1) Muhammad Ali

Three-time world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, known for his lyrical charm and boasts as much as for
his powerful fists, has moved far beyond the boxing ring in both influence and purpose. Ali won an Olympic gold medal and
later tossed it into a river because he was disgusted by racis m in America. As a young man he was recruited by Malcolm X to
join the Nat ion of Islam. He refused to serve in Vietnam--a professional fighter willing to serve t ime in jail for his pacifist
ideals. He has contributed to countless, diverse charities and causes. And his later years have found him interested in world
politics as he has battled to keep Parkinson's disease at bay.
Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. and was raised in a clapboard house in middle-class Louisville,
Kentucky. He began boxing at the age of 12. After winning an Olympic gold medal at 18, Ali signed the most lucrative contract
negotiated by a beginning professional in the history of boxing. Later, he worked his way into contention for the coveted
heavyweight title shot by boasting and creating media interest at a time when, by his own admission, he was only ranked
number nine on the list of contenders. Even from the beginning, it was clear that Ali was his own man --quick, strong-willed,
original, and witty. Ali knew that his rhymes and press-grabbing claims would infuse more interest and more money into the
sport of boxing, and he was his own best public relations man.
Ali--then still Cassius Clay--fought Sonny Liston in a match of classic contenders for the heavyweight championship of
the world. The fight almost single-handedly restored intelligence and balance to boxing. Cassius Clay had been chanting the
war cry "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" for weeks; he beat Liston in a display of beautiful, controlled boxing. Liston
could hit with deadly power, but Ali utilized his skills and courage with forethought and aplomb. He won the fight to become
heavyweight champion of the world. At the tender age of 22 Ali knew that he was something above and beyond a great boxer:
He had marketing sense, political finesse, and a feeling of noble purpose.
Throughout his career and life, Ali has always professed to want to help other black Americans --and he has, time and time
again. When he returned from Italy, having just won an Olympic gold medal, he was so proud of his trophy that he wore it day
and night and showed it to everyone, whether they wanted to see it or not. Ali's first wife remembered him saying "I was youn g,
black Cassius Marcellus Clay, who had won a gold medal for his country. I went to downtown Louisville to a five -and-dime
store that had a soda fountain. I sat down at the counter to order a burger and soda pop. The waitress looked at me.... 'Sorr y, we
don't serve coloreds,' she said. I was furious. I went all the way to Italy to represent my country, won a gold medal, and now I
come back to America and can't even get served at a five-and-dime store. I went to a bridge, tore the medal off my neck and
threw it into the river. That gold medal didn't mean a thing to me if my black brothers and sisters were treated wrong in a
country I was supposed to represent."
At the age of 21, Ali was inspired by human rights activist Malcolm X to become a member of the Muslim fai th. As a
Muslim and thus, a conscientious objector, Muhammad Ali refused to even consider going to Vietnam in 1966; a tremendous
public outcry erupted against him. Although Ali had not been charged or arrested for violat ing the Selective Service Act --much
less convicted--the New York State Athletic Commission and World Boxing Association suspended his boxing license and
stripped him of his heavyweight title in May of 1967, minutes after he officially announced that he would not submit to
induction. Ali said to Sports Illustrated contributor Edwin Shrake, "I'm giving up my tit le, my wealth, maybe my future. Many
great men have been tested for their religious beliefs. If I pass this test, I'll come out stronger than ever." Eventually Al i was
sentenced to five years in prison, released on appeal, and his conviction overturned three years later.
In 1971 Ali fell from invincibility. Ali regained his title as world heavyweight champion in 1974. In 1982 Ali began
treatment for Parkinson's syndrome. It was later theorized that Ali was suffering, more precisely, from Pugilistic Parkinsonism,
brought on by repetitive trauma to the head. Ali was shortly restored to his previous level of energy and awareness; as long as
he took his medication regularly, he was able to keep the disease in check. In 1988 Ali told New York Times Magazine: "I've
got Parkinson's syndrome. I'm in no pain.... If I was in perfect health--if I had won my last two fights--if I had no problem,
people would be afraid of me. Now they feel sorry for me. They thought I was Superman. Now they can say 'He's human, like
us. He has problems.'"
Toward the end of Ali's boxing career, and afterward, his ambit ions took a decided turn toward statesmanship. In 1980 he
cast his lot with the Democrat ic Party, supporting then-Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter. During his career in the ring Ali
made more than $50 million, t wo thirds of which went to managerial expenses and taxes. He said to New York Times
Magazine, "I never talk about boxing. It just served its purpos e. I was only about 11 or 12 years old when I said 'I'm gonna get
famous so I can help my people.'" Indicating his continuing desire to help people, in 1990 Ali visited Our Children's
Foundation, Inc., in Manhattan. He addressed the children there, saying, "The sun has a purpose. The moon has a purpose. The
snow has a purpose. Cows have a purpose. You were born for a purpose. You have to find your purpose. Go to school. Learn to
read and write.... What is your purpose, your occupation? Find your purpose.... What do you have to find?" "Purpose!," they
shouted gleefully in unison. True to form, one of Ali's favored inscriptions when signing autographs is "Love is the net wher e
hearts are caught like fish."
Although Parkinson's syndrome has slowed Ali down, he still remains active--raising money for the Muhammad Ali
Foundation and frequently appearing at sports tributes and fund-raisers. Muhammad's wife Lonnie believes "Muhammad
knows he has this illness for a reason. It's not by chance. Parkinson's disease has made him a more spiritual person.
Muhammad believes God gave it to him to bring him to another level, to create another destiny." she stated in People. When
asked whether he is sorry he ever got into the ring, he responded, "If I wasn't a boxer, I wouldn't be famous. If I wasn't famous,
I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now."
2) Kofi Annan
International diplomat Kofi Annan of Ghana is the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations (UN), the mult inational
organization created to, among other things, maintain world peace. He is the first black African to head that organization and
was awarded the Nobel Prize. Noted for his cautious style of diplomacy, Annan is sometimes crit icized for his soft -spokenness,
which some say may be mistaken for weakness.
Kofi Atta Annan was born in central Ghana, Africa, on April 8, 1938. Annan is descended from tribal chiefs on both sides
of his family. His father was an educated man, and Annan became accustomed to both traditional and modern ways of life. He
has described himself as being "atribal in a tribal world."
After receiving his early education at a leading boarding school in Ghana, Annan attended the College of Science and
Technology in the capital of Kumasi. At the age of twenty, he won a Ford Foundation scholars hip for undergraduate studies at
Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he studied economics. Even then he was showing signs of becoming a
diplomat, or someone skilled in international relat ions. Annan received his bachelor's degree in economics in 1961. Shortly
after complet ing his studies at Macalester College, Annan headed for Geneva, Swit zerland, where he attended graduate classes
in economics.
Following his graduate studies in Geneva, Annan joined the staff of the World Health Organizat ion (WHO), a branch of
the United Nat ions. He served as an administrative officer and as budget officer in Geneva. Later UN posts took him to
Ethiopia and New York. Annan always assumed that he would return to his native land after college, although he was distu rbed
by the unrest and numerous changes of government that occurred there during the 1970s.
Annan became the Alfred P. Sloan fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the end of his fellowship in
1972, he was awarded a master of science degree in management. Rather than return to Ghana upon graduation, he accepted a
position at the UN headquarters in New York City. In 1974 he moved to Cairo, Egypt, as chief civilian personnel officer in the
UN Emergency Force. Annan briefly changed careers in 1974 when he left the United Nat ions to serve as managing director of
the Ghana Tourist Development Company.
Annan returned to international diplomacy and the United Nations in 1976. In fulfilling his duties to the United Nations,
Annan has spent most of his adult life in the United States, specifically at the UN headquarters in New York City. Annan had
by this time filled a number of roles at the United Nations, ranging from peacekeeping to managerial, and the 1990s were no
different. In 1990 he negotiated the release of hostages in Iraq following the invasion of Kuwait. Five years later, he oversaw
the transition of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) to the multinational Implementation Force (IFOR), a UN
peacekeeping organization.
In recognition of his abilities, Annan was appointed secretary-general, the top post of the UN, by the UN General
Assembly in December 1996. He began serving his four-year term of office on January 1, 1997. The post of secretary-general
of the United Nat ions has been called one of the world's "oddest jobs." According to the United Nations web site, "Equal parts
diplomat and activist the Secretary-General stands before the world community as the very emblem of the United Nations."
The secretary-general is the boss of ten thousand international civil servants and the chief administrator of a huge international
parliamentary system (a governing body with representation from many nations).
In this post, Annan was expected to practice "preventive diplomacy," meaning he and his staff tried to prevent, contain, or
stop international disputes. Above all, Annan tried to maintain world peace. In an address to the National Press Club, Annan
declared, "If war is the failure of diplomacy, then diplomacy is our first line of defense. The world today spends billions
preparing for war; shouldn't we spend a billion or two preparing for peace?"
Almost immediately after Annan's election to secretary-general came the question: Is this man just too nice a person for
the job? His reputation for "soft-spokenness," could be mistaken for weakness. Another factor that made people question
Annan's toughness was his involvement in the UN efforts at peacekeeping in Bosnia from 1992 to 1996. Despite the United
Nations's presence, Bosnia remained the site of an ethnic war (a war between religious or cultural groups), in which thousands
died. Sir Marrack Goulding, head of peacekeeping, once commented that Annan never expressed his doubts about the UN
policy in a forceful manner. Annan disagreed, saying that he always pressed the involved countries the United States, Britain,
France, and Russiato rethink their policy on sending soldiers to the peacekeeping force. Not one to raise his voice in anger,
Annan favored diplomacy. In a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1998, Annan noted, "You can do a lot with diplomacy,
but of course you can do a lot more with diplomacy backed up by fairness and force."
All eyes turned to Annan and his handling of the touchy situation with Iraq in 1998. Early in that ye ar, threats of war
seemed all too real. Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq, became once again a threatening presence by refusing to let UN
observers into certain areas of his country, as had been previously agreed upon, to check for illegal possession of ch emical-
warfare items and the like. Then-president Bill Clinton hinted strongly at the use of force to make Hussein agree to let in the
UN officials. In his role as secretary-general, Annan went to Iraq in February of 1998 to meet with the Iraqi leader. Aft er
talking with Annan, Hussein agreed to what he had refused beforeunlimited UN access to the eight sites that he had
previously called completely off-limits. Because of Annan's intervention, war was avoided. Annan's code of soft-spoken
diplomacy was given a boost by the outcome of his talks with Saddam Hussein in 1998.
In the summer of 2001, the United Nations unanimously appointed Kofi Annan to his second five-year term as secretary-
general. On October 12, 2001, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the United Nations and Kofi Annan. The Nobel
citation pointed out that Annan had brought new life to the peacekeeping organization, highlighted the United Nations's fight
for civil rights, and boldly taken on the new challenges of terrorism and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

