The One Hundred: A Ranking of History's Most Influential Persons

Decades and centuries are spanned in this book, and it proves to be fun, fascinating and memorable. A friend had "The 100" by Michael Hart along on vacation, and that began many hours on the beach, at dinner and in future months, of discussion about who is in "THE 100" (how many women) and why each individual was so significant, in order of importance. We shared the book, and its amazing collection of men and women on many occasions, and I wanted to find another copy, as ours was never returned! And, here it is on thriftbooks! Thank you!!

The 100 has been a life-changing book for me. It has "unlocked" history for me - allowed me to relate to it and retain information - like no other book I've read. The book is entirely evaluative. It consists of very short chapters, each about one of these hundred figures. Each chapter discusses the person's life, and why Hart has ranked him or her as more or less important than the others. The criteria he seems to use are: * How greatly did this person influence the world, especially our everyday lives? * Would progress have happened without this person? When or how would it have been likely to happen without this person's accomplishment? * Did this person do it alone, or with the help of others? Hart has an amazing overview of world history, and his perspective is often different from the norm, or certainly from what is presented in textbooks. Each person I read about, I've read about elsewhere; but Hart consistently pulls together the information in a way that makes it finally make sense to me. He dispels many common myths about world history along the way. I wish Michael Hart would write another book about his second 100 most influential people!!

I first read this book nearly 10 years ago when a friend lent it to me. Since that time, I have referenced his "logic" in ranking the top 10 people (in particular) so many times that I had to buy the book for myself and my family. Many will disagree with Hart's ranking (Christians especially are often appalled that Jesus was ranked third behind Muhammed and Isaac Newton), but the reasons are so compelling that it might actually be a force for change! Beyond that, this book is an exceptional little collection of mini-biographies of 100 influential people in history, and is a great reference book for families. My teenagers have been reading it and talking about it, and for that alone, it was worth purchasing! (Um...it's an excellent "Bathroom Book!")

Thie is one of the best in the book with this category. I read the first edition several years ago and was very impressed. Since then, I have read many similar books and magazines such as Time & Life as the new millennium approached near 2000 AD. As of today, I still think this book is the top of the heap. The uniqueness of this book is the author states the reason why he rates the person in this order. Most reader take a look at the contents and immediately raise a lot of questions. But after reading the author's argument at the end of each biography, they tend to agree what he says. This book is thought provoking, it makes you think, forces you to see the history from different angle. In the course of learning, if you do the exercise of rating on the subject you study, you tend to gain a lot of insight of the subject. For instance, rate Top 10 Greatest Symphonies. I did just that and really satisfied what I learned. Most of similar books only lump persons together without really rating them in order or state the reason. Lately I got a copy of the second edition. The author did some changes on the rating, especially persons related to communism. I think the most recent 10 years is really a very small window of our human history and is really hard to measure the impact based on it. I do agree he replaces Antoine Becquerel with E. Rutherford. I bet the author is a scientist and not a historian. He tends to put more weight on science and technology. You have to be a physicist or an electrical engineer to appreciate the way he put Michael Faraday and James Maxwell in the very high and consecutive spots in the top 100. I found some changes in the Honorable Mentioned that author never bother to explain. For example, Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin somehow sneak in to replace Tang Tai Tsung and Han Wu Ti. I think Reagan & Yeltsin are just too recent to rate their influence. It will be really hard to convince someone who is familiar with Chinese history that Boris Yeltsin has more influences than Tang Tai Tsung. Tai Tsung reigned the Tang dynasty from 626AD to 649AD. During that 23 years of time, he had profound influence on not only China but also Japan. It is also interesting to see the author spent 18 pages on Edware de Vere and 13 pages on Gorbachev. Since most persons get 5 pages average, this gives you a feeling of inconsistency in treating them equally. My final comment, it is not a good idea to rate a person still alive. This is not because he or she is not influential. It is simply too emotional or bias to rate the people still alive. Otherwise, a lot of people will rate Bill Gate over Boris Yeltsin in the list of Honorable Mentions.

First off, this book is not western european inclined, even though a great deal of influence on the world came from western europe according to the author.18 are from the Asian area. 4 more from the African and South American areas.The emphasis of this book is on the individual's influence. I ran this as a contest of sorts on a message board and here's some info to help you decide if the book might be interesting to you:Here's the criteria so that you don't go off tangent: (1) Look to how this person influenced the people around him, for good or bad, and also how it impacted later people.; (2) people who impacted their generation but not later ones in any sense got less of a ranking or far less; (3) this guy is pretty fair in giving rankings to non European types; (4) sometimes the person's goals weren't fulfilled but they did something indirectly that later became a big deal; (5) some did only one thing out of many, that may have looked small at the time, that ranked them on the list. (6) the uniqueness of the person is sometimes taken into account, meaning the event is unlikely to have happened without this person; and (7) some people build upon the ideas or methods of others so the first one will sometimes get more credit.Here's a ranking of the types of professions to help a little: SCIENTIESTS AND INVENTORS (37) POLITICAL AND MILITARY LEADERS (30) SECULAR PHILOSOPHERS (14) RELIGIOUS LEADERS (11) ARTISTIC AND LITERARY FIGURES (6) EXPLORERS (2)Highly recommend this book. Even if you don't agree with it, it's thought provoking, unlike some History books, and might even make you come up with your own list.

Anytime you start rating people (or anything else, for that matter), you are going to get some feedback (shall we say) from those who disagree with your rankings. Michael Hart rates those who,in his opinion, qualify as the 100 most influential people in history, not the greatest, or the smartest or the nicest, but the most influential. Impossible to get agreement on, but before you dismiss Hart's rankings, you should read his reasons...Reading over the list of names, it is easy to say, "Oh, that's nonsense!! What is he doing here?" But in these short bios, Hart tells you WHY he thinks this person belongs on the list, and his reasoning is well thought out, thought provoking and difficult to just dismiss. It is an interesting mental excerise to change his listing, then defend YOUR choice as clearly as Hart does, (and doing that is tougher than it sounds, by the way). Hart's book does exactly what a book of this nature should do, it makes us THINK and that fact alone qualifes it as an excellent book and one that should not be missed.....