title: Children's literature

text: Writer Mary Renck Jalongo In "Young Children and Picture Books" discusses damaging stereotypes of Native Americans in children's literature, stating repeated depictions of indigenous people as living in the 1800s with feathers and face paint cause children to mistake them as fictional and not as people that still exist today. The depictions of Native American people in Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie" and J. M. Barrie's "Peter Pan" are widely discussed among critics. Wilder's novel, based on her childhood in America's midwest in the late 1800s, portrays Native Americans as racialized stereotypes and has been banned in some classrooms. In her essay, "Somewhere Outside the Forest: Ecological Ambivalence in Neverland from The Little White Bird to Hook", writer M. Lynn Byrd describes how the natives of Neverland in "Peter Pan" are depicted as "uncivilized", valiant fighters unafraid of death and are referred to as "redskins", which is now considered a racial slur.


title: Children's literature

text: The presence of empire as well as pro-colonialist and imperialist themes in children's literature have been identified in some of the most well known children's classics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.


title: Children's literature

text: In the French illustrator Jean de Brunhoff's 1931 picture book "Histoire de Babar, le petit elephant (The Story of Babar, The Little Elephant)", prominent themes of imperialism and colonialism have been noted and identified as propaganda. An allegory for French colonialism, Babar easily assimilates himself into the bourgeois lifestyle. It is a world where the elephants who have adapted themselves dominate the animals who have not yet been assimilated into the new and powerful civilization. H. A. Rey and Margret Rey's "Curious George" first published in 1941 has been criticized for its blatant slave and colonialist narratives. Critics claim the man with the yellow hat represents a colonialist poacher of European descent who kidnaps George, a monkey from Africa, and sends him on a ship to America. Details such as the man in colonialist uniform and Curious George's lack of tail are points in this argument. In an article, "The Wall Street Journal" interprets it as a "barely disguised slave narrative." Rudyard Kipling, the author of "Just So Stories" and "The Jungle Book" has also been accused of colonial prejudice attitudes. Literary critic Jean Webb, among others, has pointed out the presence of British imperialist ideas in "The Secret Garden". Colonialist ideology has been identified as a prominent element in Peter Pan by critics.


title: Children's literature

text: Some of the earliest children's stories that contain feminist themes are Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" and Frank L. Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". With many women of this period being represented in children's books as doing housework, these two books deviated from this pattern. Drawing attention to the perception of housework as oppressive is one of the earliest forms of the feminist movement. "Little Women", a story about four sisters, is said to show power of women in the home and is seen as both conservative and radical in nature. The character of Jo is observed as having a rather contemporary personality and has even been seen as a representation of the feminist movement. It has been suggested that the feminist themes in "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" result from influence of Baum's mother-in law, Matilda Gage, an important figure in the suffragist movement. Baum's significant political commentary on capitalism, and racial oppression are also said to be part of Gage's influence. Examples made of these themes is the main protagonist, Dorothy who is punished by being made to do housework. Another example made of positive representations of women is in Finnish author Tove Jansson's Moomin series which features strong and individualized female characters. In recent years, there has been a surge in the production and availability of feminist children's literature as well as a rise in gender neutrality in children's literature.


title: Children's literature

text: In addition to perpetuating stereotypes about appropriate behavior and occupations for women and girls, children's books frequently lack female characters entirely, or include them only as minor or unimportant characters. In the book "Boys and Girls Forever: Reflections on Children's Classics", scholar Alison Lurie says most adventure novels of the 20th century, with few exceptions, contain boy protagonists while female characters in books such as those by Dr. Seuss, would typically be assigned the gender-specific roles of receptionists and nurses. The "Winnie-the-Pooh" characters written by A. A. Milne, are primarily male, with the exception of the character Kanga, who is a mother to Roo. Even animals and inanimate objects are usually identified as being male in children's books. The near-absence of significant female characters is paradoxical because of the role of women in creating children's literature. According to an article published in the "Guardian" in 2011, by Allison Flood, "Looking at almost 6,000 children's books published between 1900 and 2000, the study, led by Janice McCabe, a professor of sociology at Florida State University, found that males are central characters in 57% of children's books published each year, with just 31% having female central characters. Male animals are central characters in 23% of books per year, the study found, while female animals star in only 7.5%".


title: Children's literature

text: On the one hand "Growing up with Dick and Jane" highlights the heterosexual, nuclear family and also points out the gender-specific duties of the mother, father, brother and sister, while "Young Children and Picture Books", on the other hand, encourages readers to avoid books with women who are portrayed as inactive and unsuccessful as well as intellectually inferior and subservient to their fellow male characters to avoid children's books that have repressive and sexist stereotypes for women.


title: Children's literature

text: In her book "Children's Literature: From the fin de siècle to the new millennium", professor Kimberley Reynolds claims gender division stayed in children's books prominently until the 1990s. She also says that capitalism encourages gender-specific marketing of books and toys. For example, adventure stories have been identified as being for boys and domestic fiction intended for girls. Publishers often believe that boys will not read stories about girls, but that girls will read stories about both boys and girls; therefore, a story that features male characters is expected to sell better. The interest in appealing to boys is also seen in the Caldecott awards, which tend to be presented to books that are believed to appeal to boys. Reynolds also says that both boys and girls have been presented by limited representations of appropriate behaviour, identities and careers through the illustrations and text of children's literature. She argues girls have traditionally been marketed books that prepare them for domestic jobs and motherhood. Conversely, boys are prepared for leadership roles and war. During the 20th century, more than 5,000 children's picture books were published in the U.S; during that time, male characters outnumbered female characters by more than 3 to 2, and male animals outnumbered female animals by 3 to 1. No children's picture book that featured a protagonist with an identifiable gender contained only female characters.


title: Children's literature

text: "I'm Glad I'm a Boy! I'm Glad I'm a Girl!" (1970) by Whitney Darrow Jr. was criticized for narrow career depictions for both boys and girls. The book informs the reader that boys are doctors, policemen, pilots, and presidents while girls are nurses, meter maids, stewardesses and first ladies.


title: Children's literature

text: Nancy F. Cott, once said that "gender matters; that is, it matters that human beings do not appear as neuter individuals, that they exist as male or female, although this binary is always filtered through human perception. I should add that when I say gender, I am talking about meaning. I am talking about something in which interpretation is already involved."


title: Children's literature

text: In her book "La sua barba non è poi così blu... Immaginario collettivo e violenza misogina nella fiaba di Perrault" (2014, translated into Spanish "Su barba no era tan azul" and winner of the first international CIRSE award 2015), Angela Articoni analyzes the fairy tale Bluebeard dwelling on the sentence pronounced by the protagonist to convince herself to accept marriage, an expression that recites to repeat the women victims of violence who hope to be able to redeem their prince charming.


title: Children's literature

text: A widely discussed and debated topic by critics and publishers in the children's book industry is whether outdated and offensive content, specifically racial stereotypes, should be changed in new editions. Some question if certain books should be banned, while others believe original content should remain, but publishers should add information to guide parents in conversations with their children about the problematic elements of the particular story. Some see racist stereotypes as cultural artifacts that should be preserved. In "The Children's Culture Reader", scholar Henry Jenkins references Herbert R. Kohl's essay "Should We Burn Babar?" which raises the debate whether children should be educated on how to think critically towards oppressive ideologies rather than ignore historical mistakes. Jenkins suggests that parents and educators should trust children to make responsible judgments.


title: Children's literature

text: Some books have been altered in newer editions and significant changes can be seen, such as illustrator Richard Scarry's book "Best Word Book Ever". and Roald Dahl's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". In other cases classics have been rewritten into updated versions by new authors and illustrators. Several versions of "Little Black Sambo" have been remade as more appropriate and without prejudice.


title: Children's literature

text: Bruno Bettelheim in "The Uses of Enchantment", uses psychoanalysis to examine the impact that fairy tales have on the developing child. Bettelheim states the unconscious mind of a child is affected by the ideas behind a story, which shape their perception and guides their development. Likewise, author and illustrator Anthony Browne contends the early viewing of an image in a picture book leaves an important and lasting impression on a child. According to research, a child's most crucial individual characteristics are developed in their first five years. Their environment and interaction with images in picture books have a profound impact on this development and are intended to inform a child about the world.


title: Children's literature

text: Children's literature critic Peter Hunt argues that no book is innocent of harbouring an ideology of the culture it comes from. Critics discuss how an author's ethnicity, gender and social class inform their work. Scholar Kimberley Reynolds suggests books can never be neutral as their nature is intended as instructional and by using its language, children are embedded with the values of that society. Claiming childhood as a culturally constructed concept, Reynolds states that it is through children's literature that a child learns how to behave and to act as a child should, according to the expectations of their culture. She also attributes capitalism, in certain societies, as a prominent means of instructing especially middle class children in how to behave. The "image of childhood" is said to be created and perpetuated by adults to affect children "at their most susceptible age". Kate Greenaway's illustrations are used as an example of imagery intended to instruct a child in the proper way to look and behave. In Roberta Seelinger Trites's book "Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature", she also argues adolescence is a social construct established by ideologies present in literature. In the study "The First R: How Children Learn About Race and Racism", researcher Debra Ausdale studies children in multi-ethnic daycare centres. Ausdale claims children as young as three have already entered into and begun experimenting with the race ideologies of the adult world. She asserts racist attitudes are assimilated using interactions children have with books as an example of how children internalize what they encounter in real life.


title: Children's literature

text: Many noted awards for children's literature exist in various countries, parts of the world, or for specific languages:


title: Children's literature

text: International awards also exist as forms of global recognition. These include the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, Ilustrarte Bienale for illustration, and the BolognaRagazzi Award for art work and design. Additionally, bloggers with expertise on children's and young adult books give a major series of online book awards called The Cybils Awards, or Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." He is best known for his novels "Main Street" (1920), "Babbitt" (1922), "Arrowsmith" (1925), "Elmer Gantry" (1927), "Dodsworth" (1929), and "It Can't Happen Here" (1935).


