|
THE CREAM OF THE CROP
THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO'VE
SHAPED AMERICA
THE TOP 25 INFLUENTIAL AMERICANS?
YOU DECIDE
|
George Washington
He made the United States possible—not only by defeating a king, but by declining to become one himself.
|
He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over America’s second founding.
|
Thomas Jefferson
The author of the five most important words in American history: “All men are created equal.”
|
John Adams
His leadership made the American Revolution possible; his devotion to republicanism made it succeed.
|
|
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and then he proved it
|
Benjamin Franklin
The Founder-of-all-trades— scientist, printer, writer, diplomat, inventor, and more; like his country, he contained multitudes.
|
Alexander Hamilton
Soldier, banker, and political scientist, he set in motion an agrarian nation’s transformation into an industrial power.
|
John Marshall
The defining chief justice, he established the Supreme Court as the equal of the other two federal branches.
|
|
His dream of racial equality is still elusive, but no one did more to make it real.
|
Thomas Edison
It wasn’t just the lightbulb; the Wizard of Menlo Park was the most prolific inventor in American history.
|
Ulysses S. Grant
He was a poor president, but he was the general Lincoln needed; he also wrote the greatest political memoir in American history.
|
James Madison
He fathered the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights.
|
|
Woodrow Wilson
He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy. And he also sold us out to the Federal Reserve
|
John D. Rockefeller
The man behind Standard Oil set the mold for our tycoons—first by making money, then by giving it away.
|
He gave us the assembly line and the Model T, and sparked America’s love affair with the automobile.
|
Theodore Roosevelt
Whether busting trusts or building canals, he embodied the “strenuous life” and blazed a trail for twentieth-century America.
|
|
Mark Twain
Author of our national epic, he was the most unsentimental observer of our national life.
|
Ronald Reagan
The amiable architect of both the conservative realignment and the Cold War’s end.
|
Andrew Jackson
The first great populist: he found America a republic and left it a democracy
|
Thomas Paine
The voice of the American Revolution, and our first great radical.
|
Links provided by BIOGRAPHY.COM
|