3) Lance Armstrong

If scripted by Hollywood, the story would be dismissed as trite melodrama: A deadly disease strikes a promising
athlete. Despite desperately thin odds, he manages not only to beat the affliction but also to return to the sport and win its
top prize. Unbelievable, except its true.
But the story doesnt end on the finish line at the Tour de France. His experience made him a part of a cancer
community, and motivated him to unleash the same passion and drive he does in bike races to the fight against cancer.
Since he made history in 1999, he has won the tour six more times, and has become one of the most recognizable and
admired people of this era.
Lances sporting career began in Plano, Texas, where his mother Linda supported his competitive urges from the
beginning. He displayed a gift early on when he won the Iron Kids Triathlon at 13 and became a professional when he was
only 16 years old. At the near-cost of his high school diploma, he trained with the U.S. Olympic cycling developmental
team in Colorado Springs, Colorado, during his senior year. That sealed his destiny and Lance embarked on a career as a
bike racer.
His rise in the amateur ranks appeared effortless, and Lance qualified for the junior world championships in Moscow
in 1989. By 1991 he was the U.S. National Amateur Champion and soon after turned professional.
Once in the pro ranks, he quickly proved himself with a USPRO Championship title, stage victories in the Tour de
France, a World Championship, multiple victories at the Tour du Pont, a No. 1 world ranking, and a spot on the U.S.
Olympic team. Lance entered 1996 as the No. 1 ranked cyclist in the world, competed as a member of the U.S. Cycling
Team in the Atlanta Summer Olympic Games, and signed a contract with the French-based Cofidis racing team.
While seemingly at the top of his game, he was literally forced off his bike in excruciating pain. In early October, h is
doctor gave him the stunning news that he had cancer. And his life changed forever.
Tests revealed advanced testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and his brain. Though his chances for his
recovery were far less than 50-50, a frightened yet determined Lance began an aggressive form of chemotherapy. With the
advice of specialists, he tried a course of treatment that gave him a chance for a cull recovery with less danger of losing
lung capacity as a side effect. Remarkably, the chemotherapy began to work, and Lance gradually allowed his thoughts to
return to racing.
Cancer left him scarred physically and emotionally, but he now maintains it was the best thing that ever
happened to me. This new perspective allowed him to think beyond cycling and focus on his debt to the cancer
community. He formed the Lance Armstrong Foundation within months of his diagnosis to help others with their cancer
struggles.
Lances complete recovery from cancer seemed miraculous, but actually returning to racing felt unfathomable.
Having departed from Cofidis, Lance found himself teamless unt il the United States Postal Service took a leap of faith and
signed him. If he never turned another pedal, the story would be an inspirational one. But it wasnt enough for Lance. He
needed to prove himself in the ranks of the professional elite. His professional comeback, however, got off to a rocky start.
Early season racing in 1998 nearly ended his career again when, in a cold and miserable Paris -Nice race, he pulled to the
side of the road and quit. Many thought that was the last day on the bike for Lance Armstrong.
Lance later admitted that he wasnt ready to return to racing he was just learning how to live again, let along race a
bicycle. He retreated to Boone, North Carolina, with friend and longtime coach Chris Carmichael for a week of stress -free
riding. It was there that he learned to love the bike again build up the courage to try again. His first race back on the b ike
was a reason for celebration as he, appropriately, won the Lance Armstrong Foundation Downtown Criterium in his
hometown of Austin, Texas. His new focus on life and training paid off in the form of top-five finishes in the Tour of Spain
and the World Championships.
1999 came with a specific goal the Tour de France. When Lance went to the line at the prologue of the Tour, it was
already a victory both for him and cancer survivors everywhere. But showing up wasnt enough. He won the prologue
stage and rode on to win his first Tour victory with a stunning mixture of power, aggressiveness, and team strategy. It was
now official: Lance was an international hero.
Lance didnt stop there. He has added six more Tour de France tit les to his list, has been awarded virtually every
sports honor there is, and has become a symbol of hope and inspiration. He also continues to be a leader and a ctivist on
behalf of cancer survivors around the world. The Lance Armstrong Foundation has become among the most influential
organizations of its kind and today provides practical information and tools people need to battle cancer and live strong
through education, advocacy, public health programs, and research grants.
Lance has retired, but one thing remains certain. No matter what his path, he will travel it with the sure knowledge
that every day is precious and that every step matters.









4) Louis Armstrong

Like most of the great innovators in jazz, he was a s mall man. But the extent of his influence across jazz, across
American music and around the world has such continuing stature that he is one of the few who can easily be mentioned with
Stravinsky, Picasso and Joyce. His life was the embodiment of one who moves from rags to riches, from anonymity to
internationally imitated innovator. Louis Daniel Armstrong supplied revolutionary language that took on such pervasiveness
that it became commonplace, like the light bulb, the airplane, the telephone.
That is why Armstrong remains a deep force in our American expression. Not only do we hear him in those trumpet
players who represent the present renaissance in jazz we can also detect his influence in certain rhythms that sweep from
country-and-western music all the way over to the chanted doggerel of rap.
Armstrong was born Aug. 4, 1901 in New Orleans. He grew up at the bottom, hustling and hustling, trying to bring
something home to eat, sometimes searching garbage cans for food that might still be suitable for supper. The spirit of
Armstrong's world, however, was not dominated by the deprivation of poverty and the dangers of wild living
What struck him most, was the ceremonial vigor of the people. Ranging from almost European pale to jet black, the
Negroes of New Orleans had many social clubs, parades and picnics. With rags, blues, snippets from opera, church music and
whatever else, a wide breadth of rhythm and tune was created to accompany or stimulate every kind of human involvement.
He had some knucklehead in his soul too. While a genial fountain of joy, Armstrong was a street boy, and he had a
dirty mouth. It was his shooting off a pistol on New Year's Eve that got him thrown into the Colored Waifs' Home, an
institution bent on refining ruffians. It was there that young Louis first put his lips to the mouthpiece of a cornet. Like a ny
American boy, no matter his point of social origin, he had his dreams.
The sound developed very quickly, and he was soon known around New Orleans as formidable. The places he played
and the people he knew were sweet and innocent at one end of the spectrum and rough at the other. He played picnics for
young Negro girls, Mississippi riverboats on which the white people had never seen Negroes in tuxedos before, and dives
where the customers cut and shot one another. Out of those experiences, everything from pomp to humor to erotic charis ma to
grief to majesty to the profoundly gruesome and monumentally spiritual worked its way into his tone. He became a beacon of
American feeling.
From 1920 on, he was hell on two feet if somebody was in the mood to challenge him. Musicians then were wont to
have "cutting sessions" battles of imagination and stamina. Fairly soon, young Armstrong was left alone. Armstrong took a
train to Chicago in 1922, where he joined his mentor Joe Oliver, and the revolution took place in full form. King Oliver and his
Creole Jazz Band, featuring the dark young powerhouse with the large mouth, brought out the people and all the musicians,
black and white, who wanted to know how it was truly done.
When he was called to New York City in 1924 by the big-time bandleader Fletcher Henderson, Armstrong looked
exactly like what he was, a young man who was not to be fooled around with and might slap the taste out of your mouth if you
went too far. His improvisations set the city on its head. The stiff rhythms of the time were slashed away by his combination of
the percussive and the soaring. He soon returned t o Chicago, perfected what he was doing and made one record after another
that reordered American music. Needing more space for his improvised line, Armstrong rejected the contrapuntal New Orleans
front line of clarinet, trumpet and trombone in favor of the single, featured horn, which soon became the convention. His
combination of virtuosity, strength and passion was unprecedented. No one in Western music not even Bach has ever set
the innovative pace on an instrument, then stood up to sing and converted the vocalists.
The melodic and rhythmic vistas Armstrong opened up solved the mind-body problem as the world witnessed how
the brain and the muscles could work in perfect coordination on the aesthetic spot. In his radical reinterpretations, Armstro ng
bent and twisted popular songs with his horn and his voice until they were shorn of sentimentality and elevated to serious art .
He brought the change agent of swing to the world, the most revolutionary rhythm of his century.
Louis Armstrong was so much, in fact, that the big bands sounded like him, their featured improvisers took direction
from him, and every school of jazz since has had to address how he interpreted the basics of the idiom swing, blues, ballads
and Afro-Hispanic rhythms. His freedom, his wit, his discipline, his bawdiness, his majesty and his irrepressible willingness to
do battle with deep sorrow and the wages of death give his music a perpetual position in the wave of the future that is the
station of all great art.
Armstrong traveled the world constantly. He had a great love for children, was always willing to help out fellow
musicians and passed out laxatives to royalty and heads of state. However well he was received in Europe, the large public
celebrations with which West Africans welcomed him during a tour in the late '50s were far more appropriate for this sequoia
of 20th century music.
He usually accepted human life as it came, and he shaped it his way. But he didn't accept everything. By the middle
'50s, Armstrong had been dismissed by younger Negro musicians as some sort of minstrel figure, an embarrassment, too jovial
and hot in a time when cool disdain was the new order. He was, they said, holding Negroes back because he smiled too much
and wasn't demanding a certain level of respect from white folks. But when Armstrong called out President Eisenhower for not
standing behind those black children as school integration began in Little Rock, Ark., 40 years ago, there was not a peep hea rd
from anyone else in the jazz world. His heroism remained singular. Such is the way of the truly great: they do what they do in
conjunction or all by themselves. They get the job done. Louis Daniel Armstrong was that kind.
5) Lucille Ball

Lucille Dsire Ball was born August 6, 1911, in the small town of Celoron, New York. Her father, Henry Durrell Ball,
was a telephone lineman for the Bell Company, while her mother, Dsire (DeDe) Hunt, was often described as a lively and
energetic young woman. While DeDe Ball was pregnant with her second child, Frederick, Henry Ball contracted typhoid fever
and died in February 1915.
At least one biographer has suggested that the grief associated with the loss of her father drove Lucille into playacting.
Whether true or not, Ball's recollections of early childhood were, for the most part, happy. She and her brother lived with
doting grandparents and a strong, independent mother. Her grandfather was an eccentric socialist who enjoyed the theater. He
frequently took the family to local vaudeville shows and encouraged young Lucy to take part in both her own and school plays.
At the age of fifteen, Lucy dropped out of high school, and with her mother's approval, enrolled in the John Murray
Anderson/Robert Milton School of the Theater in New York City. At this stage in Ba ll's life, she was hopelessly beyond her
element. Nervous and shy in a large city she hated, Ball lasted only six weeks at the school and returned to Celoron.
Ball later returned to New York and, despite a bout with potentially crippling rheumatoid arthritis, worked as a model.
Ball's entrance into the film industry came about fortuitously, when she ran into a local theatrical agent, while walking up
Broadway one day. The agent informed Ball of an opportunity to appear in a new film, Ball auditioned and was hired. It was a
small part, and it would be many years after her work in B-pictures before she would achieve celebrity status, but Lucille Ball
had found Hollywood.
During Lucille Ball's first years in Hollywood, she progressed from bit parts to featured roles, though rarely in major films.
Indeed, over time Ball became known as a "Queen of the B's." Despite her talent, it was quite possible that Ball might never
have progressed beyond that level had she not met Cuban vocalist and bandleader Desi Arnaz.
Arnaz was born in 1917, in Cuba, where his father was mayor of Santiago, an important seaport city. The Arnaz family
was wealthy, and Desi was reared in relative luxury until the political revolution of 1933. Following his father's imprisonme nt,
Desi Arnaz and his family fled to the United States. Desi worked his way through numerous menial jobs (including one in
which he cleaned bird cages) before joining bandleader Xavier Cugat as a vocalist. In 1939 he came to Hollywood. It was on
the set of RKO Studios that Ball and Arnaz met; they were married on 30 November 1940.
The Ball-Arnaz marriage was tempestuous, to say the least. The two were from vastly different cultures and backgrounds.
Unlike her television personality, Ball was conservative in nature and uncomfortable when not among friends. Arnaz had a
more outgoing personality, with a fondness for both liquor and women. The early years of their marriage were marked by long
periods of separation as their careers progressed in different directions. By the late 1940's, Ball had become established as a
bonafide star, but she rarely appeared in roles which showcased the full range of her comedic talents. As an "aging" star in her
thirties, she was constantly in danger of early replacement by up-and-coming younger actresses. Arnaz, meanwhile, was
frequently on the road with his band, only rarely seeing Lucille. Both wanted children and a stable family life, but found th is
goal impossible to achieve while they were apart.
In 1950 CBS decided to develop a television series based on Ball's radio performances. Ball pressured the studio to cast
Arnaz in the role of husband, a suggestion that met with strong opposition. The network's major object ion was the belief the
public would not accept a Latin bandleader as her husband. Ball's answer was direct: "We ARE married!" To overcome the
network's reservations, Ball suggested that she and Arnaz embark on a personal summer tour to highlight their act. In June
1950, they premiered successfully in Chicago, proving their point. To compound their happiness, it became apparent Lucille
was pregnant. It was also during this period that the couple formed Desilu Productions, parent company for their studios. Wit h
success, however, came t ragedy. In July, Ball suffered a miscarriage. After a period of recuperation, she and Arnaz returned to
the stage with their act. The success of the tour finally convinced CBS to go ahead with a series, and in early 1951 preparat ions
began. Ironically, Lucille again became pregnant, delivering a healthy girl, Lucie Arnaz, in July.
I Love Lucy ran from 15 October 1951 to 24 September 1961. At its peak, it was the highest rated show on television.
Sadly, the marriage between Ball and Arnaz barely survived the end of the series. The day after the final show was filmed in
March of 1960 Ball filed for divorce. Despite the end of their marriage, Ball and Arnaz never lost their love and respect for
each other. Following the demise of their series, Ball purchased Arnaz's shares of Desilu Productions in 1962, becoming the
first woman to head a Hollywood studio since Mary Pickford many years before.
When I Love Lucy premiered during the 1951-1952 television season, only fifteen million television sets were to be found
in American homes. Three years later, that number had doubled. In that time, Lucille Ball had become established as the most
popular female comedian on television, and arguably the most popular female practitioner of physical comedy in the first half -
century of prime-time television. Ball was not herself an inherently funny person; she looked at acting as a serious profession
and "worked" at physical comedy. Yet Ball had an inherent ability to observe a situation and, by exaggeration of normal
behavior, could present a routine which struck an observer with comedic overtones. It was a rare performer who could do so,
while at the same time retaining the situation as one which was within the realm of possibility. There is no question Ball ha d
her faults and her detractors. At times, she exhibited anger and pettiness. Nevertheless, Ball could also recognize ability in
those with whom she worked, and she felt secure enough in her position to allow her staff to do the jobs for which they were
hired. Despite her well-publicized battles with Arnaz, she always recognized his importance to their careers, and Arnaz in turn
never failed to give Ball credit where deserved. Most important perhaps, Ball recognized the importance of hard work in
attaining success in one's career, and she was always willing to give help to aspiring performers who exhibited this character.