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: His works are known for their critical views of American capitalism and materialism in the interwar period. He is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Born February 7, 1885, in the village of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis began reading books at a young age and kept a diary. He had two older siblings, Fred (born 1875) and Claude (born 1878). His father, Edwin J. Lewis, was a physician and a stern disciplinarian who had difficulty relating to his sensitive, unathletic third son. Lewis's mother, Emma Kermott Lewis, died in 1891. The following year, Edwin Lewis married Isabel Warner, whose company young Lewis apparently enjoyed. Throughout his lonely boyhood, the ungainly Lewis—tall, extremely thin, stricken with acne and somewhat pop-eyed—had trouble making friends and pined after various local girls. At the age of 13, he unsuccessfully ran away from home, wanting to become a drummer boy in the Spanish–American War. In late 1902, Lewis left home for a year at Oberlin Academy (the then-preparatory department of Oberlin College) to qualify for acceptance at Yale University. While at Oberlin, he developed a religious enthusiasm that waxed and waned for much of his remaining teenage years. He entered Yale in 1903, but did not receive his bachelor's degree until 1908, having taken time off to work at Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair's cooperative-living colony in Englewood, New Jersey, and to travel to Panama. Lewis's unprepossessing looks, "fresh" country manners and seemingly self-important loquacity made it difficult for him to win and keep friends at Oberlin and Yale. He did initiate a few relatively long-lived friendships among students and professors, some of whom recognized his promise as a writer. Lewis later became an atheist.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Lewis's earliest published creative work—romantic poetry and short sketches—appeared in the "Yale Courant" and the "Yale Literary Magazine", of which he became an editor. After graduation Lewis moved from job to job and from place to place in an effort to make ends meet, writing fiction for publication and to chase away boredom. While working for newspapers and publishing houses (and for a time at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California writers' colony), he developed a facility for turning out shallow, popular stories that were purchased by a variety of magazines. He also earned money by selling plots to Jack London, including one for the latter's unfinished novel "The Assassination Bureau, Ltd".


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Lewis's first published book was "Hike and the Aeroplane", a Tom Swift-style potboiler that appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Sinclair Lewis's first serious novel, "Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man", appeared in 1914, followed by "The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life" (1915) and "The Job" (1917). That same year also saw the publication of another potboiler, "", an expanded version of a serial story that had originally appeared in "Woman's Home Companion". "Free Air", another refurbished serial story, was published in 1919.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Upon moving to Washington, D.C., Lewis devoted himself to writing. As early as 1916, he began taking notes for a realistic novel about small-town life. Work on that novel continued through mid-1920, when he completed "Main Street", which was published on October 23, 1920. His biographer Mark Schorer wrote that the phenomenal success of "Main Street" "was the most sensational event in twentieth-century American publishing history". Lewis's agent had the most optimistic projection of sales at 25,000 copies. In its first six months, "Main Street" sold 180,000 copies, and within a few years, sales were estimated at two million. Richard Lingeman wrote in 2002, ""Main Street" made [Lewis] rich—earning him about 3 million current dollars" (almost $5 million, as of 2022).


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Lewis followed up this first great success with "Babbitt" (1922), a novel that satirized the American commercial culture and boosterism. The story was set in the fictional Midwestern town of Zenith, Winnemac, a setting to which Lewis returned in future novels, including "Arrowsmith", "Gideon Planish" and "Dodsworth".


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Lewis continued his success in the 1920s with "Arrowsmith" (1925), a novel about the challenges faced by an idealistic doctor. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, which Lewis declined, still upset that "Main Street" had not won the prize. It was adapted as a 1931 Hollywood film directed by John Ford and starring Ronald Colman which was nominated for four Academy Awards.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Next Lewis published "Elmer Gantry" (1927), which depicted an evangelical minister as deeply hypocritical. The novel was denounced by many religious leaders and banned in some U.S. cities. It was adapted for the screen more than a generation later as the basis of the 1960 movie starring Burt Lancaster, who earned a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the title role. The film won two more awards as well.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Lewis next published "Dodsworth" (1929), a novel about the most affluent and successful members of American society. He portrayed them as leading essentially pointless lives in spite of great wealth and advantages. The book was adapted for the Broadway stage in 1934 by Sidney Howard, who also wrote the screenplay for the 1936 film version directed by William Wyler, which was a great success at the time. The film is still highly regarded; in 1990, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, and in 2005 "Time" magazine named it one of the "100 Best Movies" of the past 80 years.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: During the late 1920s and 1930s, Lewis wrote many short stories for a variety of magazines and publications. "Little Bear Bongo" (1930) is a tale about a bear cub who wants to escape the circus in search of a better life in the real world, first published in "Cosmopolitan" magazine. The story was acquired by Walt Disney Pictures in 1940 for a possible feature film. World War II sidetracked those plans until 1947. Disney used the story (now titled "Bongo") as part of its feature "Fun and Fancy Free".


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: In 1930 Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first writer from the United States to receive the award, after he had been nominated by Henrik Schück, member of the Swedish Academy. In the academy's presentation speech, special attention was paid to "Babbitt". In his Nobel Lecture, Lewis praised Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, and other contemporaries, but also lamented that "in America most of us—not readers alone, but even writers—are still afraid of any literature which is not a glorification of everything American, a glorification of our faults as well as our virtues," and that America is "the most contradictory, the most depressing, the most stirring, of any land in the world today." He also offered a profound criticism of the American literary establishment: "Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead."


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: After winning the Nobel Prize, Lewis wrote eleven more novels, ten of which appeared in his lifetime. The best remembered is "It Can't Happen Here" (1935), a novel about the election of a fascist to the American presidency.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: After praising Dreiser as "pioneering", that he "more than any other man, marching alone, usually unappreciated, often hated, has cleared the trail from Victorian and Howellsian timidity and gentility in American fiction to honesty and boldness and passion of life" in his Nobel Lecture in December 1930, in March 1931 Lewis publicly accused Dreiser of plagiarizing a book by Dorothy Thompson, Lewis's wife, which led to a well-publicized fight, wherein Dreiser repeatedly slapped Lewis. Thompson initially made the accusation in 1928 regarding her work "The New Russia" and Dreiser's "Dreiser Goes to Russia", though "The New York Times" also linked the dispute to competition between Dreiser and Lewis over the Nobel Prize. Dreiser fired back that Sinclair's 1925 novel "Arrowsmith" (adapted later that year as a feature film) was unoriginal and that Dreiser himself was first approached to write it, which was disputed by the wife of "Arrowsmith"'s subject, microbiologist Dr. Paul de Kruif. The feud carried on for some months. In 1944, however, Lewis campaigned to have Dreiser recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: After an alcoholic binge in 1937, Lewis checked in for treatment to the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. His doctors gave him a blunt assessment that he needed to decide "whether he was going to live without alcohol or die by it, one or the other." Lewis checked out after ten days, lacking any "fundamental understanding of his problem", as one of his physicians wrote to a colleague.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: In the autumn of 1940, Lewis visited his old acquaintance, William Ellery Leonard, in Madison, Wisconsin. Leonard arranged a meeting with the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a tour of the campus. Lewis immediately became enthralled with the university and the city and offered to remain and teach a course in creative writing in the upcoming semester. For a month he was quite enamored of his professorial role. Suddenly, on November 7, after giving only five classes to his select group of 24 students, he announced that he had taught them all that he knew. He left Madison the next day.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: In the 1940s, Lewis and rabbi-turned-popular-author Lewis Browne frequently appeared on the lecture platform together, touring the United States and debating before audiences of as many as 3,000 people, addressing such questions as "Has the Modern Woman Made Good?", "The Country Versus the City", "Is the Machine Age Wrecking Civilization?", and "Can Fascism Happen Here?". The pair were described as "the Gallagher and Shean of the lecture circuit" by Lewis biographer Richard Lingeman.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: In the early 1940s, Lewis lived in Duluth, Minnesota. During this time, he wrote the novel "Kingsblood Royal" (1947), set in the fictional city of Grand Republic, Minnesota, an enlarged and updated version of Zenith. It is based on the Sweet Trials in Detroit in which an African-American doctor was denied the chance to purchase a house in a "white" section of the city. Lewis' creation of the novel was proceeded by his introduction to the black community via Edward Francis Murphy, a Josephite priest with whom he had attended school as a child. "Kingsblood" was a powerful and very early contribution to the civil rights movement.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: In 1943, Lewis went to Hollywood to work on a script with Dore Schary, who had just resigned as executive head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's low-budget film department to concentrate on writing and producing his own films. The resulting screenplay was "Storm In the West", "a traditional American western" — except for the fact that it was also an allegory of World War II, with primary villain Hygatt (Hitler) and his henchmen Gribbles (Goebbels) and Gerrett (Goering) plotting to take over the Franson Ranch, the Poling Ranch, and so on. The screenplay was deemed too political by MGM studio executives and was shelved, and the film was never made. "Storm In the West" was finally published in 1963, with a foreword by Schary detailing the work's origins, the authors' creative process, and the screenplay's ultimate fate.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Sinclair Lewis had been a frequent visitor to Williamstown, Massachusetts. In 1946, he rented Thorvale Farm on Oblong Road. While working on his novel "Kingsblood Royal", he purchased this summer estate and upgraded the Georgian mansion along with a farmhouse and many outbuildings. By 1948, Lewis had created a gentleman's farm consisting of of agricultural and forest land. His intended residence in Williamstown was short-lived because of his medical problems.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: In 1914 Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger (1887–1981), an editor at "Vogue" magazine. They had one son, Wells Lewis (1917–1944), named after British author H. G. Wells. Serving as a U.S. Army lieutenant during World War II, Wells Lewis was killed in action on October 29 amid Allied efforts to rescue the "Lost Battalion" in France. Dean Acheson, the future Secretary of State, was a neighbor and family friend in Washington, and observed that Sinclair's literary "success was not good for that marriage, or for either of the parties to it, or for Lewis's work" and the family moved out of town.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Lewis divorced Grace on April 16, 1925. On May 14, 1928, he married Dorothy Thompson, a political newspaper columnist. Later in 1928, he and Dorothy purchased a second home in rural Vermont. They had a son, Michael Lewis (1930–1975), who became a stage actor. Their marriage had virtually ended by 1937, and they divorced in 1942.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Lewis died in Rome from advanced alcoholism on January 10, 1951, aged 65. His body was cremated and his remains were buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. His final novel "World So Wide" (1951) was published posthumously.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: William Shirer, a friend and admirer of Lewis, disputes accounts that Lewis died of alcoholism. He reported that Lewis had a heart attack and that his doctors advised him to stop drinking if he wanted to live. Lewis did not stop, and perhaps could not; he died when his heart stopped.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Compared to his contemporaries, Lewis's reputation suffered a precipitous decline among literary scholars throughout the 20th century. Despite his enormous popularity during the 1920s, by the 21st century most of his works had been eclipsed in prominence by other writers with less commercial success during the same time period, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Since the 2010s there has been renewed interest in Lewis's work, in particular his 1935 dystopian satire "It Can't Happen Here". In the aftermath of the 2016 United States presidential election, "It Can't Happen Here" surged to the top of Amazon's list of best-selling books. Scholars have found eerie parallels in his novels to the COVID-19 crisis, and to the rise of Donald Trump.


