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100 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Moby Dick was a flop at the time, but Melville is remembered as the American Shakespeare. |
100: Herman Melville
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He broke the New Deal majority, and then broke his presidency on a scandal that still haunts America.
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99: Richard Nixon
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As an educator and a champion of self-help, he tried to lead black America up from slavery.
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98: Booker T. Washington
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America’s first great songwriter, he brought us “O! Susanna” and “My Old Kentucky Home.”
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97: Stephen Foster
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He made the cars we drive safer; thirty years later, he made George W. Bush the president.
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96: Ralph Nader
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A producer for forty years, he was the first great Hollywood mogul.
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95: Samuel Goldwyn
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The founder of Kodak democratized photography with his handy rolls of film.
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94: George Eastman
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He was the most successful rebel slave; his specter would stalk the white South for a century.
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93: Nat Turner
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As the creator of Tom Joad, he chronicled Depression-era misery.
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92: John Steinbeck
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Harriet Beecher Stowe’s clergyman father earned fame as an abolitionist and an evangelist.
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91: Lyman Beecher
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Forget the fire and brimstone: his subtle eloquence made him the country’s most influential theologian.
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90: Jonathan Edwards
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The last man who could swing an election with a newspaper column.
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89: Walter Lippmann
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A giant of physics, he helped develop quantum theory and was instrumental in building the atomic bomb.
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88: Enrico Fermi
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With a single book—and a singular approach—he changed American parenting.
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87: Benjamin Spock
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She got off her sickbed and founded Christian Science, which promised spiritual healing to all.
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86: Mary Baker Eddy
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His spare style defined American modernism, and his life made machismo a cliché.
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85: Ernest Hemingway
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As a lawyer and a Supreme Court justice, he was the legal architect of the civil-rights revolution.
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84: Thurgood Marshall
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The novels are unreadable, but he was the first great mythologizer of the frontier.
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83: James Fenimore Cooper
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He asked Americans what they thought, and the politicians listened.
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82: George Gallup
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With Coming of Age in Samoa, she made anthropology relevant—and controversial.
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81: Margaret Mead
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The press baron who perfected yellow journalism and helped start the Spanish-American War.
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80: William Randolph Hearst
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His talent and charisma took jazz from the cathouses of Storyville to Broadway, television, and beyond.
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79: Louis Armstrong
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Whether a hero, a fanatic, or both, he provided the spark for the Civil War.
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78: John Brown
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She spoke to the discontent of housewives everywhere—and inspired a revolution in gender roles.
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77: Betty Friedan
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America’s most significant architect, he was the archetype of the visionary artist at odds with capitalism.
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76: Frank Lloyd Wright
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He saved the national pastime in the wake of the Black Sox scandal—and permanently linked sports and celebrity.
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75: Babe Ruth
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What Joseph Smith founded, Young preserved, leading the Mormons to their promised land.
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74: Brigham Young
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His mechanical reaper spelled the end of traditional farming, and the beginning of industrial agriculture.
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73: Cyrus McCormick
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He promised us “Every Day Low Prices,” and we took him up on the offer
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72: Sam Walton
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He didn’t create American English, but his dictionary defined it.
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71: Noah Webster
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They went west to explore, and millions followed in their wake.
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70: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
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As the founding publisher of The New York Herald, he invented the modern American newspaper.
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69: James Gordon Bennett
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He co-discovered DNA’s double helix, revealing the code of life to scientists and entrepreneurs alike.
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68: James D. Watson
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The circus impresario’s taste for spectacle paved the way for blockbuster movies and reality TV.
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67: P.T. Barnum
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The king of rock and roll. Enough said.
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66: Elvis Presley
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The original American dropout, he has inspired seekers of authenticity for 150 years.
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65: Henry David Thoreau
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The founder of Hull House, she became the secular saint of social work.
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64: Jane Addams
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As a general, he organized the American effort in World War II; as a statesman, he rebuilt Western Europe.
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63: George Marshall
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The mind behind Pragmatism, America’s most important philosophical school.
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62: William James
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The country’s greatest labor organizer, he made the golden age of unions possible.
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61: Samuel Gompers
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The most gifted chronicler of America’s tormented and fascinating South.
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60: William Faulkner
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The father of architectural modernism, he shaped the defining American building: the skyscraper.
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59: Louis Sullivan
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The voice of the antebellum South, he was slavery’s most ardent defender.
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58: John C. Calhoun
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He was a good general but a better symbol, embodying conciliation in defeat.
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57: Robert E. Lee
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His tireless advocacy of universal public schooling earned him the title “The Father of American Education.”
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56: Horace Mann
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The Monroe Doctrine’s real author, he set nineteenth-century America’s diplomatic course.
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55: John Quincy Adams
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The Rockefeller of the Information Age, in business and philanthropy alike.
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54: Bill Gates
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Known as “The Great Dissenter,” he wrote Supreme Court opinions that continue to shape American jurisprudence.
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53: Oliver Wendell Holmes
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The founder of Mormonism, America’s most famous homegrown faith.
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52: Joseph Smith
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The ardent champion of birth control—and of the sexual freedom that came with it.
