People of the Century: One Hundred Men and Women Who Shaped the Last One Hundred Years

Lists such as these are always going to be subjective and hotly debated by people who disagree with them, but for the most part, I think this list was pretty solid. Along with a lot of the usual suspects, such as Sigmund Freud, FDR, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein (who went on to be named as TIME's Person of the Century), Hitler, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Mao Zedong, there are numerous people who aren't always considered for lists such as these, such as Pete Rozelle, Harvey Milk, Juan Trippe, Willis Carrier, A.P. Giannini, Leo Burnett, and Bill W. I had actually never heard of a number of these people, but as the essays showed, they did some pretty important and influential things in spite of how their fame might be overshadowed by that of more obvious people of the past century. However, there were more than a few glaring omissions. I'm utterly floored that Stalin was left off of this list; how could anyone not consider him one of the most important people of the century? Or Elvis, Drs. Gregory Goodwin Pincus and John Rock (inventors of the birth control pill, easily one of the most important inventions of the century), Pope John XXIII, Pol Pot, Babe Ruth, Fidel Castro, Mussolini (another huge omission!), or John Logie Baird and Charles Jenkins (inventors of television)? As someone quite interested in antique televisions, I was extraordinarily disappointed that in neither the essays for David Sarnoff nor Philo Farnsworth were these men or their mechanical scanning-disc televisions, which were actually a lot more common in the late Twenties and early Thirties than most people have been led to believe, mentioned. Essays like these only perpetuate the myth that the history of television only begins in 1939 with the debut of electronic television. The essay on Louis B. Mayer also reported as fact that old urban legend about Clark Gable running someone over and then having it covered up by the studio while someone else went to jail in his place. Fortunately, most of the essays seemed to be free of such urban legends and incomplete history. The majority of the essays also seemed to be rather fair and balanced, addressing the shortcomings of the subject instead of just endlessly praising them as demigods. Only a couple were like the one for the Kennedys, seeming more empty and unspecific instead of in-depth and giving us real reasons why this person or group should be considered one of the greatest people of the century. I'm a fan of the Kennedys, and even I thought that one was rather shallow and vapid! On the opposite end of the spectrum, Peggy Noonan's essay on Ronald Reagan (possibly the book's longest by far) was obnoxiously sycophantic. Contrary to what some people think, the man was not some sort of demigod. Even though I'm on the completely opposite political page from him, I do have to agree he was one of the century's most important people. I just wish a more impartial person had been found to write the essay on him, addressing his n

It¹s countdown time whether we face it or not. And the bestsellers prove it. We¹ve encountered books predicting happenings for the millennium we¹re about to greet and books listing people, businesses, music, inventions, events that have made impacts during the millennium we¹re leaving. In addition to Life: Our Century in Pictures and Russell Ash¹s The Top 10 of Everything 2000, there are seemingly 1000 collections about these 1000 years. One book worth looking at is PEOPLE OF THE CENTURY with a forward by Dan Rather of CBS and an afterward by Walter Isaacson of Time Magazine. The compilation features 100 men and women who influenced the century, rather than the millennium.We reunite with leaders, artists, and intellectuals who gave us rock Œn¹ roll,jazz, flight; shopping malls, existentialism, bytes; splitting the atom, penicillin, cloning of sheep, and Bob Dylan. Those writing the profiles with reputability include William F, Buckley, Rita Dove, Molly Ivins, Roger Rosenblatt, and Deborah Tannen. Descriptions of the contributors appear in the index along with photo credits, nicely referenced. We readily expect some profiles: Henry Ford, Anne Frank, James Joyce, Rosa Parks, Theodore Roosevelt, and Igor Stravinsky, We might have forgotten others: Sigmund Freud (as profiled by Peter Gay) and Leo Baekeland, the maker of plastics who moved to the U.S. from Belgium in 1889. We ask ³why?² of others. For example, Hitler is included, as is Bart Simpson. Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel bluntly admits how frightening it was to write of Hitler. And some readers might bluntly admit how foolish it is to read about ³forever 10,² make-believe Bart Simpson. Others might question ever-lovin¹ Oprah being among the 100, but the criteria put her on the list. PEOPLE OF THE CENTURY concerns people who ³cast a long shadow.² We are refreshed by some inclusions: Emmeline Pankhurst, for instance, reminds us of the women¹s-right-to-vote, which she achieved for England in 1918 (2 years before America¹s in 1920.) The book is arranged chronologically, beginning in 1903 in nearby Kitty Hawk and moving poignantly to 1989 with the ³unknown,² lone ³everyman² in Tiananmen Square. In this compact history, people are profiled as well as pictured with a ³life-at -a glance² bio. The index needs improvement ( so that readers can more easily locate people by their fields) and so do Dan Rather mixed metaphors. ( The new age is ³taking flight² and becoming a ³rough draft.²) Also Paul Rudnick could use poetic sensitivity when writing about Marilyn Monroe. He callously groups her with American commodities of Coca-cola and Levis. Isaacson¹s afterward reminds us of the century¹s lessons: ³freedom won² and not the pursuit of ³material abundance² but the nurturing of ³the dignity and values of each individual.² Obviously some of these lessons were learned the hard way. PEOPLE OF THE 

This presentation of 100 great people of the century (as selected by the editors of TIME) is noteworthy both for its bias and limited scope - it is heavy on Americans and late 20th century personalities - and for its writing. Each person is presented to the reader through an essay, and most of these essays are not capsule biographies so much as meditations on the nature of the person and his/her influence. The strange pairing of certain authors and subjects (Elie Wiesel on Adolf Hitler or Salman Rushdie on Mohandas K. Ghandi) allow for some interesting insights and speculation. More sympathetic pairings of author and subject (George Plimpton on Muhammad Ali, Rita Dove on Rosa Parks, Philip Glass on Igor Stravinsky) offer equally interesting, though less speculative, pieces that are quite fun to read. Overall, the quality of writing in the book is quite high, and even when it isn't (as, for example in Bill Gate's essay on the Wright brothers or Lee Iacocca on Henry Ford) the insights of the author - because of who and what they are - allow the ideas to take on a level of significance that makes up for so-so skills as an essayist.I received this as a Christmas present and spent most of Christmas day reading through all the essays. It provided a very pleasant way to review the century we are leaving. My one regret with the book is the inclusion of a few subjects that simply don't belong (Brue Lee, Bart Simpson? )which necessarily restricted the field that could be included. It is, of course, a personal bias and everyone will have their own take on who should or should not have been represented, but in the entire list there is only one novelist, one poet, one composer, one painter; yet there are numerous political and military figures. Understandable in terms of overt impact on history, but it sells the cultural aspects of the century short._