title: Sinclair Lewis

text: Samuel J. Rogal edited "The Short Stories of Sinclair Lewis (1904–1949)", a seven-volume set published in 2007 by Edwin Mellen Press. The first attempt to collect all of Lewis's short stories.


title: Reliance Retail

text: Reliance Retail is an Indian retail company and a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. Founded in 2006, it is the largest retailer in India in terms of revenue. Its retail outlets offer grocery,


title: Reliance Retail

text: In September 2020, it was announced that American investment firm Silver Lake has bought 1.75% stake in Reliance Retail for valuing the business at . On 23 September, it was announced that KKR has bought 1.28% stake for ₹5,500 crore valuing the venture at ₹4.28 trillion or $58 billion.


title: Reliance Retail

text: In October 2020, Singapore's GIC bought a 1.22% stake for $752 million, while TPG acquired a 0.41% stake for $250 million giving Reliance Retail a pre-money valuation of $58.5 billion.


title: Reliance Retail

text: In 2022, Reliance Retail launched fashion stores under Azorte brand, under which it retails footwear, fashion accessories, home and beauty products.


title: Reliance Retail

text: Reliance Retail had a turnover of ₹337 billion in the financial year 2016–17. Reliance Retail announced revenues of ₹450 billion for the nine months ended December 2017 for financial year 2017–18, showing over a 90% jump from the corresponding previous period. The company also reported a profit of ₹7 billion for the period. In financial year 2019–2020, the company reported revenue of ₹1.62 trillion and EBITDA of 9,654 crore growing 55.7% year over year.


title: Reliance Retail

text: On 29 August 2020, Reliance Retail announced that it is acquiring the retail, wholesale, logistics and warehousing business from the Future Group for adding 15 lakh square meters of retail space to the company.


title: Reliance Retail

text: On 15 November 2020, Reliance Retail announced that it had acquired a majority ownership of the furniture and decorating company Urban Ladder.


title: Reliance Retail

text: On 7 October 2021, the company announced its partnership with 7-Eleven to open its stores in India. The announcement came a day after Future Group announced the end of its partnership with 7-Eleven, citing the inability to meet the target of opening stores and payment of franchisee fees. The first 7-Eleven in India opened in Mumbai.


title: Reliance Retail

text: There are over 45 subsidiaries and divisions of Reliance Retail. Following is a list of major divisions:


title: Reliance Retail

text: Although Reliance Retail's grocery businesses primarily markets products of third party FMCG players, they also sell inhouse brands including: Best Farms, Good Life, Enzo, Mopz, Expelz and Home One.


title: Geb

text: Geb was the Egyptian god of the earth and a mythological member of the Ennead of Heliopolis. He could also be considered a father of snakes. It was believed in ancient Egypt that Geb's laughter created earthquakes and that he allowed crops to grow.


title: Geb

text: The name was pronounced as such from the Greek period onward and was originally wrongly read as Seb. The usual Egyptian name was "Geb", perhaps 'The lame one'. It was usually spelled with either initial -g- (all periods), or sometimes with -k-point ("gj"). The latter initial root consonant occurs once in the Middle Kingdom "Coffin Texts", more often in 21st Dynasty mythological papyri as well as in a text from the Ptolemaic tomb of Petosiris at Tuna El-Gebel or the name was written with initial hard -k-, as e.g. in a 30th Dynasty papyrus text in the Brooklyn Museum dealing with descriptions of and remedies against snakes.


title: Geb

text: The oldest representation in a fragmentary relief of the god was as an anthropomorphic bearded being accompanied by his name, and dating from king Djoser's reign, 3rd Dynasty, and was found in Heliopolis. However, the god never received a temple of his own. In later times he could also be depicted as a ram, a bull or a crocodile (the latter in a vignette of the Book of the Dead of the lady Heryweben in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo).


title: Geb

text: Geb was frequently feared as father of snakes (one of the names for snake was "s3-t3" – "son of the earth"). In a Coffin Texts spell Geb was described as father of the mythological snake Nehebkau of primeval times. In more mythology, Geb also often occurs as a primeval divine king of Egypt from whom his son Osiris and his grandson Horus inherited the land after many conflicts with the disruptive god Set, brother and killer of Osiris. Geb could also be regarded as personified fertile earth and barren desert, the latter containing the dead or setting them free from their tombs, metaphorically described as "Geb opening his jaws", or imprisoning those there not worthy to go to the fertile North-Eastern heavenly "Field of Reeds". In the latter case, one of his otherworldly attributes was an ominous jackal-headed stave (called "wsr.t" "Mighty One') rising from the ground onto which enemies could be bound.


title: Geb

text: In the Heliopolitan "Ennead" (a group of nine gods created in the beginning by the one god Atum or Ra), Geb is the husband of Nut, the sky or visible daytime and nightly firmament, the son of the earlier primordial elements Tefnut (moisture) and Shu ("emptiness"), and the father to the four lesser gods of the system – Osiris, Seth, Isis and Nephthys. In this context, Geb was believed to have originally been engaged with Nut and had to be separated from her by Shu, god of the air. Consequently, in mythological depictions, Geb was shown as a man reclining, sometimes with his phallus still pointed towards Nut. Geb and Nut together formed the permanent boundary between the primeval waters and the newly created world.


title: Geb

text: As time progressed, the deity became more associated with the habitable land of Egypt and also as one of its early rulers. As a chthonic deity he (like Min) became naturally associated with the underworld, fresh waters and with vegetation – barley being said to grow upon his ribs – and was depicted with plants and other green patches on his body.


title: Geb

text: His association with vegetation, healing and sometimes with the underworld and royalty brought Geb the occasional interpretation that he was the husband of Renenutet, a minor goddess of the harvest and also mythological caretaker (the meaning of her name is "nursing snake") of the young king in the shape of a cobra, who herself could also be regarded as the mother of Nehebkau, a primeval snake god associated with the underworld. He is also equated by classical authors as the Greek Titan Cronus.


title: Geb

text: Ptah and Ra, creator deities, usually begin the list of divine ancestors. There is speculation between Shu and Geb and who was the first god-king of Egypt. The story of how Shu, Geb, and Nut were separated in order to create the cosmos is now being interpreted in more human terms; exposing the hostility and sexual jealousy. Between the father-son jealousy and Shu rebelling against the divine order, Geb challenges Shu's leadership. Geb takes Shu's wife, Tefnut, as his chief queen, separating Shu from his sister-wife. Just as Shu had previously done to him. In the book of the Heavenly Cow, it is implied that Geb is the heir of the departing sun god. After Geb passed on the throne to Osiris, his son, he then took on a role of a judge in the Divine Tribunal of the gods.


title: Geb

text: Some Egyptologists (specifically Jan Bergman, Terence Duquesne or Richard H. Wilkinson) have stated that Geb was associated with a mythological divine creator goose who had laid a world egg from which the sun and/or the world had sprung. This theory is assumed to be incorrect and to be a result of confusing the divine name "Geb" with that of a Whitefronted Goose ("Anser albifrons"), also called originally "gb(b)": "lame one, stumbler".


title: Geb

text: This bird-sign is used only as a phonogram in order to spell the name of the god (H.te Velde, in: "Lexikon der Aegyptologie" II, lemma: Geb). An alternative ancient name for this goose species was "trp" meaning similarly 'walk like a drunk', 'stumbler'. The Whitefronted Goose is never found as a cultic symbol or holy bird of Geb. The mythological creator 'goose' referred to above, was called "Ngg wr" "Great Honker" and always depicted as a Nile Goose/Fox Goose or Egyptian goose ("Alopochen aegyptiacus") who ornithologically belongs to a separate genus and whose usual Egyptian name was "smn", Coptic "smon". A coloured vignet irrefutably depicts a Nile Goose with an opened beak ("Ngg wr"!) in a context of solar creation on a mythological papyrus dating from the 21st Dynasty.


title: Geb

text: Similar images of this divine bird are to be found on temple walls (Karnak, Deir el-Bahari), showing a scene of the king standing on a papyrus raft and ritually plucking papyrus for the Theban god Amun-Re-Kamutef. The latter Theban creator god could be embodied in a Nile goose, but never in a Whitefronted Goose. In "Underworld Books" a diacritic goose-sign (most probably denoting then an "Anser albifrons") was sometimes depicted on top of the head of a standing anonymous male anthropomorphic deity, pointing to Geb's identity. Geb himself was never depicted as a Nile Goose, as later was Amun, called on some New Kingdom stelae explicitly: "Amun, the beautiful "smn"- goose" (Nile Goose).


