SPECIAL REPORTS
Provide in-depth articles about historic moments, important discoveries, and newsmakers that touched our lives.
The 2015 Year Book features eight Special Reports chronicling a range of events, including a thorough discussion on a movement called “urban homesteading,” concerning what urban dwellers are doing to get fresh food without processing, antibiotics, and unwanted chemicals; the 125th anniversary of Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre and its remarkable history; the 2014 World Cup, won by Germany, which was held in Brazil in June and July; a history of Ukraine from independence to 2014 that explains how we arrived at the 2014 crisis between Russia and Ukraine; an obituary of American writer Maya Angelou; a story on the severe drought in the western United States, and especially in California, where the state is struggling to provide water for its 38 million citizens and its agriculture; the 2014 Olympic Winter Games, including all medal winners; and an obituary of Robin Williams, comic and Oscar-winning actor, whose career spanned nearly four decades.
The 2015 Year Book includes four new Portraits, including Lauren Bacall, legendary stage and film actress; Pete Seeger, American folk singer and political activist; Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez; and Mickey Rooney, celebrated Hollywood actor.
There are also three Focus On articles spanning such topics as Academy Award winners for 2014; the dresses of British-born American fashion designer Charles James, featured in a retrospective held in 2014 at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; and extreme weather events in North America, Europe, and Asia, including the southward shift of the North Polar Vortex in late 2013 and early 2014 that led to heavy snowfall and one of the coldest winters ever experienced in Canada and the eastern and central United States.