Some were brilliant, including his biography of Sir Edmund Backhouse, an unscrupulous British oriental scholar, and his satirical essays on life at Oxford published under the pseudonym Mercurius Oxoniensis.

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He's a one-time staff writer for Rolling Stone and author of an eclectic body of work including a biography of Nike's Phil Knight, a history of Sears, and articles about fishing for catfish on Louisiana's bayous, logrolling and coondog racing.

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Clicking on the names brings up further details on the person, including a short biography, phone number, email address, prior employment history, description of current employer and links to press articles, SEC filings and other publicly available documents where the name appears.

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Notes included details of the singer's date and place of birth and a biography of her musical career, including the albums she has released.

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Mr. Connell was the author of 19 books, including two book-length poems, a biography of Spanish painter Francisco Goya and a historically detailed novel about the Crusades, "Deus Lo Volt!"

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But those who sip from Twitter's fire hose can get much more information, including a sender's location, the biography on his profile page and how many people have subscribed to his messages (see blog post on the map of a tweet).

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The biography category features a diverse range of subjects including Mary Queen of Scots by John Guy and poet Stephen Spender by John Sutherland.

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