title: Geb

text: The only clear pictorial confusion between the hieroglyphs of a Whitefronted Goose (in the normal hieroglyphic spelling of the name Geb, often followed by the additional -b-sign) and a Nile Goose in the spelling of the name Geb occurs in the rock cut tomb of the provincial governor Sarenput II (12th Dynasty, Middle Kingdom) on the Qubba el-Hawa desert-ridge (opposite Aswan), namely on the left (southern) wall near the open doorway, in the first line of the brightly painted funerary offering formula. This confusion is to be compared with the frequent hacking out by Akhenaten's agents of the sign of the Pintail Duck (meaning 'son') in the royal title 'Son of Re', especially in Theban temples, where they confused the duck sign with that of a Nile Goose regarded as a form of the then forbidden god Amon.


title: Geb

text: In Greco-Roman Egypt, Geb was equated with the Greek god Cronus, because he held a quite similar position in the Greek pantheon, as the father of the gods Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon, as Geb did in Egyptian mythology. This equation is particularly well attested in Tebtunis in the southern Fayyum: Geb and Cronus were here part of a local version of the cult of Sobek, the crocodile god. The equation was shown on the one hand in the local iconography of the gods, in which Geb was depicted as a man with attributes of Cronus and Cronus with attributes of Geb. On the other hand, the priests of the local main temple identified themselves in Egyptian texts as priests of "Soknebtunis-Geb", but in Greek texts as priests of "Soknebtunis-Cronus". Accordingly, Egyptian names formed with the name of the god Geb were just as popular among local villagers as Greek names derived from Cronus, especially the name "Kronion".


title: Lily Aldridge

text: Lily Maud Aldridge (born November 15, 1985) is an American model best known for being a Victoria's Secret Angel from 2010 until 2018. She also appeared in the "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue", alongside Chrissy Teigen and Nina Agdal, for the 50th anniversary cover in 2014.


title: Lily Aldridge

text: Aldridge was born at Saint John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California. She went to Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica. She is the daughter of English artist Alan Aldridge and "Playboy" Playmate of the month Laura Lyons. Aldridge attended high school in London, as well as Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, California.


title: Lily Aldridge

text: Aldridge started modeling at the age of 16, for Abercrombie & Fitch. Her advertising campaigns included Rocawear, Arden B., Rag & Bone, Shiatzy Chen, Bobbi Brown, Smashbox Cosmetics, GAP, Tommy Hilfiger, Coach, JCrew, Charles David, Levi's, J Brand, Accessorize.


title: Lily Aldridge

text: She was also featured in the spring 2011 advertising campaign for clothing company rag & bone, and served as a photographer for the very same campaign in the following season.


title: Lily Aldridge

text: She was named the face of clothing company XOXO and the skincare company Proactiv in 2014. With Chanel Iman, she was the face of the Born Free Africa campaign for online retailer Shopbop.


title: Lily Aldridge

text: Aldridge's first major magazine cover was the August 2003 issue of Spanish "Vogue". She has since appeared on the covers of French Glamour, Vogue Mexico, Elle Korea, Elle Brazil, Elle Vietnam, Tatler, 10 magazine, S Moda, Esquire Mexico, Allure Russia and Net-A-Porter's online magazine, The Edit.


title: Lily Aldridge

text: She has appeared in editorials for American, French, British, Spanish, German, and Mexican "Vogue", American, Australian, and Korean "Elle", "Harper's Bazaar", "LOVE", "W", "V", "Glamour", and "Marie Claire".


title: Lily Aldridge

text: Aldridge made her "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue" debut in 2014, as a covermodel alongside Chrissy Teigen and Nina Agdal for the issue's 50th anniversary.


title: Lily Aldridge

text: She has been the face of fashion label Velvet Tees since 2004. In 2013, Aldridge released her own clothing line with Velvet Tees called Lily Aldridge for Velvet.


title: Lily Aldridge

text: Aldridge made her Victoria's Secret Fashion Show debut in 2009. She became a Victoria's Secret Angel in 2010 was given wings for the first time during that year's show. She continued to appear in the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show until stepping away in 2018.


title: Lily Aldridge

text: On November 2, 2015, Victoria's Secret announced that Aldridge would have the honor of wearing that year's Fantasy Bra during its fashion show, joining the ranks of models such as Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, Alessandra Ambrosio and Adriana Lima. The bra, created by jeweler Mouawad, has an estimated value of $2 million and features more than 6,500 precious gems. She unveiled the bra in a video for "Vogue".


title: Lily Aldridge

text: Her time as an Angel included multiple magazine appearances. She appeared on the February 2011 cover of "British GQ" alongside fellow Angels Lindsay Ellingson, Erin Heatherton, and Candice Swanepoel for its annual Victoria's Secret Collector's Issue. Aldridge, Heatherton and Swanepoel also appeared in an editorial for "V Magazine" that month. In October 2014, Aldridge appeared in "British Vogue" with fellow Victoria's Secret Angels Adriana Lima, Candice Swanepoel, Lais Ribeiro and Elsa Hosk.


title: Lily Aldridge

text: Aldridge had a brief appearance alongside Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and others in Limp Bizkit's 2000 music video for "Break Stuff." In 2015 she appeared in Taylor Swift's video for "Bad Blood," portraying an assassin named Frostbyte. Aldridge has also appeared in two Kings of Leon videos: "Use Somebody" and "Temple."


title: Lily Aldridge

text: Aldridge appeared on the TV series "Love Advent", "2 Broke Girls" with Martha Hunt in episode "And the Model Apartment", and the film "Ocean's 8" (2018). She also appeared in an episode of "Top Chef" with her husband Caleb Followill.


title: Lily Aldridge

text: Aldridge launched her eponymous fragrance line, Lily Aldridge Parfums, in the fall of 2019. The line's first fragrance, Haven, is described as a "romantic floral scent, with rich rose, fresh peony and a note of deep musk." The second scent, Summit, is described as a "warm, aromatic scent, with sweet tobacco, rich leather, spices and woods." She said the line was developed with sustainability in mind; the bottles feature bottle caps made with responsibly harvested wood and recycled-paper boxes that double as shipping cartons.


title: Lily Aldridge

text: Aldridge met Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill at Coachella in 2007. They married on May 12, 2011, at the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, California. They have a daughter Dixie (born June 2012); and a son Winston (born February 2019).


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Võ Nguyên Giáp (; 25 August 1911 – 4 October 2013) was a Vietnamese general and communist politician who is regarded as having been one of the greatest military strategists of the 20th century. He served as interior minister in President Hồ Chí Minh's Việt Minh government, the military commander of the Việt Minh, the commander of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), minister of defence, and deputy prime minister. He also served as a member of the Politburo of the Vietnam Workers' Party, which in 1976 became the Communist Party of Vietnam.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Giáp first rose to prominence during World War II, when he served as the military leader of the Viet Minh resistance against the Japanese occupation of Vietnam. He had no direct military training and was a history teacher at a French-speaking academy, influenced by historical military leaders and personally citing T. E. Lawrence and Napoleon as his two greatest influences. He later earned the moniker "Red Napoleon" from some Western sources.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Giáp was a crucial military commander in two wars: the First Indochina War of 1946–1954, fighting against the French, and the Vietnam War of 1955–1975, fighting against South Vietnam and its American backers. He participated in several historically significant battles, including Vĩnh Yên in 1951, Nà Sản in 1952, Điện Biên Phủ in 1954, the Tet Offensive in 1968, the Easter Offensive in 1972, and the final Ho Chi Minh Campaign of 1975.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Giáp was a mastermind military builder; during the First Indochina War, he had transformed a rag-tag band of rebels to a 'fine light-infantry army' fielding cryptography, artillery and advanced logistics and capable of challenging a larger, modernised French Far East Expeditionary Corps and the Vietnamese National Army. He was also a very effective logistician, laying the foundation of the Ho Chi Minh trail, recognised as one of the great feats of military engineering of the 20th century.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: As head of the army during the Vietnam War, Giáp is often credited with North Vietnam's military victory over South Vietnam and the United States. Recent scholarship indicates other leaders had played more prominent roles, with former subordinates and now rivals Văn Tiến Dũng and Hoàng Văn Thái assuming a more direct military responsibility than Giáp. Nevertheless, he played a pivotal role in the second transformation of the PAVN into "one of the largest, most formidable" mechanised and combined-arms fighting force capable of delivering a knockout blow to an increasingly more powerful rival Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in conventional warfare.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Võ Nguyên Giáp was born on 25 August 1911 (or 1912 according to some sources) in Quảng Bình Province, French Indochina. Giáp's father and mother, Võ Quang Nghiêm and Nguyễn Thị Kiên, worked the land, rented some to neighbours, and lived a relatively comfortable life.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Giáp's father was both a minor official and a committed Vietnamese nationalist, having played a part in the Cần Vương movement in the 1880s. He was arrested for subversive activities by the French colonial authorities in 1919 and died in prison a few weeks later. Giáp had two sisters and one brother, and soon after his father's incarceration, one of his sisters was also arrested. Although she was not held for long, the privations of prison life made her ill and she too died a few weeks after being released.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Giáp was taught at home by his father before going to the village school. His precocious intelligence meant that he was soon transferred to the district school and in 1924, at the age of thirteen, he left home to attend the Quốc Học (also known in English as the "National Academy"), a French-run "lycée" in Huế. This school had been founded by a Catholic official named Ngo Dinh Kha, and his son, Ngô Đình Diệm also attended it. Diem later became President of South Vietnam (1955–63). Years earlier the same school had educated another boy, Nguyen Sinh Cung, also the son of an official. In 1943 Cung adopted the name Ho Chi Minh.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: At age 14, Giáp became a messenger for the Haiphong Power Company. He was expelled from the school after two years for taking part in protests, and went home to his village for a while. While there, he joined the "Tân Việt Revolutionary Party", an underground group founded in 1924, which introduced him to communism. He returned to Hue and continued his political activities. He was arrested in 1930 for taking part in student protests and served 13 months of a two-year sentence at Lao Bảo Prison. By Giáp's own account the reason for his release was lack of evidence against him. He joined the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1931 and took part in several demonstrations against French rule in Indochina as well as assisting in founding the Democratic Front in 1933.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Although he has denied it, Giáp was said by the historian Cecil B. Currey to have also spent some time in the prestigious Hanoi Lycée Albert Sarraut, where the local elite was educated to serve the colonial regime. He was said to have been in the same class as Phạm Văn Đồng, a future Prime Minister, who has also denied having studied at Albert Sarraut, and Bảo Đại, the last Emperor of Annam. From 1933 to 1938, Giáp studied at the Indochinese University in Hanoi where he earned a bachelor's degree in law with a major in political economy.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: While a student, Giáp had taken lodgings with Professor Dang Thai Minh, whose daughter, Nguyen Thi Minh Giang (also cited as Nguyễn Thị Quang Thái), he had first met at school in Hue. She too had learned nationalism from her father and had joined the revolutionary activities with which Giáp was involved. In June 1938 (or, according to some sources, April 1939) they were married and in May 1939 they had a daughter, Hong Anh (Red Queen of Flowers). Giáp's busy political activities took a toll on his postgraduate studies, and he failed to pass the examinations for the Certificate of Administrative Law. Unable therefore to practice as a lawyer, he took a job as a history teacher at the in Hanoi.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: As well as teaching in school, Giáp was busy producing and writing articles for "Tiếng Dân" (Voice of the People) founded by Huỳnh Thúc Kháng and many other revolutionary newspapers, while actively participating in various revolutionary movements. All the while, Giáp was a dedicated reader of military history and philosophy, revering Sun Tzu. He also made a particular study of Napoleon's generalship, and greatly admired T. E. Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", learning from it practical examples of how to apply minimum military force to maximum effect. During the Popular Front years in France, he founded "Hồn Trẻ tập mới" (Soul of Youth), an underground socialist newspaper. He also founded the French-language paper "Le Travail" (on which Phạm Văn Đồng also worked).