6) Stephen Bechtel

At a lunch in Los Angeles late in 1949, construction executive Stephen Bechtel found himself seated next to Robert
Minckler, president of a West Coast subsidiary of Socony Mobil Oil. Minckler said he would like to build a refinery "up
North" to process crude from wells in Alberta if the oil could be piped across the Canadian Rockies.
In the conventional wisdom of the time, Minckler might as well have speculated about running a pipe line to the
moon. But Steve Bechtel was, and remained throughout his nearly 70-year career, a visionary whose imagination was fired by
grandiose projects the more seemingly impossible the better. Three years after the lunch, a consortium organized by the
family construction company, Bechtel Corp., began work. The construction gangs had to string pipe up slide -prone cliffs, some
3,600 ft. high, down into rock-walled canyons and across cascading rivers 72 rivers and streams in all. By 1955, though,
80,000 bbl. of crude a day were flowing to Vancouver on the Canadian Pacific Coast, touching off a boom in the formerly
energy-short Northwest.
It was perhaps Bechtel's most characteristic coup. His motto, endlessly repeated, was, "We'll build anything for
anybody, no matter what the location, type or size." He and his company did build not just pipelines and refineries but also
airports, ships, power plants, dams, factories, bridges, hotels, transit systems and even an entire city (Jubail, Saudi Arabi a) in
140 countries on six continents. It has been said, hyperbolically perhaps, that Bechtel engineers changed the physical contours
of the planet more than any other humans.
Bechtel grew up on rugged construction sites where his father Warren, who started the company, punched rail lines
and highways through the California wilderness. To the end of his long life he died in 1989, six months short of his 89th
birthday Steve Bechtel enjoyed prowling around job sites. He valued the title "builder" more than any oth er, but he neither
looked nor sounded like a construction boss. In his prime, in the 1950s, he was trim, well tailored and relatively soft voice d,
with the ingratiating manner of a salesman.
He was always peering over the horizon. In the 1920s he foresaw an energy boom and took the company into
pipeline construction. Later he helped pioneer the now common "turnkey" construction contract, under which Bechtel would
design a project, build it, and turn it over to the owner by a pre-set date, for a fixed fee. In 1959 he helped produce a study for a
tunnel under the English Channel, a project completed 35 years later, five years after his death.
Returning to active management, Bechtel spent six months every year roaming the world, hobnobbing with kings,
presidents and foreign business magnates, fishing for projects. Around 1947 he landed a whopper construction of what was
then the world's longest oil pipeline (1,068 miles) across Saudi Arabia. That was an early step in the building of a powerful
economy as well as a fruitful relationship with Saudi kings. According to legend, on one trip to the kingdom Bechtel noticed
the flames of natural gas being burned off at wellheads as he flew over. Surely, he thought, the wasted energy could be put t o
some use. In 1973 he presented a plan to King Faisal, an old acquaintance: use the gas to power factories in a new city that
Bechtel would build on the site of a tiny fishing village at Jubail. The city is still under construction, but it already houses a
steel mill and factories that make chemicals, plastics and fertilizer. The town is now home to 70,000 people out of a planned
eventual population of 370,000.
Bechtel got on the map in a place that was almost off it Black Canyon, Nev. With Depression raging in 1931,
Bechtel helped organize a consortium called Six Companies to tackle what was then the biggest civil engineering construction
job in U.S. history: the Hoover Dam. Workers had to excavate 3.7 million cubic yards of rock and pour 4.4 million cubic yards
of cement; the main arch of the dam towers 70 stories high. Steve was first in charge of all transportation, engineering and
administration. When his father died suddenly in 1933, he became chief executive of the whole project, which transformed the
economy of much of the West, as well as transforming the company.
After Hoover, Bechtel was convinced he and his outfit had no limits, and set out to prove it. While the dam was still
going up, he began building the 8.2-mile San Francisco- Oakland Bay Bridge. During World War II, Bechtel operated
shipyards that turned out more than 550 cargo carriers and oil tankers. At the same time he built a top -secret 1,600-mile
pipeline through the Canadian wilderness to Alaska, under primitive conditions. The hectic pace left him so fatigued that in
1946 he briefly retired. But he could never be happy on the shelf.
The company Bechtel built is not universally loved. One partner in the wart ime shipyards was John McCone, then a
steel executive who later became CIA director. He came early in a long line of men who alternately filled high offices in
Bechtel and the Federal Government (most notable: George Shult z and Caspar Weinberger). That led to charges of undue
influence by whom on whom was never quite clear. The company's penchant for secrecy didn't help its reputation, either. In
1976 the Justice Depart ment charged that Bechtel had gone too far to please Arab clients by blacklisting potential
subcontractors who dealt with Israel. Bechtel signed a consent decree promising not to join any Arab boycott of Israel.
None of that has prevented the company, now headed by Riley Bechtel, a grandson of Steve's, from flourishing
mightily. When Steve Sr. took over, Bechtel had revenues of less than $20 million; a quarter century later, when he officially
retired, sales were $463 million. The company, still family controlled, had 1997 revenues of $11.3 billion; its projects rang e
from a transit system in Athens to a semiconductor plant in China. These and others are fruits of Steve Bechtel's forward
thinking decades before the term global economy became a cliche.




7) David Ben-Gurion

Part Washington, part Moses, he was the architect of a new nation state that altered the destiny of the Jewish people and the
Middle East

Ever since he was a frail child with a disproportionately big head, David Ben-Gurion was always clear about his next
move, about the Jewish people's destination, about the link between his steps and the deliverance of the Jews in their biblic al
homeland.
Ben-Gurion ached to be an intellectual; during the most dramat ic years of his leadership, he gulped philosophy books,
commented on the Bible, flirted with Buddhism, even taught himself ancient Greek in order to read Plato in the original; he
had a relentless curiosity about the natural sciences (but no taste for fiction or the fine arts). Verbal battle, not dialogue, was his
habitual mode of communication. Rather than a philosopher, he was a walking exclamat ion mark, a t ight, craggy man with a
halo of silvery hair and a jawbone that projected awesome willpower and a volcanic temper.
He came from the depressed depths of small-town Polish-Jewish life, which he left behind in 1906. Inspired by a
Hebrew-Zionist upbringing, shocked by anti-Semitic pogroms in Eastern Europe, he went to Turkish Palestine "to build it and
be rebuilt by it," as was the motto of those days. He became a pioneer, a farmhand, active with early Zionist -socialist groups.
At age 19 he was what he would remain all his life: a secular Jewish nationalist who combined Jewish Messianic visions with
socialist ideals, a man with fierce ambit ion for leadership, extraordinary tactical-political skills and a sarcastic edge rather than
a sense of humor.
In 1915 Ben-Gurion, expelled from Palestine for his nationalist and socialist activities, chose to go to New York City,
where he hastily taught himself English and plunged head on into perpetrating the local Zionist -socialist movement. Yet his
authoritative, almost despotic character and his enchantment with Lenin's revolution and leadership style were tempered during
his three years in the U.S. by the impact American democracy left on him. Many years later, Ben -Gurion, who was urged by
some countrymen to "suspend" democracy more than once, refused to do so.
After World War I he returned to Palestine, now governed by Britain and after 1920 designated by the League
of Nat ions as a "National Home" for the Jewish people. He rose to prominence in the growing Zionist -socialist movement. The
increasing anti-Semit ism in Europe during the 1920s and '30s sent waves of Jewish immigrants into the country. Furious Arab
leaders launched a rebellion against the British and a holy war on the Jews. Much earlier than others, Ben -Gurion recognized
the depth and rationale of Arab objection to Zionism: he was aware of the tragic nature of a clash between two genuine claims
to the same land. He saw the creation of an independent homeland for the homeless Jewish people as, first and foremost, a
crucial provision for the survival of pers ecuted Jews. At the cost of being labeled a traitor (by extremists on the right) and an
opportunist (by the dogmatic left), he was ready to go a long way to accommodate the Arabs. Yet he was one of the first to
foresee that in order for the Jews to avoid a showdown with the Arabs or to survive such a showdown, they must set up a
shadow state and a shadow military force.
Ben-Gurion was the great architect and builder of both. Throughout the tragic years from 1936 to 1947, while
millions of Jews were rounded up and murdered by the Germans, denied asylum by almost all nations and barred by the Brit ish
from finding a home in Palestine, he subtly orchestrated a complex strategy: he inspired tens of thousands of young Jews from
Palestine to join the British army in fighting the Nazis, but at the same time authorized an underground agency to ship Jewish
refugees into the country. As the Brit ish were intercepting, deporting and locking away these survivors of the Nazi inferno i n
barbed-wired detention camps, world opinion grew more and more sympathetic to the Zionist prescription for the plight of the
Jews. This strategy helped bring about the favorable atmosphere that led to the 1947 U.N. resolution, partit ioning Palestine into
a Jewish state and an Arab state.
But even before the Brit ish left, attacks on Jews were unleashed all over the country. On May 14, 1948, in
accordance with the U.N. resolution, Ben-Gurion proclaimed Israel's independence, ignoring last -minute admonitions from
Washington and overruling doomsday predictions by some of his closest associates. Within hours, military forces of five Arab
nations invaded Israel, joining Palestinian milit ias in an openly declared attempt to destroy the Jews. It was the worst of s everal
Israeli-Arab wars: 1% of the Jewish population died, as well as thousands of Arabs. More than half a million Palestinians lost
their homes; some fled, some were driven out by Israeli forces.
The crux of his leadership was a lifelong, partly successful struggle to transplant a tradition of binding majority rule
in a painfully divided Jewish society that for thousands of years had not experienced any form of self-rule, not even a central
spiritual authority. In admirers as well as vehement opponents, Ben-Gurion's wrathful-father personality evoked strong
emotions: awe, anger, admiration, resentment.
The dream is a reality now albeit a flawed, disappointing reality. Perhaps it is in the nature of dreams and visions
to remain magnificently flawless only for as long as they are unfulfilled. Ben-Gurion always wanted Israel to become a " Light
unto the Nations," an exemplary polity abiding by the highest moral standards. He himself, and his Israel, could hardly live up
to such expectations. But he was, to borrow a literary term, a fantastic realist who gave his people an elemental leadership
during the most fateful half-century in their history.






8) Michael Bloomberg

Michael Bloomberg is an American businessman, philanthropist and the founder of Bloomberg L.P., currently
serving as the Mayor of New York City. He was a general partner at Salomon Brothers before founding the financial software
service company in 1981. He was elected mayor as a Republican in 2001, and was reelected to a second term in 2005.
Bloomberg was born to a Jewish family in a Boston neighborhood on February 14, 1942. His parents were both
immigrants from Poland. While advancing to the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America, Bloomberg sold Christmas
wreaths for five years so he could afford to go to summer camp each year. He attended Johns Hopkins University and
graduated with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering. Later he received his MBA degree from Harvard Business School.
Bloomberg was a general partner at Salomon Brothers. He made his fortune with his o wn company, Bloomberg L.P.,
selling financial information terminals to Wall Street firms; the company also began a radio network.
In 2001 the incumbent mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, was ineligible for re-election, as New York limits the
mayoralty to two terms. Several well-known New York City politicians aspired to succeed him. Bloomberg, a lifelong member
of the Democratic Party, decided to run for mayor as a member of the Republican Party.
Voting in the primary began on the morning of September 11. Later that day, however, because of the World Trade
Center disaster, the primary was postponed. In the rescheduled primary, Bloomberg defeated his opponent to become the
Republican nominee. In the general election, Bloomberg had Giuliani's endorsement. He a lso enjoyed a huge spending
advantage. New York City's campaign finance law restricted the contributions a candidate could accept, but Bloomberg
exercised his right to opt out of this law, attracting some criticism. He spent some $73 million of his own mon ey on his
campaign, outspending his opponent by five to one. One of the major themes of his campaign was that, with the city's economy
suffering from the effects of the attacks, it needed a mayor with business experience.
Bloomberg won 50% to 48%. Bloomberg declined the mayor's salary, accepting remuneration of $1.00 annually.
Bloomberg does not reside in Gracie Mansion, the official mayor's mansion, but at his own home elsewhere on the Upper East
Side. He maintains his home address in the white pages and is known to ride the subway to City Hall every morning, even
during periods of heightened terrorist alert.
Bloomberg was re-elected mayor in November 2005 by a margin of 20%, the widest margin ever for a Republ ican
mayor of New York. Bloomberg's term as mayor ends on December 31, 2009. He is banned by term limits from running again.
Bloomberg joins Rudy Giuliani and Fiorello LaGuardia as re-elected Republican mayors in this mostly Democratic city.
Bloomberg has said he wants reforming public education to be the legacy of his first term and addressing poverty to
be the legacy of his second. He is known as a polit ical pragmatist and for a managerial style that reflects his experience in the
private sector. Bloomberg has chosen to apply a statistical, result s-based approach to city management, appointing city
commissioners based on their expertise and granting them wide autonomy in their decision-making. Breaking with 190 years
of tradition, Bloomberg implemented a "bullpen" open office plan, reminiscent of a Wall Street trading floor, in which dozens
of aides and managerial staff are seated together in a large chamber. The design is intended to promote accountability and
accessibility.
Mayor Bloomberg has repeatedly stated his intention to return to a life of philanthropy once his eight-year tenure in
office expires. Bloomberg is among the world's richest people. He was ranked 44th by Forbes magazine in its list of 400
Richest Americans in September 2006. He was ranked 94th in the Forbes 500 Forbes List of the 500 Richest People in the
World in March 2005. Forbes reports his net worth at US$5 billion, which, in addit ion to aiding his polit ical career, has
allowed him to engage in substantial philanthropy, including the donation of over US$300 million to Johns Hopkins University.
In August of 2006, Bloomberg donated $125 million to a worldwide anti -smoking init iative designed to curb
smoking and introduce anti-s moking measures throughout the globe. The donation will defray the cost of the first two years of
a "Worldwide Stop Smoking Initiat ive," and the recipients will chiefly be pre-existing anti-s moking lobbying groups. His
charitable contributions were such that he was ranked seventh in the United States in philanthropic endeavors.



















