisa, and Genoa. Camus's literary career Throughout the 1930s, Camus broadened his interests. He read the French classics as well as the writers of the day—among them André Gide, Henry de Montherlant, André Malraux—and was a prominent figure among the young left-wing intellectuals of Algiers. For a short period in 1934–35 he was also a member of the Algerian Communist Party. In addition, he wrote, produced, adapted, and acted for the Théâtre du Travail (Workers' Theatre, later named the Théâtre de l'Équipe), which aimed to bring outstanding plays to working-class audiences. He maintained a deep love of the theatre until his death. Ironically, his plays are the least-admired part of his literary output, although Le Malentendu (Cross Purpose) and Caligula, first produced in 1944 and 1945, respectively, remain landmarks in the Theatre of the Absurd. Two of his most enduring contributions to the theatre may well be his stage adaptations of William Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun (Requiem pour une nonne; 1956) and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Possessed (Les Possédés; 1959). In the two years before the outbreak of World War II, Camus served his apprenticeship as a journalist with Alger-Républicain in many capacities, including those of leader- (editorial-) writer, subeditor, political reporter, and book reviewer. He reviewed some of Jean-Paul Sartre's early literary works and wrote an important series of articles analyzing social conditions among the Muslims of the Kabylie region. These articles, reprinted in abridged form in Actuelles III (1958), drew attention (15 years in advance) to many of the injustices that led to the outbreak of the Algerian War in 1954. Camus took his stand on humanitarian rather than ideological grounds and continued to see a future role for France in Algeria while not ignoring colonialist injustices. He enjoyed the most influence as a journalist during the final years of the occupation of France and the immediate post-Liberation period. As editor of the Parisian daily Combat, the successor of a Resistance newssheet run largely by Camus, he held an independent left-wing position based on the ideals of justice and truth and the belief that all political action must have a solid moral basis. Later, the old-style expediency of both Left and Right brought increasing disillusion, and in 1947 he severed his connection with Combat. By now Camus had become a leading literary figure. L'Étranger (U.S. title, The Stranger; British title, The Outsider), a brilliant first novel begun before the war and published in 1942, is a study of 20th-century alienation with a portrait of an “outsider� condemned to death less for shooting an Arab than for the fact that he never says more than he genuinely feels and refuses to conform to society's demands. The same year saw the publication of an influential philosophical essay, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), in which Camus, with considerable sympathy, analyzed contemporary nihilism and a sense of the “absurd.� He was already seeking a way of overcoming nihilism, and his second novel, La Peste (1947; The Plague), is a symbolical account of the fight against an epidemic in Oran by characters whose importance lies less in the (doubtful) success with which they oppose the epidemic than in their determined assertion of human dignity and fraternity. Camus had now moved from his first main concept of the absurd to his other major idea of moral and metaphysical “rebellion.� He contrasted this latter ideal with politico-historical revolution in a second long essay, L'Homme révolté (1951; The Rebel), which provoked bitter antagonism among Marxist critics and such near-Marxist theoreticians as Jean-Paul Sartre. His other major literary works are the technically brilliant novel La Chute (1956) and a collection of short stories, L'Exil et le royaume (1957; Exile and the Kingdom). La Chute reveals a preoccupation with Christian symbolism and contains an ironical and witty exposure of the more complacent forms of secular humanist morality. In 1957, at the early age of 44, Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature. With characteristic modesty he declared that had he been a member of the awarding committee his vote would certainly have gone to André Malraux. Less than three years later he was killed in an automobile accident. Assessment As novelist and playwright, moralist and political theorist, Albert Camus after World War II became the spokesman of his own generation and the mentor of the next, not only in France but also in Europe and eventually the world. His writings, which addressed themselves mainly to the isolation of man in an alien universe, the estrangement of the individual from himself, the problem of evil, and the pressing finality of death, accurately reflected the alienation and disillusionment of the postwar intellectual. He is remembered, with Sartre, as a leading practitioner of the existential novel. Though he understood the nihilism of many of his contemporaries, Camus also argued the necessity of defending such values as truth, moderation, and justice. In his last works he sketched the outlines of a liberal humanism that rejected the dogmatic aspects of both Christianity and Marxism. John Cruickshank Ed. Copyright © 1994-2008 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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