DUMMERSTON, Vt. - Who are the 100 most influential Americans of all time?
The Atlantic Monthly asked 10 top historians - including Pulitzer winners Doris Kearns Goodwin, David M. Kennedy, Walter McDougall and Gordon S. Wood - this question and the result appears in the latest issue of the magazine.
Ranking people, places and things from best to worst is an activity that is guaranteed to provoke an argument. This list is no exception.
The No. 1 choice, Abraham Lincoln, is obvious. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson - at No. 2 and 3, respectively - are hard to quibble with.
Once you get past those three, the arguments begin.
Conservatives might howl about Franklin Delano Roosevelt being ranked at No. 4, but as the decisive political figure of the 20th Century, he rightly deserves to be just behind those three presidents.
But how in the hell did Ronald Reagan end up at No. 17? For undoing Roosevelt's New Deal? For the largest peacetime military buildup in history? For tripling the national debt? For Iran-Contra and the most corrupt administration in history (at least until George W. Bush came along)?
Some credit Reagan for ending the Cold War, but Mikhail Gorbachev deserves as much, if not more credit. As questionable as putting Reagan at No. 17 is putting Woodrow Wilson at No. 10.
Wilson, credited for being the father of American interventionist foreign policy, is ranked higher as a president than Ulysses S. Grant (12, more for his Civil War exploits than his presidency), James Madison (13), Theodore Roosevelt (15), Andrew Jackson (18), Harry Truman (21), John Adams (25) or Dwight D. Eisenhower (28).
You have to go all the way down the list to No. 30 before you find a woman, the women's rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Women are underrepresented, but the ones who made it are worthy - Susan B. Anthony (38), Rachel Carson (39), Harriet Beecher Stowe (41), Eleanor Roosevelt (42), Margaret Sanger (51), Jane Addams (64), Betty Friedan (77), Margaret Mead (81) and Mary Baker Eddy (86).
Tycoons occupy more than a few spots - John D. Rockefeller (11), Henry Ford (14), Andrew Carnegie (20), J.P. Morgan (37), Bill Gates (54), Sam Walton (72) and William Randolph Hearst (80).
Not counting Benjamin Franklin at No. 6, who occupies multiple niches in American history, Mark Twain is the highest ranked writer at No. 16. One might argue Thomas Paine (19), was more important to our history, with his "Common Sense," the most important writing from the Revolutionary War era after the Declaration of Independence. You can make a case for Walt Whitman (22) being equally as great as Mark Twain in terms of work that is essential to the American character.
Was Jackie Robinson (35) more important than W.E.B. DuBois (43), Frederick Douglass (47), Thorogood Marshall (84) or Booker T. Washington (98) to the advancement of black Americans? Robinson was the second highest black American on the list, after Martin Luther King Jr. at No. 8.
Should Elvis Presley (66) be ranked ahead of Louis Armstrong (79)? And why didn't Bob Dylan make the list?
Thomas Edison, at No. 9, certainly would rank as America's top scientific and technical genius. But was Walt Disney (26) more influential than Albert Einstein (31), Jonas Salk (34) or Robert Oppenheimer (48)?
Should William Faulkner (60) be ranked ahead of Henry David Thoreau (65)? Should Lyndon B. Johnson (44) be ranked higher than Richard Nixon (99)? Should Ralph Nader (96) and Benjamin Spock (87) be on the list while John F. Kennedy is not?
Randolph T. Holhut has been a journalist in New England for more than 25 years. He edited "The George Seldes Reader" (Barricade Books). He can be reached at randyholhut@yahoo.com.
But this is simply wrong. Every single person listed for consideration is way, way off the mark. There is indeed a "single most influential person" in American history, and when the facts are actually understood, his name is beyond argument, for he is in fact, the single most influential person who ever lived on this earth. More influential than Jesus even. Who am I talking about?
Nikola Tesla.
Without him, you would not be reading this. Without him, the modern industrial age would never have happened. You would be shivering in front of a fire right now to keep warm. Tesla actually invented the foundation of virtually everything as we know it; the AC motor, the generation of alternating current, the basis for the entire power grid itself.
Yes, more influential than Jesus. Billions of people are unaffected by Jesus, but no one on this planet is unaffected by electricity, even those who lack it.
Tesla also invented Radio first, NOT Marconi, and this was finally proven in a court of law in the 1980's.
Here Here ! For Nilola Tesla !
I've never even heard of the name. But you are right.
I suppose the inventer of the Turbine engine which runs the generators should get an honorary mention at least?
by
"Hoss" David P. (51 articles, 5 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 338 comments)
on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 4:51:39 PM
4 comments
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