9) Niels Bohr

Niels Bohr was born and educated in Copenhagen, Denmark. He lived, worked, and died there, too. But his mark on
science and history was worldwide. His professional work and personal convictions were part of the larger stories of the
century.
At the University of Copenhagen, he studied physics and played soccer. After receiving his doctorate in 1911, Bohr
traveled to England on a study grant. Bohr began to work on the problem of the atom's structure. Bohrs model was a huge leap
forward in making theory fit the experimental evidence that other physicists had found over the years. A few inaccuracies
remained to be ironed out by others over the next few years, but his essential idea was proved correct. He received the Nobel
Prize for this work in 1922.
After Hit ler took power in Germany, Bohr was deeply concerned for his colleagues there, and offered a place for
many escaping Jewish scientists to live and work. He later donated his gold Nobel medal to the Finnish war effort. After 1939,
Bohr's life was largely devoted to humanitarian efforts, such as intervening for the Danish Jews; he had to save human lives,
including his own and those of his family. Moreover, he felt duty-bound to prevent science from turning into a tool of
wholesale destruction. Following his escape to Sweden in September 1943, he was quickly flown to England and from there to
the United States. There he lent his talents to the Manhattan Project, and during his stay at Los Alamos he did work on the
initiator phase of the activation of the atomic bomb. He also began to stress the need for international control of atomic
weapons and energy. His view and arguments helped shape the Acheson-Lilienthal plan and the Baruch proposals to the United
Nations on behalf of the American government. In 1950 he submitted in a letter to the United Nations a plea for an "open
world where each nation can assert itself solely by the extent to which it can contribute to the common culture, and is able to
help others with experience and resources." In the 1950s Bohr's principal contribution to science consisted in taking a leading
part in the development of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN). It was at his institute that the decision was
made to build the 28-Bev (billion-electron-volt) accelerator near Geneva.

Manhattan Project History
Niels Bohr's Memorandum to President Roosevelt (July 1944)

It certainly surpasses the imagination of anyone to survey the consequences of the project in years to come, where, in
the long run, the enormous energy sources which will be available may be expected to revolutionize industry and transport.
a weapon of an unparalleled power is being created which will completely change all future conditions of warfare.
Quite apart from the question of how soon the weapon will be ready for use and what role it may play in the present
war, this situation raises a number of problems which call for the most urgent attention. Unless, indeed, some agreement
about the control of the use of the new active materials can be obt ained in due t ime, any temporary advantage, however great,
may be outweighed by a perpetual menace to human security.
Ever since the possibilities of releasing atomic energy on a vast scale came in sight, much thought has naturally been
given to the question of control, but the further the exploration of the scientific problems concerned is proceeding, the clearer it
becomes that no kind of customary measures will suffice for this purpose, and that the terrifying prospect of a future
competition between nations about a weapon of such formidable character can only be avoided through a universal agreement
in true confidence.
The prevention of a competition prepared in secrecy will therefore demand such concessions regarding exchange
of information and openness about industrial efforts, including military preparations, as would hardly be conceivable unless all
partners were assured of a compensating guarantee of common security against dangers of unprecedented acuteness.
The establishment of effective control measures will facilitate a new approach to the problems of international
relationship.
The present moment where almost all nations are entangled in a deadly struggle for freedom and humanity might, at
first sight, seem most unsuited for any committing arrangement concerning the project. Not only have the aggressive powers
still great military strength, although their original plans of world domination have been frustrated and it seems certain th at
they must ultimately surrender, but even when this happens, the nations united against aggression may face grave causes of
disagreement due to conflicting attitudes toward social and economic problems.
Without impeding the immediate military objectives, an initiative, aiming at forestalling a fateful competit ion,
should serve to uproot any cause of distrust between the powers on whose harmonious collaboration the fate of coming
generations will depend.
Indeed, it would appear that only when the question is raised among the united nations as to what co ncessions the
various powers are prepared to make as their contribution to an adequate control arrangement, will it be possible for any one of
the partners to assure himself of the sincerity of the intentions of the others.
Many reasons, indeed, would seem to justify the conviction that an approach with the object of establishing
common security from ominous menaces, without excluding any nation from participating in the promising industrial
development which the accomplishment of the project entails, will be welcomed, and be met with loyal co-operation in the
enforcement of the necessary far-reaching control measures.
It is in such respects that helpful support may perhaps be afforded by the world-wide scientific collaboration which
for years has embodied such bright promises for common human striving. Personal connections between scientists of
different nations might even offer means of establishing preliminary and unofficial contact.
10) Marlon Brando

On the opening night of A Streetcar Named Desire 51 years ago, Marlon Brando, in his first starring role, sent it
immortally. His performance as Stanley Kowalski, later repeated on film, provided one of our age's emblematic images, the
defining portrait of mass man shrewd, vulgar, ignorant, a rapacious threat to all that is gentle and civilized in our culture. He
gave us something else too, this virtually unknown 23-year-old actor. For when the curtain came down, our standards for
performance, our expectations of what an actor should offer us in the way of psychological truth and behavioral honesty, were
forever changed.
Brando would go on to give us a few great things, and a few near great things, but eventually he would abandon
himself, as every tabloid reader knows, to suet and sulks, self-loathing and self-parody. The greatness of few major cultural
figures of our century rests on such a spindly foundation. No figure of his influence has so precariously balanced a handful of
unforgettable achievements against a brimming barrelful of embarrassments.
And yet the reverence in which he is held by his profession is unshakable. His sometime friend and co-star Jack
Nicholson said it simply and best: "He gave us our freedom." By which he meant that Brando's example permitted actors to go
beyond characterizations that were merely well made, beautifully spoken and seemly in demeanor; allowed them to play not
just a script's polished text but its rough, conflicting subtext as well.
But there was more to his gift than his sometimes mumbled challenge to convention, both middle class and theatrical.
Had to be, or he would have been no more than a momentary phenomenon. The performances that defined Brando's screen
character, and that somehow articulated the postwar generation's previously inarticulate disgust with American blandness and
dishonesty, its struggles to speak its truest feelings, are powered by that rough ambivalence.
All these movies were s mall, intense, black and white, ideally suited to the psychological realis m of the
Stanislavskian Method, as it came to be known; ideally suited, as well, to Brando's questing spirit. But in the '50s, as he
reached the height of his powers, Hollywood sank to the nadir of its strength. Competing with TV, it embraced color, wide
screen, spectacle and was looking for bold, uncomplicated heroes to fill its big, empty spaces. Brando looked (and felt)
ludicrous in this context.
Worse, his own admirers kept piling pressures on him. An actor and friend named William Redfield spoke for them
all when he said, "We ... believed in him not just as an actor, but as an art istic, spiritual and specifically American leader." But
this was not a role that suited him, for there was nothing in his nature that he could draw on to fill it out. The son of alc oholics
a stern taciturn father; a sweet, culturally aspiring mom he had drifted to New York City and into acting when he was
expelled from the military school that was supposed to shake the flakiness from his soul.
His first and most influential act ing teacher, Stella Adler, thought him "the most keenly aware, the most empathetic
human being alive," yet thought his commit ment to acting was, at best, "touch and go." But the work, the community he found
among New York's eager young actors, gave shy, sly Bud Brando two things he never had before a sense of identity and a
sense of direction.
So he had found himself in his work. But he had not been looking for a cause to lead. It was a historical accident tha t
he appeared to those idealistic rebels against theatrical tradit ion, the Stanislavskians, as the messiah they had sought for
decades the genius-hunk who could sexily take their case to the starstruck public, help them reform not just acting technique
but the whole corrupt Broadway-Hollywood way of doing business.
It was the wrong role for him. He could talk their talk and walk their walk, but he wasn't truly a Method actor; he
was much more an observer of others than an explorer of his own depths. And even that was hard for him. "There comes a time
in life when you don't want to do it anymore," he once said. "You know a scene is coming where you'll have to yell or cry or
scream and ... it 's always bothering you, always eating away at you." There was no way Brando was going to add cultural
heroism to the rest of his burdens.
By the '60s, Brando's interviews and his work were growing more cynical. Acting, he said, was the expression
"of a neurotic impulse," a "self-indulgence." Any pretensions to art he may have harbored were now just "a chilly hope." Far
from being a culture's hero, he became its Abominable Snowman, flitting through the shadows of bad movies, becoming a blur
on the paparazzi's lenses. Twice he paused in his flight to remind us of the greatness that might have been with his curiously
affecting menace in The Godfather, with the ruined grandeur of Last Tango in Paris. That was more than a quarter-century ago,
but in a way, that was enough. For the passing years have taught us this: refusing to rally a revolution, Marlon Brando still
managed to personify it. His shadow now touches every acting class in America, virtually every movie we see, every TV show
we tune in. Marlon Brando may have resisted his role in history, may even have travestied it, but, in the end, he could not
evade it.












11) Richard Branson (Virgin Records)

Richard Branson was born in 1950. He was educated at the exclusive Stowe School but did not excel, possibly due to
his nearsightedness and dyslexia. In his teens he developed a national magazine, Student at the Age of Sixteen. At seventeen he
began a student advisory service. After leaving school, Branson entered the music industry. Considering that he could sell
records cheaper than the existing average, he started a mail-order catalogue with friends. It was a success, and they opened a
record discount shop. They named the business Virgin, because it was their first venture. In 1972 a studio was built in
Oxfordshire. This was to provide the catalyst for Virgin Records that went on to sign major names - all contributing to the
continued success story. By the early 1980s, Virgin Records was one of the top six record companies in the world.
Then, in 1984, Branson got a phone call out of the blue suggesting a jumbo jet passenger service between London
and New York. Branson liked the idea, much to the horror of his fellow directors who thought him crazy. Undeterred, he
announced to the world that Virgin Atlantic Airways would begin operating within three months! At which point a lot of other
people agreed -- he was crazy! But, an aircraft was found, staff were hired, licenses granted and, thanks in no small part to
Branson's infectious enthusiasm, on June, 22 1984, an aircraft packed with friends, celebrit ies and the media set off for Newark,
New Jersey-- and a phenomenon was born! Since then, Virgin Atlantic has become the second largest long-haul international
airline operating services out of London's Heathrow and Gatwick Airports to 21 destinations all over the world.
In 1992 Branson sold Virgin Music to Thorn EMI and ploughed the profits back into Virgin Atlantic, improving an
already great service even further. However, he still has a big role in the entertainment industry through the international
Megastores, the V2 record label and interests in night-clubs, book and software publishing, film and video editing and hotels.
In December 1999, Branson signed an agreement to sell a 49% stake of Virgin Atlantic to Singapore Airlines to form a unique
global partnership. It turned out that 1999 was an eventful year for Branson, topped off by his being awarded a knighthood for
his services to entrepreneurship. As you might imagine, Branson never stops (which can be exhausting for the people around
him!) and sets himself just as steep challenges in his personal life as in his business life. Just for fun, he has been involved in
round-the-world balloon attempts as well as rekindling the spirit of the Blue Rib and when he crossed the Atlantic in his Virgin
Atlantic Challenger II boat in the fastest ever recorded time.