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: After the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the French authorities outlawed the Indochinese Communist Party. Its leaders decided that Giáp should leave Vietnam and go into exile in China. On 3 May 1940 he said farewell to his wife, left Hanoi and crossed the border into China. Giáp's wife went to her family home in Vinh, where she was arrested, sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment, and incarcerated in the Hoa Lo Central Prison in Hanoi. In China, Giáp joined up with Hồ Chí Minh, then an adviser to the People's Liberation Army. Giáp adopted the alias Duong Huai-nan, learned to speak and write Chinese, and studied the strategy and tactics of the Chinese Communist Party.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: In September 1940, Vichy France agreed to the Japanese occupation of Vietnam, to 'protect' Indochina. In May 1941 the Eighth Congress of the Indochinese Communist Party decided to form the Viet Minh; Giáp was made responsible for establishing an intelligence network and organising political bases in the far north of the country. To begin propaganda work among the population, a news-sheet called "Việt Nam Độc Lập" was produced. Giáp wrote many articles for it, and was repeatedly criticised by Ho Chi Minh for the excessive verbosity of his writing style.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: In 1942, Giáp and about forty men moved back into Vietnam and established themselves in remote caves near the village of Vu Nhai. This and similar small groups in the mountains were the basis of the Viet Minh, the armed wing of the Vietnam Independence League. The local Nung hill people spoke little Vietnamese, so Giáp and his colleagues had to learn local dialects and draw pictures to communicate. When Vichy security patrols approached, they would conceal themselves in a cave under a waterfall, or, at times, in the lands of the Man Trang people.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: For the next few years he and his comrades worked steadily to build up a small military force and to win local people over to the communist cause. By the end of 1943 several hundred men and women had joined the Viet Minh. It was in the summer of 1943 that Giáp was told that his wife had been beaten to death by guards in the central prison in Hanoi.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: In September 1944 the first Revolutionary Party Military Conference was held and it was agreed that the time was now right to take the military struggle forward into a new phase. The formation of the Vietnam Liberation army was proclaimed, with Giáp as its commander. Ho Chi Minh directed him to establish Armed Propaganda Brigades and the first one, consisting of thirty-one men and three women, was formed in December 1944. Named the Tran Hung Dao Platoon after the great Vietnamese hero, it was armed with two revolvers, seventeen rifles, one light machine gun, and fourteen breech-loading flintlocks dating from the Russo-Japanese War.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Ho Chi Minh decided that for propaganda purposes, the Armed Propaganda Unit had to win a military victory within a month of being established, so on 25 December 1944 Giáp led successful attacks against French outposts in the Battles of Khai Phat and Na Ngan. Two French lieutenants were killed and the Vietnamese soldiers in the outposts surrendered. The Viet Minh attackers suffered no casualties. A few weeks later, Giáp was wounded in the leg when his group attacked another outpost at Dong Mu.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Through the first half of 1945, Giáp's military position strengthened as the political position of the French and Japanese weakened. On 9 March the Japanese removed the titular French regime and placed the emperor Bảo Đại at the head of a puppet state, the Empire of Vietnam.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: By April the Viet Minh had nearly five thousand members, and was able to attack Japanese posts with confidence. Between May and August 1945, the United States, keen to support anti-Japanese forces in mainland Asia, actively supplied and trained Giáp and the Viet Minh. Major Archimedes Patti, in charge of the so-called 'Deer Team' unit, taught the Viet Minh to use flamethrowers, grenade launchers and machine guns.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: In a single month they succeeded in training around 200 hand-picked future leaders of the army they were to oppose a few decades later. Growing stronger, Giáp's forces took more territory and captured more towns up until the announcement on 15 August by the Japanese Emperor of his country's unconditional surrender to the allies.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: On 28 August 1945, Giáp led his men into Hanoi, and on 2 September, Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. He formed a new government, with Giáp as Minister of the Interior. Unbeknownst to the Việt Minh, President Harry S. Truman, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin had already decided the future of postwar Vietnam at a summit meeting at Potsdam. They agreed that the country would be occupied temporarily to get the Japanese out; the northern half would be under the control of the Nationalist Chinese and the southern half under the British.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: On 9 September, the Nationalist Chinese forces crossed the border and quickly took control of the north, while on 12 September, the British Indian Army arrived in Saigon. By October French forces had begun to arrive in Vietnam, and the British handed control of the south back to them and in May 1946, an agreement between the French and the Chinese saw the Chinese withdraw from the north and the French move in there as well. Ho Chi Minh and Võ Nguyên Giáp pursued lengthy negotiations with the French, seeking to avoid an all-out war to cement their independence. Giáp led the Vietnamese delegation at the Dalat conference in April 1946, which yielded nothing, and, returning to Hanoi, he was made Minister of Defense. Ho Chi Minh departed for France on 31 May, to negotiate with the French at Fontainebleau, and he remained in France until November.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: With Ho in France, Giáp was effectively in charge of the government in Hanoi. Up to then, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam had allowed nationalist and other newspapers to publish, but when they began attacking and vilifying Giáp he cracked down on them and closed them all. He also deployed Viet Minh forces against non-communist nationalist troops in the suburbs of Hanoi, and had their leaders arrested, imprisoned, or killed. During this period he also began a relationship with a famous and beautiful dancer, Thuong Huyen, and was seen in public with her at nightclubs. This conduct caused serious concern in the upper ranks of the Party as it was contrary to the very strict and abstemious moral code by which all members were expected to abide. Wanting to protect him, Ho Chi Minh arranged for him to meet a graduate from a well-known family, Ba Hanh.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: The tense standoff between the Vietnamese government and the French occupiers escalated dramatically on 23 October when the French commander Argenlieu ordered the cruiser "Suffren" to bombard Haiphong in response to repeated skirmishes with Vietnamese forces as they tried to bring arms and contraband into the port. Around six thousand people were killed, and fourteen thousand wounded in the bombardment. Giáp, acting as de facto president in the absence of Ho Chi Minh, tried to maintain some kind of peace but by the time Ho returned in November, both sides were on a war footing. Local fighting broke out repeatedly and on 27 November, Ho's government, concluding that it could not hold Hanoi against the French, retreated up into the northern hills where it had been based two years previously. On 19 December, the Vietnamese government officially declared war on France and fighting erupted all over the country. After this time, detailed information on Giáp's personal life becomes much scarcer and in most sources the emphasis is on his military achievements and, later, on his political roles.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: The first few years of the war involved mostly a low-level, semi-conventional resistance fight against the French occupying forces. Võ Nguyên Giáp first saw real fighting at Nha Trang, when he traveled to south-central Vietnam in January–February 1946, to convey the determination of leaders in Hanoi to resist the French. However, after the Chinese communists reached the northern border of Vietnam in 1949 and the Vietnamese destruction of French posts there, the conflict turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the United States and the Soviet Union.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: French Union forces included colonial troops from many parts of the former French empire (Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Laotian, Cambodian, Vietnamese and Vietnamese ethnic minorities), French professional troops and units of the French Foreign Legion. The use of metropolitan recruits (i.e. recruits from France itself) was forbidden by French governments to prevent the war from becoming even more unpopular at home. It was called the "dirty war" ("la sale guerre") by supporters of the Left in France and intellectuals (including Jean-Paul Sartre) during the Henri Martin affair in 1950.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: When it became clear that France was becoming involved in a long drawn-out and so far not very successful war, the French government tried to negotiate an agreement with the Viet Minh. They offered to help set up a national government and promised that they would eventually grant Vietnam its independence. Ho Chi Minh and the other leaders of the Viet Minh did not trust the word of the French and continued the war.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: While growing stronger in Vietnam, the Việt Minh also expanded the war and lured the French to spread their force to remote areas such as Laos. In December 1953, French military commander General Henri Navarre set up a defensive complex at Ðiện Biên Phủ in the Mường Thanh Valley, disrupting Việt Minh supply lines passing through Laos. He surmised that in an attempt to reestablish the route, Giáp would be forced to organize a mass attack on Ðiện Biên Phủ, thus fighting a conventional battle, in which Navarre could expect to have the advantage.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Giáp took up the French challenge. While the French dug in at their outpost, the Việt Minh were also preparing the battlefield. While diversionary attacks were launched in other areas, Giáp ordered his men to covertly position their artillery by hand. Defying standard military practice, he had his twenty-four 105 mm howitzers placed on the forward slopes of the hills around Dien Bien Phu, in deep, mostly hand-dug emplacements protecting them from French aircraft and counter-battery fire.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: With anti-aircraft guns supplied by the Soviet Union, Giáp was able to severely restrict the ability of the French to supply their garrison, forcing them to drop supplies inaccurately from high altitude. Giáp ordered his men to dig a trench system that encircled the French. From the outer trench, other trenches and tunnels were gradually dug inward towards the center. The Viet Minh were now able to move in close to the French troops defending Dien Bien Phu.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: When Navarre realized that he was trapped, he appealed for help. The United States was approached and some advisers suggested the use of tactical nuclear weapons against the Viet Minh, but this was never seriously considered. Another suggestion was that conventional air raids would be enough to scatter Giáp's troops. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, refused to intervene unless the British and other Western allies agreed. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declined, claiming that he wanted to wait for the outcome of the peace negotiations taking place in Geneva, before becoming involved in escalating the war.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: On 13 March 1954, Giap launched his offensive. For 54 days, the Viet Minh seized position after position, pushing the French until they occupied only a small area of Dien Bien Phu. Colonel Piroth, the artillery commander, blamed himself for the destruction of French artillery superiority. He told his fellow officers that he had been "completely dishonoured" and committed suicide with a hand grenade. General De Castries, French Commander in Dien Bien Phu, was captured alive in his bunker. The French surrendered on 7 May. Their casualties totaled over 2,200 killed, 5,600 wounded, and 11,721 taken prisoner. The following day the French government announced that it intended to withdraw from Vietnam.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Giáp's victory over the French was an important inspiration to anti-colonial campaigners around the world, particularly in French colonies, and most particularly in North Africa, not least because many of the troops fighting on the French side in Indochina were from North Africa. The victory at Dien Bien Phu marked the beginning of a new era in the military struggles against colonialism for national liberation and independence movements in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and other colonised countries.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: After the French surrender, Giáp moved back into Hanoi as the Vietnamese government re-established itself. He expanded and modernised the army, re-equipping it with Russian and Chinese weapons systems. On 7 May 1955, he inaugurated the Vietnamese Maritime Force and on 1 May 1959, the Vietnamese People's Air Force. During the late 1950s Giáp served as Minister of Defence, Commander in Chief of the People's Army of Vietnam, Deputy Prime Minister, and deputy chairman of the Defence Council. In terms of his personal life, he was also able to move back in with his wife, from whom he had been separated for eight years during the war. She was working as a professor of history and social science at this time. Together they raised two boys and two girls. In the little spare time he had, he said in interviews that he occasionally enjoyed playing the piano, as well as reading Goethe, Shakespeare and Tolstoy.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: During the late 1950s the top priority of the re-established Vietnamese government was the rapid establishment of a socialist economic order and Communist Party rule. This involved collectivisation of agriculture and central management of all economic production. This process did not go smoothly and it led to food shortages and revolts. At the 10th Plenum of the Communist Party, 27–29 October 1956, Giáp stood in front of the assembled delegates and said:


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: The departure of the French and the de facto partition of Vietnam meant that the Hanoi government only controlled the north part of the country. In South Vietnam there were still several thousand guerillas, known as Viet Cong, fighting against the government in Saigon. The Party Plenum in 1957 ordered changes to the structure of these units and Giáp was put in charge of implementing these and building their strength to form a solid basis for an insurrection in the South. The 1959 Plenum decided that the time for escalating the armed struggle in the South was right and in July that year Giáp ordered the opening up of the Ho Chi Minh trail to improve supply lines to Viet Cong units.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Giáp remained commander in chief of the People's Army of Vietnam throughout the war against South Vietnam and its allies, the United States, Australia, Thailand, South Korea, and the Philippines. He oversaw the expansion of the PAVN from a small self-defense force into a large conventional army, equipped by its communist allies with considerable amounts of relatively sophisticated weaponry, although this did not usually match the weaponry of the Americans.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Giáp has often been assumed to have been the planner of the Tết Offensive of 1968, but this appears not to have been the case. The best evidence indicates that he disliked the plan, and when it became obvious that Lê Duẩn and Văn Tiến Dũng were going to conduct it anyway, he left Vietnam for medical treatment in Hungary, and did not return until after the offensive had begun. Although this attempt to spark a general uprising against the southern government failed disastrously, it was a significant political victory through convincing American politicians and the public that their commitment to South Vietnam could not be open-ended. Giáp later argued that the Tết Offensive was not a "purely military strategy" but part of a "general strategy, an integrated one, at once military, political and diplomatic."


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Peace talks between representatives from the United States, South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and the NLF began in Paris in January 1969. President Richard Nixon, like President Lyndon B. Johnson before him, was convinced that a U.S. withdrawal was necessary, but four years passed before the last American troops departed.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: In October 1972, the negotiators came close to agreeing to a formula to end the conflict. The proposal was that the remaining U.S. troops would withdraw from South Vietnam in exchange for a cease-fire and the return of American prisoners held by Hà Nội. It was also agreed that the governments in North and South Vietnam would remain in power, and reunification would be "carried out step by step through peaceful means". Although the North's "Nguyễn Huệ Offensive" during the spring of 1972 was beaten back with high casualties, the proposal did not require them to leave the South. PAVN would thus be able to maintain a foothold in South Vietnam from which to launch future offensives.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: In an effort to put pressure on both North and South Vietnam during the negotiations, President Nixon ordered a series of air raids on Hanoi and Haiphong, codenamed Operation Linebacker II. The operation ended on 29 December 1972, after 12 days with 42 U.S. casualties and over 1600 N.Vietnamese killed. North Vietnam then agreed to sign the Paris Peace Accords that had been proposed in October with added conditions more favorable to the U.S. South Vietnam objected, but had little choice but to accept it.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: The last U.S. combat troops had left in August 1972. The remaining US military personnel (except for the staff of the Defense Attache's Office and the US Embassy's Marine guards) completed their withdrawal in March 1973. Despite the agreement, there was no end in fighting. South Vietnamese attempts to regain communist controlled territory inspired their opponents to change strategy. Communist leaders met in Hanoi in March for a series of meetings to plan for a massive offensive against the South. In June 1973, the U.S. Congress passed the Case–Church Amendment, which prohibited any further U.S. military involvement, and the PAVN supply routes could operate normally without any fear of U.S. bombing.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: The standard view of this period is that after Ho Chi Minh's death in September 1969, Giáp lost a power struggle in 1972 shortly after the failed Easter Offensive where he was blamed by the Politburo for the offensive's failure. Giáp was recalled to Hanoi where he was replaced as field commander of the PAVN and from then on watched subsequent events from the sidelines, with the glory of victory in 1975 going to the chief of the general staff, General Văn Tiến Dũng. Giáp's role in the 1975 victory is largely ignored by official Vietnamese accounts.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Soon after the fall of Saigon, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was established. In the new government, Giáp maintained his position as Minister of National Defense and he was made Deputy Prime Minister in July 1976. In December 1978 he oversaw the successful Cambodian–Vietnamese War which drove the Khmer Rouge from power and ended the Cambodian genocide. In retaliation, Cambodia's ally China responded by invading the Cao Bang province of Vietnam in January 1979 and once again Giáp was in overall responsibility for the response, which drove the Chinese out after a few months. He finally retired from his post at the Defense Ministry in 1981 and retired from the Politburo in 1982. He remained on the Central Committee and Deputy Prime Minister until he retired in 1991.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: Giáp wrote extensively on military theory and strategy. His works include "Big Victory, Great Task"; "People's Army, People's War"; "Ðiện Biên Phủ"; and "We Will Win".


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: In 1995, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara met Giáp to ask what happened on 4 August 1964 in the second Gulf of Tonkin Incident. "Absolutely nothing", Giáp replied. Giáp claimed that the attack on 4 August 1964, had been imaginary.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: In a 1998 interview, William Westmoreland criticized the battlefield prowess of Giáp, stating, "By his own admission, by early 1969, I think, he had lost, what, a half million soldiers? He reported this. Now such a disregard for human life may make a formidable adversary, but it does not make a military genius. An American commander losing men like that would hardly have lasted more than a few weeks."


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: American historian Derek Frisby criticized Westmoreland's view, which he said reflected a failure in understanding Giáp's core philosophy of "revolutionary war". According to Frisby, "Giap understood that protracted warfare would cost many lives but that did not always translate into winning or losing the war. In the final analysis, Giap won the war despite losing many battles, and as long as the army survived to fight another day, the idea of Vietnam lived in the hearts of the people who would support it, and that is the essence of 'revolutionary war'."