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51: Margaret Sanger
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This one-term president’s Mexican War landgrab gave us California, Texas, and the Southwest
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50: James K. Polk
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The genius behind New York’s Central Park, he inspired the greening of America’s cities.
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49: Frederick Law Olmsted
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The father of the atomic bomb and the regretful midwife of the nuclear era.
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48: Robert Oppenheimer
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After escaping from slavery, he pricked the nation’s conscience with an eloquent accounting of its crimes.
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47: Frederick Douglass
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Through his newspaper, The Liberator, he became the voice of abolition.
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46: William Lloyd Garrison
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Before the Internet, there was Morse code.
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45: Samuel F. B. Morse
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His brilliance gave us civil-rights laws; his stubbornness gave us Vietnam.
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44: Lyndon B. Johnson
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One of America’s great intellectuals, he made the “problem of the color line” his life’s work.
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43: W.E.B. Du Bois
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She used the first lady’s office and the mass media to become “first lady of the world.”
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42: Eleanor Roosevelt
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Her Uncle Tom’s Cabin inspired a generation of abolitionists and set the stage for civil war.
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41: Harriet Beecher Stowe
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He sought to make the public school a training ground for democratic life.
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40: John Dewey
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The author of Silent Spring was godmother to the environmental movement.
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39: Rachel Carson
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She was the country’s most eloquent voice for women’s equality under the law.
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38: Susan B. Anthony
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The great financier and banker was the prototype for all the Wall Street barons who followed.
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37: J. P. Morgan
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“The Great Commoner” lost three presidential elections, but his populism transformed the country.
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36: William Jennings Bryan
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He broke baseball’s color barrier and embodied integration’s promise.
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35: Jackie Robinson
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His vaccine for polio eradicated one of the world’s worst plagues.
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34: Jonas Salk
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The bard of individualism, he relied on himself—and told us all to do the same.
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33: Ralph Waldo Emerson
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His greatest scientific work was done in Europe, but his humanity earned him undying fame in America.
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32: Albert Einstein
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One of America’s greatest legislators and orators, he forged compromises that held off civil war for decades.
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31: Henry Clay
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One of the first great American feminists, she fought for social reform and women’s right to vote.
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30: Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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His Supreme Court transformed American society and bequeathed to us the culture wars.
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29: Earl Warren
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He won a war and two elections, and made everybody like Ike.
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28: Dwight D. Eisenhower
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His gin made cotton king and sustained an empire for slavery
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27: Eli Whitney
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The quintessential entertainer-entrepreneur, he wielded unmatched influence over our childhood.
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26: Walt Disney
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His leadership made the American Revolution possible; his devotion to republicanism made it succeed.
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25: John Adams
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By inventing the telephone, he opened the age of telecommunications and shrank the world.
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24: Alexander Graham Bell
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They got us all off the ground.
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23: Orville and Wilbur Wright
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He sang of America and shaped the country’s conception of itself.
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22: Walt Whitman
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An accidental president, this machine politician ushered in the Atomic Age and then the Cold War.
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21: Harry S. Truman
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The original self-made man forged America’s industrial might and became one of the nation’s greatest philanthropists.
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20: Andrew Carnegie
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The voice of the American Revolution, and our first great radical.
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19: Thomas Paine
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The first great populist: he found America a republic and left it a democracy
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18: Andrew Jackson
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The amiable architect of both the conservative realignment and the Cold War’s end.
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17: Ronald Reagan
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Author of our national epic, he was the most unsentimental observer of our national life.
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16: Mark Twain
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Whether busting trusts or building canals, he embodied the “strenuous life” and blazed a trail for twentieth-century America.
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15: Theodore Roosevelt
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He gave us the assembly line and the Model T, and sparked America’s love affair with the automobile.
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14: Henry Ford
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He fathered the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights.
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13: James Madison
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He was a poor president, but he was the general Lincoln needed; he also wrote the greatest political memoir in American history.
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12: Ulysses S. Grant
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The man behind Standard Oil set the mold for our tycoons—first by making money, then by giving it away.
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11: John D. Rockefeller
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He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy.
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10: Woodrow Wilson
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It wasn’t just the lightbulb; the Wizard of Menlo Park was the most prolific inventor in American history.
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09: Thomas Edison
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His dream of racial equality is still elusive, but no one did more to make it real.
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08: Martin Luther King
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The defining chief justice, he established the Supreme Court as the equal of the other two federal branches.
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07: John Marshall
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The Founder-of-all-trades— scientist, printer, writer, diplomat, inventor, and more; like his country, he contained multitudes.
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06: Benjamin Franklin
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Soldier, banker, and political scientist, he set in motion an agrarian nation’s transformation into an industrial power.
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05: Alexander Hamilton
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He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and then he proved it.
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04: Franklin D. Roosevelt
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The author of the five most important words in American history: “All men are created equal.”
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03: Thomas Jefferson
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He made the United States possible—not only by defeating a king, but by declining to become one himself.
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02: George Washington
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He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over America’s second founding.
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01: Abraham Lincoln |