Excerpt from Richard Bransons biography
My childhood is something of a blur to me now, but there are several episodes that stand out. I do remember that my
parents continually set us challenges. My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she
stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost. My
youngest sister Vanessa's earliest memory is being woken up in the dark one January morning because Mum had decided I
should cycle to Bournemouth that day. Mum packed some sandwiches and an apple and told me to find some water along the
way.
Bournemouth was fifty miles away from our home. I was under twelve, but Mum thought that it would teach me the
importance of stamina and a sense of direction. I reme mber setting off in the dark, and I have a vague recollection of staying
the night with a relat ive. I have no idea how I found their house, or how I got back the next day, but I do remember finally
walking into the kitchen like a conquering hero, feeling t remendously proud of my marathon bike ride and expecting a huge
welcome.
'Well done, Ricky,' Mum greeted me in the kitchen, where she was chopping onions. 'Was that fun? Now, could you
run along to the vicar's? He's got some logs he wants chopping and I told him that you'd be back any minute.'
Our challenges tended to be physical rather than academic, and soon we were setting them for ourselves. I have an
early memory of learning how to swim. I was either four or five, and we had been on holiday in Devon with Dad's sisters,
Auntie Joyce and Aunt Wendy. I was particularly fond of Auntie Joyce, and at the beginning of the holiday she had bet me ten
shillings that I couldn't learn to swim by the end of the fortnight. I spent hours in the sea trying to swim a gainst the freezing-
cold waves, but by the last day I still couldn't do it.
'Never mind, Ricky,' Auntie Joyce said. 'There's always next year.'
But I was determined not to wait that long. Auntie Joyce had made me a bet, and I doubted that she would remember
it the next year. On our last day we got up early, packed the cars and set out on the twelve-hour journey home. The roads were
narrow; the cars were slow; and it was a hot day. Everyone wanted to get home. As we drove along I saw a river. This river
was my last chance: I was sure that I could swim and win Auntie Joyce's ten shillings.
'Please stop!' I shouted.
Dad looked in the rear-view mirror, slowed down and pulled up on the grass verge.
'What's the matter?' Aunt Wendy asked as we all piled out of the car.
'Ricky's seen the river down there,' Mum said. 'He wants to have a final go at swimming.'
I pulled off my clothes and ran down to the riverbank in my underpants. I didn't dare stop in case anyone changed their mind.
By the time I reached the water's edge I was rather frightened. Out in the middle of the river, the water was flowing fast with a
stream of bubbles dancing over the boulders. I waded out into the current. I braced myself and jumped forward against the
current, but I immediately felt myself sinking, my legs slicing uselessly through the water. The current pushed me around, tore
at my underpants and dragged me downstream. I couldn't breathe and I swallowed water. I tried to reach up to the surface, but
had nothing to push against. I kicked and writhed around but it was no help. Then my foot found a stone and I pushed up hard.
I came back above the surface and took a deep breath. The breath steadied me, and I relaxed. I had to win that ten shillings.
I kicked slowly, spread my arms, and found myself swimming across the surface. I was still bobbing up and down,
but I suddenly felt released: I could swim. I didn't care that the river was pulling me downstream. I swam triumphantly out i nto
the middle of the current. Above the roar and bubble of the water I heard my family clapping and cheering. As I swam in a
lopsided circle and came back to the riverbank some fifty yards below them, I saw Auntie Joyce fish in her huge black handbag
for her purse. I crawled up out of the water, brushed through a patch of stinging nettles and ran up the bank. I may have been
cold, muddy and stung by the nettles, but I could swim.
I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family. We were a family that would
have killed for each other - and we still are. My parents adored each other, and in my childhood there was barely a cross word
between them. My parents always treated my two sisters, Lindi and Vanessa, and me as equals whose opinions were just as
valid as theirs. When we were young, before Vanessa's arrival, if my parents went out to dinner they took me and Lindi with
them lying on blankets in the back of the car. We slept in the car while they had dinner, but we always woke up when they
started the drive back home. Lindi and I kept quiet and looked up at the night sky, listening to my parents talk and joke about
their evening. We grew up talking as friends to our parents. As children we discussed Dad's legal cases, and argued about
pornography and whether drugs should be legalized long before any of us knew what we were really talking about. My parents
always encouraged us to have our own opinions and rarely gave us advice unless we asked for it.
At home Mum had two obsessions: she always generated work for us, and she was always thinking of ways to make
money. Mum worked in a shed in the garden, making wooden tissue boxes and wastepaper bins which she sold to shops. Dad
was inventive and very good with his hands, and he designed special pressing vices which held the boxes together while they
were being glued. Eventually Mum began supplying Harrods with her tissue boxes, and it became a proper little cottage
industry. As with everything she did, Mum worked in a whirlwind of energy which was difficult to resist. There was a great
sense of teamwork within our family. Whenever we were within Mum's orbit we had to be busy. If we tried to escape by
saying that we had something else to do, we were firmly told we were selfish. As a result we grew up with a clear priority of
putting other people first.
12) Warren Buffett

Warren Edward Buffett was born on August 30, 1930 to his father Howard, a stockbroker-turned-Congressman. The
only boy, he was the second of three children, and displayed an amazing aptitude for both money and business at a very early
age. Acquaintances recount his uncanny ability to calculate columns of numbers off the top of his head - a feat Warren still
amazes business colleagues with today.
At only six years old, Buffett purchased 6-packs of Coca Cola from his grandfather's grocery store for twenty five
cents and resold each of the bottles for a nickel, pocket ing a five cent profit. While other children his age were playing
hopscotch and jacks, Warren was making money. Five years later, Buffett took his step into the world of high finance.
At eleven years old, he purchased three shares of Cit ies Service Preferred at $38 per share for both himself and his
older sister, Doris. Short ly after buying the stock, it fell to just over $27 per share. A frightened but resilient Warren held his
shares until they rebounded to $40. He promptly sold them - a mistake he would soon come to regret. Cities Service shot up to
$200. The experience taught him one of the basic lessons of investing: patience is a virtue.
In 1947, a seventeen year old Warren Buffett graduated from high school. It was never his intention to go to college;
he had already made $5,000 delivering newspapers (this is equal to $42,610.81 in 2000). His father had other plans, and urged
his son to attend the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. Buffett stayed two years, complaining that he
knew more than his professors. When Howard was defeated in the 1948 Congressional race, Warren returned home to Omaha
and transferred to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Working full-time, he managed to graduate in only three years.
Warren Buffett approached graduate studies with the same resistance he displayed a few years earlier. He was finally
persuaded to apply to Harvard Business School, which, in the worst admission decision in history, rejected him as "too young".
Slighted, Warren applied to Columbia where famed investors Ben Graham and David Dodd taught - an experience that would
forever change his life.
Through his simple yet profound investment principles, Ben Graham became an idyllic figure to the twenty-one year
old Warren Buffett. Reading an old edition of Who's Who, Warren discovered his mentor was the Chairman of a s mall,
unknown insurance company named GEICO. He hopped a train to Washington D.C. one Saturday morning to find the
headquarters. When he got there, the doors were locked. Not to be stopped, Buffett relentlessly pounded on the door until a
janitor came to open it for him. He asked if there was anyone in the building. As luck (or fate) would have it, there was. It turns
out that there was a man still working on the sixth floor. Warren was escorted up to meet him and immediately began asking
him questions about the company and its business practices; a conversation that stretched on for four hours. The man was none
other than Lorimer Davidson, the Financial Vice President. The experience would be something that stayed with Buffett for the
rest of his life. He eventually acquired the entire GEICO company through his corporation, Berkshire Hathaway.
Flying through his graduate studies at Columbia, Warren Buffett was the only student ever to earn an A+ in one of
Graham's classes. Disappointingly. both Ben Graham and Warren's father advised him not to work on Wall Street after he
graduated. Absolutely determined, Buffett offered to work for the Graham partnership for free. Ben turned him down. He
preferred to hold his spots for Jews who were not hired at Gentile firms at the time. Warren was crushed.
Returning home, he took a job at his father's brokerage house. During these initial years, Warren's investments were
predominately limited to a Texaco station and some real estate, but neither were successful. It was also during this time he
began teaching night classes at the University of Omaha (something that wouldn't have been possible several months before. In
an effort to conquer his intense fear of public speaking, Warren took a course by Dale Carnegie). Thankfully, things changed.
Ben Graham called one day, inviting the young stockbroker to come to work for him. Warren was finally given the opportunity
he had long awaited.
It was during this time that the difference between the Graham and Buffett philosophies began to emerge. Warren
became interested in how a company worked - what made it superior to competitors. Ben simply wanted numbers whereas
Warren was predominately interested in a company's management as a major factor when deciding to invest, Graham looked
only at the balance sheet and income statement; he could care less about corporate leadership. Bet ween 1950 and 1956, Warren
built his personal capital up to $140,000 from a mere $9,800. With this war chest, he set his sights back on Omaha and began
planning his next move.
On May 1, 1956, Warren Buffett rounded up seven limited partners which included his Sister Doris and Aunt Alice,
raising $105,000 in the process. He put in $100 himself, officially creating the Buffett Associates, Ltd. Before the end of t he
year, he was managing around $300,000 in capital. Small, to say the least, but he had much bigger plans for that pool of money.
Over the course of the next five years, the Buffett partnerships racked up an impressive 251.0% profit, while the Dow was up
only 74.3%.
Ten years after its founding, the Buffett Partnership assets were up more than 1,156% compared to the Dow's 122.9%. Acting
as lord over assets that had ballooned to $44 million dollars, Warren's personal stake was $6,849,936. Mr. Buffett, as they s ay,
had arrived.







13) Andrew Carnegie
One of the captains of industry of 19th century America, Andrew Carnegie helped build the formidable American
steel industry, a process that turned a poor young man into one of the richest entrepreneurs of his age. Later in his life,
Carnegie sold his steel business and systematically gave his collected fortune away to cultural, educational and scientific
institutions for "the improvement of mankind."
Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, the medieval capital of Scotland, in 1835. The town was a center of the linen
industry, and Andrew's father was a weaver, a profession the young Carnegie was expected to follow. But the industrial
revolution that would later make Carnegie the richest man in the world, destroyed the weavers' craft. When the steam-powered
looms came to Dunfermline in 1847 hundreds of hand loom weavers became expendable. Andrew's mother went to work to
support the family, opening a small grocery shop and mending shoes.
"I began to learn what poverty meant," Andrew would later write. "It was burnt into my heart then that my father had
to beg for work. And then and there came the resolve that I would cure that when I got to be a man."
An ambition for riches would mark Carnegie's path in life. However, a belief in polit ical egalitarianis m was another
ambition he inherited from his family. Andrew's father, his grandfather Tom Morrison and his uncle Tom Jr. were all Scottish
radicals who fought to do away with inherited privilege and to bring about the rights of common workers. But Andrew's
mother, fearing for the survival of her family, pushed the family to leave the poverty of Scotland for the possibilities in
America.
William Carnegie secured work in a cotton factory and his son Andrew took work in the same building as a bobbin
boy for $1.20 a week. Later, Carnegie worked as a messenger boy in the city's telegraph office. He did each job to the best of
his ability and seized every opportunity to take on new responsibilities.
Carnegie often was asked to deliver messages to the theater. He arranged to make these deliveries at night--and
stayed on to watch plays by Shakespeare and other great playwrights. In what would be a life-long pursuit of knowledge,
Carnegie also took advantage of a small library that a local benefactor made available to working boys.
One of the men Carnegie met at the telegraph office was Thomas A. Scott, then beginning his impressive career at
Pennsylvania Railroad. Scott was taken by the young worker and referred to him as "my boy Andy," hiring him as his private
secretary and personal telegrapher at $35 a month. Ever eager to take on new responsibilit ies, Carnegie worked his way up the
ladder in Pennsylvania Railroad and succeeded Scott as superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division. At the outbreak of the Civi l
War, Scott was hired to supervise military transportation for the North and Carnegie worked as his right hand man.
The Civil War fueled the iron industry, and by the time the war was over, Carnegie saw the potential in the field and
resigned from Pennsylvania Railroad. It was one of many bold moves that would typify Carnegie's life in industry and earn
him his fortune. He then turned his attention to the Keystone Bridge Company, which worked to replace wooden bridges with
stronger iron ones.
However, Andrew expressed his uneasiness with the businessman's life. In a letter to himself at age 33, he wrote: "To
continue much longer overwhelmed by business cares and with most of my thoughts wholly upon the way to make more
money in the shortest time, must degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery. I will resign business at thirty-five, but
during the ensuing two years I wish to spend the afternoons in receiving instruction and in reading systematically."
Carnegie would continue making unparalleled amounts of money for the next 30 years. Two years after he wrote that
letter Carnegie would embrace a new steel refining process being used by Englishman Henry Bessemer to convert huge
batches of iron into steel, which was much more flexible than britt le iron. Carnegie threw his own money into the process and
even borrowed heavily to build a new steel plant near Pittsburgh. Carnegie was ruthless in keeping down costs and managed by
the motto "watch costs and the profits take care of themselves."
Carnegie was unusual among the industrial captains of his day because he preached for the rights of laborers to
unionize and to protect their jobs. However, Carnegie's actions did not always match his rhetoric. Carnegie's steel workers
were often pushed to long hours and low wages. In the Homestead Strike of 1892, Carnegie threw his support behind plant
manager Henry Frick, who locked out workers and hired Pinkerton thugs to intimidate strikers. Many were killed in the
conflict, and it was an episode that would forever hurt Carnegie's reputation and haunt the man.
Still, Carnegie's steel juggernaut was unstoppable, and by 1900 Carnegie Steel produced more of the metal than all of
Great Britain. That was also the year that financier J. P. Morgan mounted a major challenge to Carnegie's steel empire. While
Carnegie believed he could beat Morgan in a battle lasting five, 10 or 15 years, the fight did not appeal to the 64-year old man
eager to spend more time with his family. Carnegie wrote the asking price for his steel business on a piece of paper and had
one of his managers deliver the offer to Morgan. Morgan accepted without hesitation, buying the company for $480 million.
"Congratulations, Mr. Carnegie," Morgan said to Carnegie when they finalized the deal. "you are now the richest man in the
world."
Fond of saying that "the man who dies rich dies disgraced," Carnegie then turned his attention to giving away his
fortune. He abhorred charity, and instead put his money to use helping others help themselves. That was the reason he spent
much of his collected fortune on establishing over 2,500 public libraries as well as supporting institutions of higher learning.
By the time Carnegie's life was over, he gave away 350 million dollars.




14) Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel wasn't just ahead of her time. She was ahead of herself. If one looks at the work of contemporary
fashion designers as different from one another as Tom Ford, Helmut Lang, Miuccia Prada, Jil Sander and Donatella Versace,
one sees that many of their strategies echo what Chanel once did. The way, 75 years ago, she mixed up the vocabulary of male
and female clothes and created fashion that offered the wearer a feeling of hidden luxury rather than ostentation are just two
examples of how her taste and sense of style overlap with today's fashion.
Chanel would not have defined herself as a feminist in fact, she consistently spoke of femininity rather than of
feminism yet her work is unquestionably part of the liberation of women. She threw out a life jacket, as it were, to women
not once but twice, during two distinct periods decades apart: the 1920s and the '50s. She not only appropriated styles, fabrics
and articles of clothing that were worn by men but also, beginning with how she dressed herself, appropriated sports clothes as
part of the language of fashion. One can s ee how her style evolved out of necessity and defiance. She couldn't afford the
fashionable clothes of the period so she rejected them and made her own, using, say, the sports jackets and ties that were
everyday male attire around the racetrack, where she was climbing her first social ladders.
It's not by accident that she became associated with the modern movement that included Diaghilev, Picasso,
Stravinsky and Cocteau. Like these artistic protagonists, she was determined to break the old formulas and invent a way of
expressing herself. Cocteau once said of her that "she has, by a kind of miracle, worked in fashion according to rules that
would seem to have value only for painters, musicians, poets."
By the late '60s, Chanel had become part of what she once rebelled against and hated the Establishment. But if
one looks at documentary footage of her from that period, one can still feel the spit and vinegar of the fiery peasant woman
who began her fashion revolution against society by aiming at the head, with hats. Her boyish "flapper" creations were in stark
contrast to the Belle Epoque millinery that was in vogue at the time, and about which she asked, "How can a brain function
under those things?" Something that Chanel can never be accused of is not using her brain. Her sharp mind is apparent in
everything she did, from her savvy use of logos to her deep understanding of the power of personality and packaging, even the
importance of being copied. And she was always quotable: "Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air,
born upon the wind. One intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road."
It is fitting, somehow, that Chanel was often photographed holding a cigarette or standing in front of her famous Art
Deco wall of mirrors. Fashion tends to involve a good dose of smoke and mirrors, so it should come as no surprise that
Gabrielle Chanel's version of her life involved a mult itude of lies, inventions, cover-ups and revisions. But as Prada said to me:
"She was really a genius. It's hard to pin down exactly why, but it has something to do with her wanting to be different and
wanting to be independent."
Certainly her life was unpredictable. Even her death in 1971, at the age of 87 in her private quarters at the Ritz
Hotel was a plush ending that probably would not have been predicted for Chanel by the nuns in the Aubazine orphanage,
where she spent time as a ward of the state after her mother died and her father ran off. No doubt the sisters at the convent in
Moulins, who took her in when she was 17, raised their eyebrows when the young woman left the seamstress job they had
helped her get to try for a career as a cabaret singer. This stint as a performer led her to take up with the local swells and
become the backup mistress of a playboy who would finance her move to Paris and the opening of her first hat business. That
arrangement gave way to a bigger and better deal when she moved on to a man who backed her expansion from hats to clothes
and from Paris to the coastal resorts of Deauville and Biarritz.
Throughout the '20s, Chanel's social, sexual and professional progress continued, and her eminence grew to the
status of legend. By the early '30s she'd been courted by Hollywood, gone and come back. She had almost married one of th e
richest men in Europe, the Duke of Westminster; when she didn't, her explanation was, "There have been several Duchesses of
Westminster. There is only one Chanel." In fact, there were many Coco Chanels, just as her work had many phases and many
styles. But probably the single element that most ensured Chanel's being remembered, even when it would have been easier to
write her off, is not a piece of clothing but a form of liquid gold Chanel No. 5, in its Art Deco bottle, which was launched in
1923. It was the first perfume to bear a designer's name.
One could say perfume helped keep Chanel's name pretty throughout the period when her reputation got ugly: World
War II. This is when her anti-Semitis m, homophobia (even though she herself dabbled in bisexuality) and other base
inclinations emerged. She responded to the war by shutting down her fashion business and hooking up with a Nazi officer
whose favors included permission to reside in her beloved Ritz Hotel. Years later, in 1954, when she decided to make a
comeback, her name still had "disgraced" attached to it.
Depending on the source, Chanel's return to the fashion world has been variously attributed to falling perfume sales,
disgust at what she was seeing in the fashion of the day or simple boredom. All these explanations seem plausible, and so does
Karl Lagerfeld's theory of why, this time around, the Chanel suit met such phenomenal success. Lagerfeld who designs
Chanel today and who has turned the company into an even bigger, more tuned-in business than it was before points out,
"By the '50s she had the benefit of distance, and so could truly distill the Chanel look. Time and culture had caught up with
her." By the t ime Katharine Hepburn played her on Broadway in 1969, Chanel had achieved first -name recognition and was
simply Coco.




15) Winston Churchill

As a young man of undistinguished academic accomplishment he was admitted to Sandhurst after two failed
attempts he entered the army as a cavalry officer. He took enthusiastically to soldiering and managed to see three campaigns.
Even at 24, Churchill was steely: "I never felt the slightest nervousness," he wrote to his mother. "[I] felt as cool as I do now."
In one campaign he was present as a war correspondent, and in the other two he was present both as a war correspondent and
as a serving officer. Thus he revealed two other aspects of his character: a literary bent and an interest in public affairs.
He was to write all his life. His life of Marlborough is one of the great English biographies, and The History of the
Second World War helped win him a Nobel Prize for literature. Writing, however, never fully engaged his energies. Polit ics
consumed him. His father Lord Randolph Churchill was a brilliant political failure. Early in life, Winst on determined to
succeed where his father had failed. His motives were twofold. His father had despised him. His disapproval surely stung, but
Churchill reacted by venerating his father's memory. Winston fought to restore his father's honor in Parliament .
Churchill entered Parliament in 1901 at age 26. In 1904 he left the Conservative Party to join the Liberals, and in it s
ranks he soon achieved high office. It was as political head of the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914
that he stepped onto the world stage. At Gallipoli in 1915, Churchill suffered a heroic failure that forced his resignation and led
to his political eclipse.
It was effectively to last nearly 25 years. Despite his readmission to office in 1917, he failed to re-establish the
reputation as a future national statesman he had won before the war. Dispirited, he chose the issue of the Liberal Party's
support for the first government formed by the Labour Party in 1924 to rejoin the Conservatives. The Conservative Prime
Minister appointed Churchill Chancellor of the Exchequer, but when he returned the country to the gold standard, it proved
financially disastrous, and he further weakened his polit ical position by opposing measures to grant India limited self -
government. He resigned office in 1931 and entered what appeared to be a terminal political decline.
Churchill was truly a romantic, but also truly a democrat. He had returned to the gold standard because he cherished,
for romantic reasons, Britain's status as a great financial power. He had opposed limited self-government for India because he
cherished, for equally romantic reasons, Britain's imperial history. It was to prove more important that as a democrat, he wa s
disgusted by the rise of totalitarian systems in Europe. In 1935 he warned the House of Commons of the importance not only
of "self-preservation but also of the human and the world cause of the preservation of free governments and of Western
civilizat ion against the ever advancing sources of authority and despotism." By espousing anti-Nazi policies, he ensured that
when the moment of final confrontation between Britain and Hitler came in 1940, he stood out as the one man in whom the
nation could place its trust. When Conservative leader Chamberlain lost the confidence of Parliament, Churchill was installed
in the premiership.
His was a bleak inheritance. Following the total defeat of France, Britain truly, in his words, "stood alone." It had no
substantial allies and, for much of 1940, lay under threat of German invasion and under constant German air attack. He
nevertheless refused Hitler's offers of peace, organized a successful air defense that led to the victory of the Battle of Br itain
and meanwhile sent most of what remained of the British army to the Middle East to oppose Hitler's Italian ally, Mussolini.
This was one of the boldest strategic decisions in history. Its victories against Mussolini during 1940 -41 both humiliated and
infuriated Hitler, while its intervention in Greece, to oppose Hit ler's invas ion of the Balkans, disrupted the Nazi dictator's plans
to conclude German conquests in Europe by defeating Russia.
Churchill's tendency to conduct strategy by impulse infuriated his advisers. His chief of staff complained that every
day Churchill had 10 ideas, only one of which was good and he did not know which one. Yet Churchill the romantic showed
acute realism in his reaction to Russia's predicament. He reviled communis m. Required to accept a communist ally in a
struggle against a Nazi enemy, he did so not only willingly but generously.
From the outset of his premiership, Churchill, half American by birth, had rested his hope of ultimate victory in U.S.
intervention. He had established a personal relationship with President Roosevelt that he hoped would flower into a war-
winning alliance. Roosevelt's reluctance to commit the U.S. beyond an association "short of war" did not dent his optimism. He
always hoped events would work his way. The decision by Japan, Hitler's ally, to attack the American Pacific fleet at Pearl
Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, justified his hopes. That evening he confided to himself, "So we had won after all."
America's entry into the Second World War marked the high point of Churchill's statesmanship. Britain,
demographically, industrially and financially, had entered the war weaker than either of its eventual allies, the Soviet Union
and the U.S. During 1942, the prestige Britain had won as Hitler's only enemy allowed Churchill to sustain parity of leadersh ip
in the anti-Nazi alliance with Roosevelt and Stalin.
Churchill understandably exulted in the success of the D-day invasion when it came in 1944. By then it was the
Russo-American rather than the Anglo-American nexus, however, that dominated the alliance. Shortly afterward he suffered
the domestic humiliation of losing the general election and with it the premiership. He was to return to power in 1951 and
remain until April 1955, when ill health and visibly failing powers caused him to resign.
It would have been kinder to his reputation had he not returned. He was not an effective peacetime Prime Minister.
His name had been made, and he stood unchallengeable, as the greatest of all Britain's war leaders. It was not only his own
country, though, that owed him a debt. So too did the world of free men and women to whom he had made a constant and
inclusive appeal in his magnificent speeches from embattled Britain in 1940 and 1941. Churchill did not merely hate tyranny,
he despised it. The contempt he breathed for dictators renewed in his Iron Curtain speech at Fulton, Mo., at the outset of the
cold war strengthened the West's faith in the moral superiority of democracy and the inevitability of its triumph.
16) Hillary Clinton

