The Britannica Guide to the 100 Most Influential Americans

496 Pages·2008·13.34 MB·English

by  Britannica

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~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.
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ro be idemif1ed as the aur-hors of [his \vork has been asserred by rhem
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are registered [fademarks of Encyclopa!dia Britannica, Inc.
This eBook edirion published by Encyclop<cdia Brirannica, Inc.
ISBN 978-1-59339-857-6
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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;