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: In 2009, Giáp became a prominent critic of bauxite mining in Vietnam following government plans to open large areas of the Central Highlands to the practice. Giáp indicated that a 1980s study led experts to advise against mining due to severe ecological damage and national security.


title: Võ Nguyên Giáp

text: On 4 October 2013, the Communist Party of Vietnam and government officials announced that Võ Nguyên Giáp had died, aged 102, at 18:09 local time, at Central Military Hospital 108 in Hanoi. He was given a state funeral on 12–13 October, and his body was laid in state at the national morgue in Hanoi until his burial in his home province of Quảng Bình. After his death, several cities in Vietnam renamed some of their most prominent streets after him.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: The 1989 World Tour was the fourth concert tour by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, in support of her fifth studio album, "1989" (2014). Swift announced the tour's first dates in North America, Europe, Japan, and Oceania in November and December 2014. She announced additional dates for Singapore and China in June 2015, and a final announcement of the third show in Melbourne was made the following month.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: The tour took seven months to plan and three months to rehearse. As with her previous tours, Swift was involved in the 1989 World Tour's planning and stage design. She aimed to create an intimate experience for concertgoers, which she found challenging for shows held in stadiums. The set list included songs predominantly taken from "1989", with additional songs from Swift's older albums transformed into a more synth-oriented production, to accompany the album's songs. For different shows, she incorporated a random song from her back catalog. The tour began on May 5, 2015, in Tokyo, Japan, and concluded on December 12, 2015, in Melbourne, Australia, spanning 85 shows. For many of the shows, Swift invited special guests onstage with her, including musicians, actors/actresses, athletes, and models whom the media called her "squad".


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: The world's highest-grossing tour of 2015, the 1989 World Tour sold over 2.278 million tickets and grossed over US$250.7 million. It was acclaimed by critics, receiving praise for Swift's stage presence and connection with the audience. Swift's appearances with an array of special guests, meanwhile, attracted commentary regarding her new image as a pop star—having previously been known as a country singer-songwriter—and her sense of authenticity that she had maintained. On December 20, 2015, Swift released a concert film entitled "The 1989 World Tour Live" in partnership with Apple Music. It was filmed at the tour's November 28, 2015 show at ANZ Stadium in Sydney, Australia, and features additional scenes of special guests from other shows throughout North America and Europe.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: Taylor Swift released her fifth studio album "1989" on October 27, 2014. The synth-pop album was Swift's first album marketed as pop music, departing from her image as a country artist. It was a commercial success, selling over one million copies within its first week of release in the United States. On November 3, 2014, via her Twitter account, Swift announced the first details of her world tour in support of "1989". Australian singer Vance Joy was announced to be an opening act, and tickets would go sale on for North American fans on November 14.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: In a November 2014 interview with "Time" magazine, Swift said that the set list would primarily consist of songs from "1989". For songs taken from her older catalog, she wanted them to fit in with the synth-heavy production of "1989" while keeping the "live feel" of live performances. Swift, as always, was heavily involved in the tour's planning and production design. She acknowledged the challenge of playing in stadiums, expressing her goal for "those people in the very top row [to] feel like they got an intimate, personal experience". In an interview with KIIS-FM in December 2014, she revealed that she knew what the stage would look like, as well as knowing that "all the fans seem to be saying that they really don't want any song [from "1989"] left off the setlist".


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: Swift first announced the North American and European dates in November 2014. The tour was set to kick off in Bossier City, Louisiana on May 20, 2015, and conclude in Tampa, Florida on October 31, 2015. Additional shows were held across the U.S., Canada, England, Scotland, Germany, and the Netherlands. A month after announcing the first dates, Swift added further shows, visiting Japan, and Australia. The first date of the tour would be in Japan in May 2015, and the shows in Australia would take place in November–December 2015. In June 2015, Swift announced further shows in Asia, visiting China and Singapore in November 2015. The following month, Swift announced a third show in Melbourne, Australia, which would also wrap up the 1989 World Tour on December 12, 2015. Opening acts for the tour included Vance Joy, Shawn Mendes, Haim, and James Bay.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: The tour took seven months to plan before three months of music rehearsals, four weeks of stage rehearsals and 10 days of two-a-days dress rehearsals. Swift traveled for the tour with 26 semi-trailer trucks and 11 buses carrying 146 people from city to city. Additionally, about 125–150 people were hired in each city to help with the load in and stage setup. The entire load in and stage setup process took between six and eight hours for arenas, with stadiums requiring an additional day. Swift chose two designs for the trucks' vinyl wrap; 13 carry one design and 13 have the other. Concertgoers were given light-up bracelets that could be programmed to change color throughout each show, a practice that was also later implemented in Swift's Reputation Stadium Tour (2018).


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: The shows on the 1989 World Tour featured a nearly identical set list spanning the majority of the "1989" studio album, with the exception of "Wonderland" (a "1989" deluxe bonus track), and different shows had different guest stars intertwined between Swift's performances. The concert began with black-and-white projections of street scenes, which subsequently served as the backdrop to the performance of "Welcome to New York". Swift then emerged from beneath the stage to sing the song, and subsequently "New Romantics", surrounded by a dozen of male dancers. For the followup performance of "Blank Space", Swift sang the song before erupting into a call-and-response climax where Swift struck a golf club against a black lacquer cane, whilst also shouting the name of the city where each concert is held. Swift proceeded with an industrial rock-oriented version of "I Knew You Were Trouble", which she performed as the shirtless male dancers delivered a sensual choreography.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: After the performance of "I Wish You Would", Swift appeared in a glowing pink polka-dot dress to perform "How You Get the Girl", accompanied by a choreography inspired by the 1952 musical "Singin' in the Rain" that was performed by the male dancers twirling neon umbrellas. The show continued with "I Know Places", during which Swift wore thigh-high black boots and garters. The song's intense lyrics and production were accompanied by a performance of Swift being chased by the masked dancers through multiple mobile doors as she sang "They are the hunters / We are the foxes." After the song ended, Swift performed "All You Had to Do Was Stay", which was followed by either "You Are in Love" or a customized number that she performed differently at several shows. "All You Had to Do Was Stay" was excluded from the set list for several shows. Swift introduced "Clean" by sharing lessons she had learnt in personal life with her audiences. After "Clean", Swift performed a synth-oriented version of "Love Story" while standing on an elevated platform that whisked around the stadium.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: Swift proceeded with "Style", during which she performed while strutting down the runway-styled stage in a sparkling dress, and "This Love". For the performance of "Bad Blood", Swift dressed in a top-to-toe black leather suit. She then performed a rock version of "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" on an electric guitar, in an intense atmosphere with her hair messed up. Afterwards, Swift emerged from beneath the stage again, and performed a mashup of "Enchanted" and "Wildest Dreams" on a grand piano. She followed with "Out of the Woods", which she performed in a sparkling bodysuit as giant paper planes flew overhead. The show concluded with "Shake It Off", during which Swift and the dancers danced on a spinning platform above the crowd as fireworks and confetti dashed across the venue.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: For different shows, Swift replaced "You Are in Love" with "Wonderland", another "1989" deluxe album track, or songs from her earlier albums. The songs included "Should've Said No" (from 2006's "Taylor Swift"); "You Belong with Me", "Fifteen" and "Fearless" (from 2008's "Fearless"); "Mean", "Sparks Fly" and "Mine" (from 2010's "Speak Now"); "Holy Ground", "All Too Well", and "Red" (from 2012's "Red"). During the second show in Santa Clara, California on August 15, 2015, Swift dedicated "Never Grow Up" (from "Speak Now") to her godson, the second child of her friend, actress Jaime King.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: A feature of the 1989 World Tour that attracted attention was its array of unannounced special guests that Swift invited onstage with her. Swift explained during an interview with Apple Music's Beats 1 Radio that since her fans could have expected what the show would look like through social media posts prior to attending, she wanted to incorporate an element of surprise: "They know the set list, they know the costumes, they've looked it up. That presented me with an interesting issue. I love the element of surprise… so going into this tour, having people pop on stage that you didn't expect to see." Though Swift had invited musicians onstage with her during previous tours, she this time invited singers, models, athletes, and actors/actresses across "every type of field". A notable example included the show at London's Hyde Park in July 2015, during which models Martha Hunt, Kendall Jenner, Karlie Kloss, Gigi Hadid, and Cara Delevingne joined Swift onstage, which was noted by the media as Swift's "squad"—her representation of her newly established feminist identity. While some of the guests were scheduled beforehand, others were improvised; Swift asked singer John Legend to join her onstage only 40 minutes prior to showtime, after spotting him in the audience.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: As the tour went on, special guests ranged from Hollywood actress Julia Roberts to counterculture figure Joan Baez. Nick Levine from the BBC observed that while these special guests were well appreciated by Swift's fans, their appearances gave the impression to others that Swift did so to prove her star power of her new image as a pop star—having abandoned her previous image as a country artist. In doing so, Swift's sense of authenticity began to slip despite her global stardom. Kristy Fairclough, a professor in popular culture and film, commented: "Her shifting aesthetic and allegiances appear confusing in an overall narrative that presents Taylor Swift as the centre of the cultural universe." Fairclough asserted that while Swift had presented herself as an underdog and outsider from her contemporaries, which had garnered her a devoted fan base, she began to appear as "a profoundly unsympathetic underdog" for being a "globally famous, attractive, thin, white, very wealthy woman". When the tour ended, Swift acknowledged that "people might need a break from [her]". "New York" magazine listed Swift's "squad" as one of the defining moments of music in the 2010s decade.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: The 1989 World Tour was met with universal acclaim; praise centered on the elaborate stage production and Swift's stage presence. "Vice" Eric Sundermann appreciated Swift's ability to connect with her audiences, saying: "She has built a career on making music that’s suited for the fabric of our lives, so it makes sense that her show is engineered to be the best night of your life." Jon Caramanica, writing for "The New York Times", acknowledged Swift's comfortable performance onstage. "Rolling Stone" critic Rob Sheffield appreciated the reworked versions of Swift's older songs, and felt that she was pushing for an even more spectacular show than her much-praised previous Red Tour (2013–14), writing: "Taking the easy way would have been 100 percent good enough. It just wasn’t what she wanted to do. Instead, she wanted to push a little harder and make a gloriously epic pop mess like this." In a similarly enthusiastic review, Kevin Coffrey from the "Omaha World-Herald" observed how the stage production complemented the songs: "Her show is on a level unlike anything I've ever seen."