Hillary Rodham entered the world of politics in 1964 (at the age of 16) by supporting the presidential bid of
Republican Senator Barry Goldwater. After completing high school in 1965, Rodham enrolled at Wellesley College in
Massachusetts where she became active in politics, serving, for a time, as President of the Wellesley College Chapter of the
College Republicans. During her junior year at Wellesley in 1968, Rodham was affected by the death of the civil rights leader
Martin Luther King Jr., whom she had met in person in 1962. After attending the Wellesley in Was hington program, her
political views became more liberal and she joined the Democrat ic Party. Rodham graduated in 1969 with depart mental honors
in Polit ical Science. She became the first student in the history of Wellesley College to deliver a commencement address when
she spoke at her own graduation. Her speech received a standing ovation and she was featured in an article published by Life
magazine. She received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Yale in 1973, having written her widely recognized thesis on the
rights of children, and began a year of post-graduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center.
During her post-graduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund. She joined the
presidential impeachment inquiry staff advising the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate Scandal. After
President Richard M. Nixon resigned in August of 1974, Rodham became a faculty member (one of only two women in the
faculty) at the University of Arkansas Law School, located in Fayetteville, where her Yale Law School classmate and boyfriend
Bill Clinton was teaching as well.
In 1975 Rodham and Clinton were married and moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1976, Hillary Rodham joined the
Rose Law Firm. In 1979, she became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm. President Jimmy Carter
appointed Rodham to the board of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978.
In 1978, with the election of her husband as governor of Arkansas, Rodham became Arkansas's First Lady, her title
for a total of 12 years. Throughout her time as first lady, Clinton continued to practice law with the Rose Law Firm. In 1988
and 1991 National Law Journal named Clinton one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America.
After Bill Clinton was elected to the White House in 1992, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the First Lady of the
United States in 1993. She was the first First Lady to hold a post -graduate degree and the first to have her own successful
professional career. She is regarded as the most openly empowered presidential wife in American history other than Eleanor
Roosevelt.
In 1993 the President appointed his wife to head the Task Force on National Health Care Reform. The
recommendation of this task force, commonly called the Clinton health care plan and nicknamed "Hillarycare" by its
opponents, failed to gain enough support to come to a floor vote in either house of Congress, although both had Democrat ic
majorities, and was abandoned in September, 1994. In her Living History memoirs, Clinton acknowledged that her political
inexperience contributed to the defeat, but also said that many other factors were responsible as well. A decade later,
"Hillarycare" would still be used as a label, sometimes pejoratively, for plans perceived as implementing universal health care.
At the time, some critics called it inappropriate for a First Lady to play a central role in matters of public policy.
Supporters, by contrast, argued that Clinton was no different than other White House advisors and that furthermore, voters
were well aware that she would play an active role in her husband's Presidency. Indeed, during the campaign Bill Clinton had
stated that voting for him would get "two for the price of one."
As first lady, Clinton won many admirers for her staunch support for women's rights around the world and her
commit ment to children's issues. Clinton performed many less political act ivities in her role as First Lady. With a lifelong
interest in regional American history, she initiated the Save America's Treasures program, a national effort that matched federal
funds to private donations to rescue from deteriorat ion and neglect, or restore to complet ion many iconic historic items and
sites. Clinton init iated the Millennium Project with monthly lectures that considered both America's past and forecasted its
future.
When long-time New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement, prominent Democratic
politicians and advisors, including Charlie Rangel, urged Clinton to run for the New York Senate seat in the U.S. Senate, 2000,
elections. She became the first First Lady of the United States to be a candidate for elected office. Clinton faced charges of
carpetbagging since she had never resided in the State of New York nor directly participated in state politics prior to her Senate
race. Opponents made the carpetbagging issue a focal point throughout the race and during debates. Her supporters pointed out
that the state was receptive to national leaders. Clinton won the election on November 7, 2000 with 55% of the vote. When
Clinton joined the Senate, she was widely reported to have kept a low public profile and learned the ways of the institution
while building relationships with senators from both sides of the aisle, thus countering her polarizing celebrity. Clinton
announced in November 2004 that she would seek a second term in the Senate in the 2006 New York election for Senator.
Clinton retained her seat, capturing 67% of the vote.









17) Katie Couric

Couric graduated from the University of Virginia in 1979 with a degree in American Studies. Just after college, she
moved to Washington, D.C., to begin a career in television news reporting. Couric's first job was as a desk assistant at ABC,
where she worked under anchorman Sam Donaldson, among others. Shortly thereafter, she began working at the Washington
bureau of the fledgling Cable News Network (CNN). For the next seven years, Couric worked at CNN bureaus around the
country as a producer and, when she could, as an on-air reporter. In 1987, she returned to Washington and took a job as a
reporter at an NBC affiliate station there.
In 1988, shortly before her marriage to Jay Monahan, a lawyer based in Washington, Couric was hired as the
number-two reporter at the Pentagon for the Washington bureau of NBC News. Over the next three years, she covered the U.S.
invasion of Panama and the Persian Gulf War in her Pentagon position as well as a newly-created post at NBC's morning
newsmagazine, Today. By early 1991, she had begun filling in as co-anchor of Today when Deborah Norville went on
maternity leave. In April, NBC executives hired Couric to replace Norville, who had been blamed by some for the show's
falling ratings.
Couric was an instant hit with viewers, who related well to her pleasant, charming demeanor and her surprisingly
hard-hitting journalistic style. During her early years on Today, she conducted many sought -after interviews with individuals
such as First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Anita Hill, George Bush, General Norman Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell, and Jerry
Seinfeld. Her comfortable on-screen rapport proved the key to the show's growing popularity, and in 1993 Today surpassed
ABC's Good Morning America in the ratings to regain its position as the most -watched morning newsmagazine in the country.
Beginning in the summer of 1993, Couric also co-hosted another prime-time news magazine, Now, with Tom Brokaw
and Katie Couric. It was eventually absorbed into the more popular program Dateline, and Couric continued her duties on
Today, which continued to solidify its hold on the top spot in the Nielsen ratings and expand the definition of a morning news
program. For her part, Couric had become the undisputed star of morning television.
Couric's incredible success with Today continued throughout the 1990s. In the summer of 1998, she signed a four-
year contract extension with NBC for $28 million. Her $7 million yearly salary elevated her into the ranks of the top
personalities in TV news, including prime-t ime anchors Diane Sawyer, Brokaw, and Dan Rather. That same year, however,
Couric faced profound tragedy in her personal life: Monahan, then a legal analyst with NBC News, died in January 1998 after
a six-month battle with colon cancer. He was 42.
In the years since her husband's untimely death, Couric mounted an aggressive campaign to raise money for research
and testing in order to fight colon cancer. As part of her efforts, Couric masterminded two weeklong television series to rai se
awareness of the disease, even undergoing an on-air colonoscopy herself in order to impress upon viewers the importance of
testing. By the end of 2000, her campaign had raised more than $10 million.
In January 2002, Couric signed a new contract with NBC for a reported $65 million over four and a half years, which
allows her to stay at the helm of Today as well as explore other possibilities at the network. The deal made Couric the world's
highest paid TV personality.
Couric continued to make TV history in 2006. Leaving the Today show after 15 years, she signed a deal with CBS to
become the first woman to anchor the evening news alone.





18) Dalai Lama

His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people. He
was born in a small village in northeastern Tibet. Born to a peasant family, His Holiness was recognized at the age of two, in
accordance with Tibetan tradit ion, as the reincarnation of his predecessor the 13th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lamas are the
manifestations of the Bodhisattva of Compass ion, who chose to reincarnate to serve the people. Dalai Lama means Ocean of
Wisdom. Tibetans normally refer to His Holiness as Yeshin Norbu, the Wish-fulfilling Gem, or simply, Kundun, meaning The
Presence.
He began his education at the age of six and completed the Geshe Lharampa Degree (Doctorate of Buddhist
Philosophy) when he was 25. At 24, he took the preliminary examination at each of the three monastic universities: Drepung,
Sera and Ganden. The final examination was held in the Jokhang, Lhasa, during the annual Monlam Festival of Prayer, held in
the first month of every year. In the morning he was examined by 30 scholars on logic. In the afternoon, he debated with 15
scholars on the subject of the Middle Path, and in the evening, 35 scholars tested his knowledge of the canon of monastic
discipline and the study of metaphysics. His Holiness passed the examinations with honours, conducted before a vast audience
of monk scholars.
In 1950, at 16, His Holiness was called upon to assume full political power as Head of State and Government when
Tibet was threatened by the might of China. In 1954 he went to Peking to talk with Mao Tse-Tung and other Chinese leaders.
In 1956, while visiting India to attend the 2500th Buddha Jayanti, he had a series of meetings with Prime Minister Nehru and
Premier Chou about deteriorating conditions in Tibet. In 1959 he was forced into exile in India after the Chinese military
occupation of Tibet. Since 1960 he has resided in Dharamsala, aptly known as " Little Lhasa", the seat o f the Tibetan
Government-in-Exile.
In the early years of exile, His Holiness appealed to the United Nations on the question of Tibet, resulting in three
resolutions adopted by the General Assembly in 1959, 1961 and 1965. In 1963, His Holiness promulgated a draft constitution
for Tibet which assures a democratic form of government. In the last two decades, His Holiness has set up educational, cultur al
and religious institutions which have made major contributions towards the preservation of the Tibetan ident ity and its rich
heritage. He has given many teachings and initiations, including the rare Kalachakra Init iation, which he has conducted more
than any of his predecessors.
His Holiness continues to present new initiatives to resolve the Tibetan issues. At the Congressional Human Rights
Caucus in 1987 he proposed a Five-Point Peace Plan as a first step towards resolving the future status of Tibet. This plan calls
for the designation of Tibet as a zone of peace, an end to the massive transfer of ethnic Chines e into Tibet, restoration of
fundamental human rights and democratic freedoms and the abandonment of China's use of Tibet for nuclear weapons
production and the dumping of nuclear waste, as well as urging "earnest negotiations" on the future of Tibet and r elations
between the Tibetan and Chinese people. In St rasbourg, France, on June 15, 1988, he elaborated on this Five -Point Peace Plan
and proposed the creation of a self-governing democrat ic Tibet, "in association with the People's Republic of China." In his
address, the Dalai Lama said that this represented "the most realistic means by which to re-establish Tibet's separate identity
and restore the fundamental rights of the Tibetan people while accommodating China's own interests." His Holiness
emphasized that "whatever the outcome of the negotiations with the Chinese may be, the Tibetan people themselves must be
the ultimate deciding authority."
Unlike his predecessors, His Holiness has met and talked with many Westerners and has visited the United States,
Canada, Western Europe, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Mongolia, Greece, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore,
Indonesia, Nepal, Costa Rica, Mexico, the Vat ican, China and Australia. He has met with religious leaders from all these
countries.
Since his first visit to the west in the early 1970s, His Holiness' reputation as a scholar and man of peace has grown
steadily. In recent years, a number of western universities and institutions have conferred Peace Awards and honorary
Doctorate Degrees upon His Holiness in recognition of his distinguished writ ings in Buddhist philosophy and of his
distinguished leadership in the service of freedom and peace.
During his travels abroad, His Holiness has spoken strongly for better understanding and respect among the different faiths
of the world. Towards this end, His Holiness has made numerous appearances in interfaith services, impart ing the message of
universal responsibility, love, compassion and kindness. "The need for simple human-to-human relationships is becoming
increasingly urgent . . . Today the world is smaller and more interdependent. One nation's problems can no longer be solved b y
itself completely. Thus, without a sense of universal responsibility, our very survival becomes threatened. Basically, un iversal
responsibility is feeling for other people's suffering just as we feel our own. It is the realization that even our enemy is entirely
motivated by the quest for happiness. We must recognize that all beings want the same thing that we want. This is the way to
achieve a true understanding, unfettered by artificial consideration."









