ebook img

The Britannica Guide to the 100 Most Influential Americans PDF

496 Pages·2008·13.34 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview The Britannica Guide to the 100 Most Influential Americans

Encyclopxdia Britannica, Inc., is a leader in reference and edu cation publishing whose products can be found in many media, from [he Internet to mobile phones to books. A pioneer in electronic publishing since the early 1980s, Britannica launched the first encyclopedia on the Internet in 1994. It also continues to publish and revise its famed print set, first released in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768. Encyclopxdia Britannica's contributors in clude many of the greatest writers and scholars in the world, and more than 110 Nobel Prize winners have written for Britannica. A professional editOrial staff ensures [hat Britannica's content is clear, current, and correct. This book is principally based on content from the encyclopedia and its contributors. ~NCYCLOP.t!DIA Britannica THE GUIDE TO THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL AMERICANS Encyclopxdia 13rirannica, Inc. www.brirannicrl.com Firsr prim edirion published in rhe UK by Robinson, an imprinr of Consrable & Robinson Lrd, 2008 Toxr © 2008 Enc)·clopxdia Brirannica, Inc. The [igh[ of Encycl0p<'edia Britannica, lne. ro be idemif1ed as the aur-hors of [his \vork has been asserred by rhem in accordance with [he Copyriglu, Designs & Parenrs Ac[, 1988. 13rirannica, Encyclopxdia Britannica, and the Thisrle logo are registered [fademarks of Encyclopa!dia Britannica, Inc. This eBook edirion published by Encyclop<cdia Brirannica, Inc. ISBN 978-1-59339-857-6 No parr of this work may be produced or urilized in any form or by any means, elecrronic or mechanic..1.1, including phorocopying, recording, or by any informarion storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. CONTENTS Introduction IX Jonathan Edwards 1 Benjamin Franklin 4 George Washington 16 Thomas Paine 39 Thomas Jefferson 44 James Madison 62 John Marshall 69 Alexander Hamilton 76 Noah Webster 85 Robert Fulton 88 Eli Whitney 92 Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Sacagawea 95 Samuel F.B. Morse 103 Ralph Waldo Emerson 106 William Lloyd Garrison 111 Joseph Smith 114 Robert E. Lee 118 VI CONTENTS Abraham Lincoln 124 Cyrus Hall McCormick 143 Harriet Beecher Stowe 145 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony 147 Henry David Thoreau 150 Frederick Douglass 156 Herman Melville 158 Oliver Wendell Holmes 163 Walt Whitman 164 Harriet Tubman 170 Andrew Carnegie 172 Mark Twain 175 J.P. Morgan 191 John D. Rockefeller 193 Thomas Alva Edison 195 Alexander Graham Bell 204 Louis Sullivan 208 Booker T. Washington 215 Theodore Roosevelt 217 John Dewey 225 Jane Addams 228 Henry Ford 230 William Randolph Hearst 236 Frank Lloyd Wright 239 Wilbur and Orville Wright 244 W.E.B. Du Bois 250 D.W. Griffith 253 Margaret Sanger 257 Albert Einstein 258 Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer 268 George Catlett Marshall 270 Franklin D. Roosevelt 273 Eleanor Roosevelt 286 CONTENTS VII Ezra Pound 290 Dwight D. Eisenhower 295 Cole Porter 303 Earl Warren 305 J. Edgar Hoover 308 William Faulkner 310 George Gershwin 316 Ernest Hemingway 324 Louis Armstrong 330 Walt Disney 333 Enrico Fermi 338 Ray Kroc 342 Benjamin Spock 344 J. Robert Oppenheimer 345 Dr Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) 348 Rachel Carson 349 Lyndon B. Johnson 351 Joseph R. McCarthy 356 Edward R. Murrow 358 Ronald W. Reagan 359 Jackson Pollock 371 Richard Nixon 374 Rosa Parks 383 Jonas Edward Salk 385 Orson Welles 386 John F. Kennedy 388 Leonard Bernstein 398 Billy Graham 400 Jackie Robinson 403 Betty Friedan 406 Johnny Carson 408 Malcolm X 409 Walter Cronkite 413 VIII CONTENTS Marilyn Monroe 415 Cesar Chavez 417 Andy Warhol 418 James Dewey Watson 420 Martin Luther King, Jr 422 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis 431 Ralph Nader 433 Elvis Presley 435 Ted Turner 440 Bob Dylan 442 Muhammad Ali 450 Steven Spielberg 455 AI Gore 457 Oprah Winfrey 459 Bill Gates 461 Steve Jobs 464 Madonna 469 Michael Jordan 471 Larry Page and Sergey Brin 473 I ~ITRODUCTION The editors of the Encyclopcedia Britannica are pleased to present this guide to the most influential figures in American history. The United States is often thought of as the land of rugged individualism, so it seems entirely fitting to view the nation's history, at least in part, through the lives of the people who made it. Here the reader will find the stories of one hundred people who have played crucial roles in the march of American civilization, from the colonial period to the present. In fact, there are 106 individuals discussed in this book, since the contribution of some of them is difficult to separate from that of another person (as in the case of Wilbur and Orville Wright, who, in the volume that follows, constitute a single entry). These biographies form an impressive and in many ways an incongruous group, spanning the ages, from the stern eighteenth-century Puritan Jonathan Edwards to the jaunty and dynamic duo of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, who may have only begun to leave their mark on America and the world. x INTRODUCTION In between, the reader will find dozens of others as dissim ilar as the oldest and youngest members of our list: Thomas Jefferson and Dwight D. Eisenhower, presidents whose lega cies are as distinct as the men themselves and the times in which they lived; Andrew Carnegie and Harriet Tubman, a builder of conventional railroads and the founder of another kind of railroad, one that carried slaves to freedom; John Marshall and George Catlett Marshall, one a great jurist, the other a great diplomat; Jane Addams and the popstar Ma donna, the selfless social reformer and the avatar of postmo dern self-reinvention. The differences among them are vast, but all of them were, or are, Americans who made a lasting impact on their country. Overall, we have tried to compile a book that represents the contrasts of America itself - men and women, exalted and humble, rural and urban, radical and conservative, native and immigrant. The book seems destined to provoke disagreement, and, frankly, only if it does will we feel we have truly accomplished our purpose in publishing it. For by the nature of its self imposed limits, such a project raises as many questions as it answers, questions that beg for scrutiny and discussion. How, indeed, can there truly be a list of the most influential Amer icans that numbers exactly one hundred? How can we reduce the thousands of great leaders the country has had to a mere fivescore? For that matter, how do we measure this elusive thing called "influence" and say with confidence that one person exerts more of it than another? How can the sway of presidents be compared with that of business executives, the historical shadow of a great novelist sized up against the impact of a charismatic social activist? And what of the people left out? How can the list include Ray Kroc and not John Steinbeck;

Description:
Who do you think are the most influential Americans ever? Walt Disney or Benjamin Franklin? Rosa Parks or Oprah Winfrey? This book is an in-depth look at the men and women who changed the world's most powerful nation. Heroes and villains, film stars and physicists, generals and peaceniks. Each entry
See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.