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: Paige Allen from "The Sun Chronicle" was positive towards Swift's performance, but felt that she alone could have carried the show without opening acts and special guests. Hunter Hauk of "The Dallas Morning News" also deemed the opening acts "forgettable", but was impressed by Swift's natural performance onstage. In a review of the Glasgow show, David Pollock from "The Independent" lauded Swift's energetic performance and described the show as a "resonantly feminist show which emphasises a fun, heartfelt message over polemic". Reviewing the tour's Sydney show, Bernard Zuel from the "Sydney Morning Herald" gave it a four-and-a-half-stars score. Zuel lauded the show as "one of the most spectacular stadium shows" he had ever seen, and praised Swift's stage presence for creating a lively and euphoric energy. Reviewing the same show, Elle Hunt of "The Guardian" gave it a perfect five-over-five-stars score, asserting that the show was a reminder of Swift's emotional engagement through her songs as her greatest asset that "has won her enormous global fandom". In 2017, "Rolling Stone" included the 1989 World Tour in their list of the "50 Greatest Concerts of the Last 50 Years".


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: Pre-sales for European shows of the 1989 World Tour started on November 4, and public on-sale started on November 7 (tickets for London were sold later on November 10). The first round of pre-sales on selected North American shows started on November 7 and general sales for the public in North America started from November 14, 2014; Australia started from December 12, 2014; Japan started from the following day; Singapore and Shanghai started from June 30, 2015. Swift was the sixth-most-searched artist on Ticketmaster in 2014.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: In St. Louis, Swift was originally scheduled to perform on October 13 and 14, 2015, but one of the St. Louis shows was dropped and the other was rescheduled to September 28, 2015, with tickets going on sale on January 30, 2015. However, tickets for the St. Louis show sold out within minutes, resulting in a second date being added there on September 29 at the same venue. Due to massive demand, Swift added more dates to the European leg, one for Cologne and one for Dublin. Swift added one more Dublin show after six minutes when the first show sold out, and tickets for both concerts sold out within 55 minutes. In Australia, tickets for the first show on December 11, 2015, in Melbourne, at AAMI Park were sold out in less than an hour. Soon afterwards, Swift announced extra dates for Melbourne and Adelaide. Due to popular demand, in July 2015, Swift added a third Melbourne show after the first two shows were sold out. Swift became the first female artist to play three shows at AAMI Park. In January 2015, "Forbes" reported that the 1989 World Tour was one of the most expensive concert tours of 2015 on the secondary market.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: The tour topped the "Billboard" Hot Tours chart with Swift's first five shows from the North American run (May 20 – June 6, 2015, excluding Baton Rouge), which generated a total of $16.8 million from 149,708 ticket sales. It topped the "Billboard" Hot Tours chart for the second week, earning $15.2 million, with a total of 129,962 tickets sold from three shows in Charlotte and Philadelphia. By August 1, 2015, the 1989 World Tour had grossed $86.2 million, at 20 performances in North America, with 771,460 tickets sold at seven arenas and nine stadiums. On September 9, "Billboard" reported that the tour had grossed over $130 million, with 1.1 million tickets sold. The 1989 World Tour surpassed the Red Tour as Swift's highest-grossing by October 2015, when "Billboard" reported that the tour had grossed over $173 million. The tour also returned to number one on the Hot Tours chart, becoming Swift's sixth time atop the chart in 2015, thanks to ticket sales totaling $13.6 million from the shows in Toronto, St. Louis and Des Moines.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: On "Billboard" list of the "Top 25 Boxscores" published in December 2015, Swift scored seven entries with the 1989 World Tour shows, the highest number of entries among all touring acts. After concluding in Melbourne, the tour grossed over $250 million and became the world's highest-grossing tour in 2015, as reported by "Pollstar". It was also the highest-grossing North American tour of 2015. Specially, the 1989 World Tour grossed nearly $200 million in North America alone, breaking the previous all-time high of $162 million set by the Rolling Stones in 2005. Two shows in Tokyo ranked at number nine on "Pollstar" list of "2015 Year-End Top 100 International Boxoffice". Other shows appearing on the list were the shows in Melbourne, Sydney, Shanghai, and Brisbane. The 1989 World Tour also scored 24 shows on another list of "Pollstar" – "2015 Year-End Top 200 Concert Grossed [in North America]" – with the highest position (number five) being the two shows in East Rutherford; and the lowest position (number 160) being two shows in Denver. Overall, the tour broke a string of attendance and grossing records, including the record for most sold-out shows by an artist in Staples Center history (16 shows across Swift's career), commemorated in a banner presented by Kobe Bryant.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: The tour was supported by a concert film, titled The 1989 World Tour – Live. It was released on December 20, 2015, exclusively via Apple Music. Directed by Jonas Åkerlund, the film was filmed at the Sydney, Australia, concert from the 1989 World Tour, held at ANZ Stadium on November 28, 2015, where Swift performed in front of over 76,000 people. Prior to the show, concertgoers were informed that it would be filmed for a commercial purpose.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: On December 13, 2015, Swift announced she had partnered with Apple Music to release "The 1989 World Tour - Live" on the 20th of the same month. It contains over two hours of concert, interview, and never-before seen backstage and rehearsal footage with some of the musical and surprise guests from previous shows. Scenes from "The 1989 World Tour - Live" were compiled for the music video for "New Romantics", the seventh and final single from the album.


title: The 1989 World Tour

text: This set list is representative of the show on May 5, 2015, in Tokyo. It is not representative of all concerts for the duration of the tour.


title: Brie

text: Brie (; ) is a soft cow's-milk cheese named after Brie, the French region from which it originated (roughly corresponding to the modern "département" of Seine-et-Marne). It is pale in color with a slight grayish tinge under a rind of white mould. The rind is typically eaten, with its flavor depending largely upon the ingredients used and its manufacturing environment. It is similar to Camembert, which is native to a different region of France. Brie typically contains between 60% and 75% butterfat, slightly higher than Camembert.


title: Brie

text: "Brie" is a style of cheese, and is not in itself a protected name, although some regional bries are protected.


title: Brie

text: Brie may be produced from whole or semi-skimmed milk. The curd is obtained by adding rennet to raw milk and warming it to a maximum temperature of 37 °C (98.6 °F). The cheese is then cast into moulds, sometimes with a traditional perforated ladle called a . The mold is filled with several thin layers of cheese and drained for approximately 18 hours. The cheese is then taken out of the moulds, salted, inoculated with cheese culture ("Penicillium candidum", "Penicillium camemberti," or "Brevibacterium linens"), and aged in a controlled environment for at least four or five weeks.


title: Brie

text: If left to mature for longer, typically several months to a year, the cheese becomes stronger in flavour and taste, the pâte drier and darker, and the rind also darker and crumbly, and it is called (French for 'black brie').


title: Brie

text: Overripe brie contains an unpleasantly excessive amount of ammonia, produced by the same microorganisms required for ripening.


title: Brie

text: A thirty-gram serving of brie contains and 8.4 grams of fat, of which 5.26 grams are saturated fat. Brie is a good source of protein; a serving of brie can provide 5 to 6 grams of protein. Brie contains a good amount of both vitamin B12 and vitamin B2.


title: Brie

text: There are now many varieties of brie made all over the world, including plain brie, herbed varieties, double and triple brie and versions of brie made with other types of milk. Indeed, although brie is a French cheese, it is possible to obtain Somerset and Wisconsin brie. The French government officially certifies only two types of brie, "Brie de Meaux" and "Brie de Melun". Some varieties of brie cheese are smoked.


title: Brie

text: Brie de Meaux is an unpasteurized round cheese with a diameter of , and a weight of about . Manufactured in the town of Meaux in the Brie region of northern France since the 8th century, it was originally known as the "Queen's Cheese", or, after the French Revolution, the "Queen of Cheeses," and was eaten by all social classes. It was granted the protection of "Appellation d'origine contrôlée" (AOC) status in 1980. It is produced primarily in the eastern part of the Parisian basin.


title: Brie

text: Brie de Melun has an average weight of and a diameter of , smaller than Brie de Meaux. It has a stronger flavour and more pungent smell. It is made with unpasteurised milk. Brie de Melun is also available in the form of "Old Brie" or black brie. It was granted the protection of AOC status in 1980.


title: Brie

text: Brie de Montereau, Île-de-France, Brie de Nangis, Brie de Provins, Brie noir, Brie fermier, Brie d'Isigny, Brie de Melun bleu, Brie petit moulé, Brie laitier Coulommiers.


title: Brie

text: King Island Dairy, on King Island between Victoria and Tasmania, produces a range of cheeses sold as "brie", as does Jindi Cheese in Victoria and High Valley Mudgee Cheese Co in Mudgee, NSW.


title: Brie

text: Cornish Brie; Somerset Brie; Baron Bigod (made in Suffolk); Cenarth Brie (made in Wales); Morangie Brie (made in the Highlands, Scotland); Connage Clava Brie (made in Scotland).


title: Brie

text: The Marin French Cheese Company in California has made an unaged cheese since 1865 described as "fresh brie".


title: Brie

text: Kolb-Lena, a Savencia Fromage & Dairy plant in Illinois has made Brie- and Camembert-style cheese since early 1900. Today still producing Brie under the brands: Alouette, Delice de France or award-winning soft cheese under Dorothy's.


title: Brie

text: Brazilian "brie" is made in the dairy region located in the Southern area of Minas Gerais state (bordering São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro states) and Southeast Minas Gerais (bordering Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo states).


title: Brie

text: Ireland produces various "brie" cheeses such as Wicklow Bán Brie, St. Killian Brie, and The Little Milk Company's Organic Irish Brie.


title: Brie

text: New Zealand has many brie-style cheeses. They vary from the huge Mainland brand with Creamy, Double Cream, and Blue varieties to craft cheesemakers such as Grinning Gecko.


title: Brie

text: Brie is produced as a wheel; a segment, or a whole wheel, may be bought. The white rind is edible. The cheese is ready to eat when the outside is firm, and the inside is slightly bouncy and resilient. Underripe Brie is stiff to the touch; overripe Brie is creamier and almost runny. The cheese is sometimes served baked.