19) Michael Dell (Dell Computers)

Michael Dell was born in Houston, Texas. The son of an orthodontist and a stockbroker, he first got interested in
computers when he was in the seventh grade. In an interview with Esther Wang of the Daily Texan, Dell recalled: "Computers
were just starting to come into being in terms of the personal computer in the late '70s, early '80s. I got some exposure to the
first personal computers, became really interested in the product and what I could envision about how that could change
society and business and culture and education and everything else, and that caught my interest pretty early." He got his fir st
computer--an Apple II--in 1979 when he was 14. Dell also was a born entrepreneur, earning a quick $2,000 from a stamp and
baseball card trading enterprise he operated through the mail when he was only 12 years old. He also found innovative ways to
drum up business for the newspaper delivery route he operated while in high school. Dell would obtain the names and
addresses of newlyweds in his delivery area and mail them an introductory offer of two weeks' free service. His clever sales
strategy earned him more than $18,000, enough to buy his own fully-equipped BMW even before he was old enough to drive.
Although he was a fairly good student, Dell grew impatient with the slow pace of school and at the age of 8 sent by
mail for information about obtaining a high school equivalency diploma, hoping that he might be able to bypass the rest of his
public school obligation. His parents, however, balked at this notion and insisted that Michael complete his schooling
conventionally. After he graduated from high school, Michael was sent to the Univers ity of Texas at Austin, where his parents
hoped he might eventually study to be a doctor. It was during his freshman year in college that Dell launched his direct sale s
computer business. He had already gained some experience in taking apart and then reass embling computers and soon realized
that he could make money by adding components to basic units and selling them for a profit. With an init ial investment of
$1,000 he began operating his business out of his dorm room, much to the chagrin of his roommates, who at one point
barricaded his door with piles of computer equipment. His roommates' enmity notwithstanding, Dell's business skyrocketed.
By the end of his freshman year, he was taking in roughly $80,000 a month. Dell dropped out of college at the age of 19 to
pursue his dream of a direct-sales PC empire
In the summer of 1984 Dell incorporated his business as PCs Unlimited and moved its headquarters from his
dormitory room to a storefront in Austin. In its first year of business, the company sold computer equipment manufactured by
other computer companies, such as IBM and Compaq, to which were added various optional features. To help expand his
business, Dell borrowed money from his family but was soon able to repay it as his company's annual sales climbed to the $30
million mark. In 1987 Dell renamed his company Dell Computer Corporation and a year later took it public. By the end of
1988, Dell's annual sales had reached $159 million.
At the heart of his computer company's success has been its adherence to Dell's original concept of a direct-sales
model. Customers can place their orders by calling Dell's toll -free number or by logging on to the company's Web site. Their
orders produce a made-to-order computer that is shipped within 36 hours. Because the company builds only to order, it has
managed to keep its inventory to less than 6 percent of sales. Further slashing its inventories, Dell maintains a close
relationship with most of its suppliers, many of whom have built new facilities close to Dell's headquarters outside of Austin.
Dell was quick to recognize the potential of the Internet as a marketing tool. By 1996 the company's Web site was
booking orders from customers. In the late 1990s Dell appeared on the company's television commercials to plug the
company's newly created online technical support. Dell's Internet strategy paid off well, favorably impressing major customers
like the Ford Motor Company. In September 1999, Ford's CEO observed: "We can interact much, much more efficiently with
them [Dell] than with their rivals."
Dell has continued to refine his company's Internet strategy, moving aggressively to maintain close communications
with Dell's key suppliers. By the dawn of the new millennium the company had connected 90 percent of its suppliers onto
Dell's factory floors via the World Wide Web, allowing suppliers to see current informat ion on orders and thus replenish
supplies only as needed. Using this and other techniques, Dell was able to cut its inventories to a mere five days' worth in 2000,
a sharp reduction from 13 days' worth in 1997. By contrast rival Compaq Computer (since merged into Hewlett Packard) had
more than three weeks of inventories on hand in the first quarter of 2001.
Dell was asked how his company had managed to do so well during the economic slump of the early new
millennium while the rest of the industry continued to struggle. "I think it's pretty simple," Dell replied. "We deliver bett er
value to customers with a business model that's really focused on direct relationships . We've got a very efficient supply chain.
We turn our inventory 99 times during the quarter. And so when you've got great service, great products, great value, custome rs
beat a path to your door."














20) Walt Disney

He created Mickey Mouse and produced the first full-length animated movie. He invented the theme park and
originated the modern mult imedia corporation. For better or worse, his innovations have shaped our world and the way we
experience it. But the most significant thing Walt Disney made was a good name for himself.
It was, of course, long ago converted into a brand name, constantly fussed over, ferociously defended, first by Disney,
latterly by his corporate heirs and assigns. Serving as a beacon for parents seeking clean, decent ente rtainment for their
children, the Disney logo a stylized version of the founder's signature--more generally promises us that anything appearing
beneath it will not veer too far from the safe, sound and above all cheerful American mainstream, which it def ines as much as
serves. That logo also now identifies an institution whose $22 billion in annual sales make it the world's largest media comp any.
The notion of Walt Disney as a less than cheerful soul will ring disturbingly in the minds of Americans . The truth
about Disney, who was described by an observant writer as "a tall, somber man who appeared to be under the lash of some
private demon," is slightly less benign and a lot more interesting. Though he could manage a sort of gruff amiability with
strangers, his was, in fact, a withdrawn, suspicious and, above all, controlling nature. And with good or anyway explicable
reason. For he was born to a poverty even more dire emotionally than it was economically. His father Elias was one of those
feckless figures who wandered the heartland at the turn of the century seeking success in many occupations but always finding
sour failure. He spared his children affection, but never the rod. They all fled him at the earliest possible moment.
Before leaving home at 16 to join the Red Cross Ambulance Corps during World War I, Walt, the youngest son, had
discovered he could escape dad's and life's meanness in art classes. In the service he kept drawing, and when he was
mustered out, he set up shop as a commercial artist in Kansas City, Mo. There he discovered animat ion, a new field, wide open
to an ambitious young man determined to escape his father's sorry fate.
Animat ion was as well a form that placed a premium on technical problem solving, which was absorbing but not
emotionally demanding. Best of all, an animated cartoon constituted a little world all its own something that, unlike life, a
man could utterly control. Reduced to living in his studio and eating cold beans out of a can, Disney endured the hard t imes
any worthwhile success story demands. It was not until he moved to Los Angeles and partnered with his shrewd and kindly
older brother Roy, who took care of business for him, that he began to prosper modestly. Even so, his first commercially viab le
creation, Oswald the Rabbit, was stolen from him. That, naturally, reinforced his impulse to control. It also opened the way for
the mouse that soared. Cocky, and in his earliest incarnations sometimes cruelly mischievous but always an inventive problem
solver, Mickey would become a symbol of the unconquerably chipper American spirit in the depths of the Depression.
Artistically, the 1930s were Disney's best years. He embraced Technicolor as readily as he had sound, and, though he
was a poor animator, he proved to be a first-class gag man and story editor, a sometimes collegial, sometimes bullying, but
always hands-on boss, driving his growing team of youthfully enthusiastic artists to ever greater sophistication of technique
and expression. When Disney risked everything on his first feature, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," it turned out to be no
risk at all, so breathlessly was his work embraced. Even the intellectual and art istic communities saw in it a kind of populi st
authenticity naive and sentimental, courageous and life affirming.
But they misread Disney. In his dark and brilliant "Pinocchio" and the hugely ambitious "Fantasia," he would stretch
technique to the limits. Artistically he strove for realis m; intellectually, for a bland celebration of t radition. There had been an
Edenic moment in his childhood when the Disneys settled on a farm outside little Marceline, Mo., and he used his work to
celebrate the uncomplicated sweetness of the small-town life and values he had only briefly tasted.
His insistence on the upbeat also possibly served as an anodyne for the bitterness he felt when an ugly 1941 labor
dispute ended his dream of managing his studio on a communitarian basis with himself as its benign patriarch. Commercially,
this worked out beautifully for him. Most people prefer their entertainments to embrace the comfortably cute rather than the
disturbingly acute especially when they're bringing the kids. Movie critics started ignoring him, and social crit ics began
hectoring him, because his work ground off the rough, emotionally instructive edges of the folk- and fairy-tale tradition on
which it largely drew, robbing it of "the pulse of life under the skin of events," as one critic put it.
Disneyland was another bet-the-farm risk, and Disney threw himself obsessively into the park's design, which
anticipated many of the best features of modern urban planning, and into the "imagineering" by which the simulacrums of
exotic, even dangerous creatures, places, fantasies could be unthreateningly reproduced.
These attractions were better than any movie in his eyes three dimensional and without narrative problems. They
were, indeed, better than life, for they offered false but momentarily thrilling experiences in a sterile, totally controlled
environment from which dirt, rudeness, mischance (and anything approaching authentic emotion) had been totally eliminated.
All his other enterprises had to be delivered into the possibly uncomprehending world. When Disneyland opened in 1955, that
changed: he now had his own small world, which people had to experience on his terms.
Before he was felled by cancer at 65, it is possible to imagine that he was happy. He had at last devised a machine
with which he could endlessly tinker. The little boy, envious of the placid small-town life from which he was shut out, had
become mayor no, absolute dictator of a land where he could impose his ideals on everyone. The restless, hungry young
entrepreneur had achieved undreamed-of wealth, power and honor.

21) Dr. Z

When Dieter Zetsche took over as president and chief executive officer of the struggling Chrysler unit of
DaimlerChrysler in November 2000, one of his first orders of business was to interview the company's veteran executives. The
main topic of conversation: How could the company once and for all break the boom-and-bust cycle that had defined it since
the late 1970s?
It was a problem that had bedeviled his predecessors from Lee Iacocca to Bob Lut z. Each time the company dragged
itself back from the precipice, its leaders promised "never again." But almost like clockwork, Chrysler would find itself facing
a crisis nearly every decade. While other industries and companies, including Chrysler's rivals, experienced cycles of their own,
Chrysler's busts and booms were notable for their especially deep dives and soaring heights.
High on Zetsche's interview list was Trevor Creed, senior vice president of design and a 20-year veteran of the
company. Creed had joined Chrysler in 1985 just as the company was on the upswing from its first of three near-death
experiences: the 1979 brush with bankruptcy, which was averted only with a government bailout. He lived through the scary
downturn of the early 1990s and had also suffered through the most recent crisis, which came after the merger of Daimler-Benz
and Chrysler in 1998.
Zetsche -- a former chief engineer with Mercedes and a top lieutenant of DaimlerChrysler's chief executive Jurgen E.
Schrempp -- litt le imagined what Creed would suggest for pulling Chrysler out of its most recent slump. Car designers
typically see more freedom and bigger budgets as key to turning around an ailing car brand. But Creed had no intention of
asking for either. Instead, he told Zetsche it was about time Chrysler figured out what made it so great during times of crisis --
and then learned how to apply those lessons during the good times as a way to build Chrysler into a great company.
Creed's unusual demand was echoed by the other executives Zetsche met with over the next several weeks. As they
explained, reviving Chrysler would take far more than putting a new leader at the top or setting up a new org chart. And it
would take far more, even, than learning from past mistakes.
Instead, they said there was real gold in Chrysler's hair-raising history: Each time the company faced the abyss, its
people pulled off heroic feats to yank it back. In fact, Chrysler seemed to be at its best when its back was against the wall .
What if the company could somehow institutionalize the urgency, the dedicat ion to consumers, the discipline, and the focus of
its executives that repeatedly surfaced each time it teetered on the brink of catastrophe -- without, of course, actually landing
Chrysler back in crisis?
Over the past four and a half years, Zetsche and his management team have worked to create what might be called a
"controlled crisis" strategy. So far, the outcome has been astonishing. When Zetsche arrived in 2000, Chrysler was well into its
third catastrophe. Just two years after its much-heralded merger with Daimler-Benz, the automaker was bleeding red ink and
shedding market share. In 2003, Chrysler posted a loss of $637 million. But this past February, DaimlerChrysler announced
that Chrysler earned $1.9 billion in 2004 -- almost as much as big brother Mercedes (whose profits have been dwindling
because of quality woes and tougher competition.)
Here is one lesson, forged in the crucible of crisis, that Zetsche and his team have been applying in their efforts to
keep Chrysler at the top of its game.

It's the Company, not the Cult of Personality
Zetsche's willingness to listen to and learn from veteran executives spoke volumes to the company's more than
80,000 employees. Past executives who had helped lead the company out of downturns often ignored the acco mplishments of
the whole company after the crisis was over. They began emphasizing their own roles in the turnaround.
It was easy to see how the cult of personality could take hold. The car industry seems to breed bigger -than-life
executives. Iconic leaders such as Iacocca (whose very name, serendipitously, is an acronym for "I Am Chairman of Chrysler
Corporation of America") and Lutz became synonymous with Chrysler's turnarounds and were lionized in the press. Obviously,
though, thousands of people worked long and hard to engineer the recoveries -- a fact that could become glaringly obvious
when Chrysler honchos left the company to try their turnaround magic elsewhere.
Zetsche recognizes that he can't cast himself as the leader who saved Chrysler. Each executive who "saved" Chrysler
went on to help put Chrysler back into a tailspin by hoarding authority and devaluing the contributions of others. By contras t,
Zetsche depends on a team of executives to make decisions together even in the good times. And inst ead of assuming he knows
what's best, he has spent a huge amount of time getting to know the company he leads by learning about its history.
Not long after he arrived at the company, Zetsche made the first of what would become many visits to the Walter P.
Chrysler Museum, a glass-and-brick building housed on a quiet corner of the company's headquarters campus in suburban
Detroit. Zetsche, 52, says the visits have been a way of connecting with a culture and company he knew very little about befo re
he landed in the CEO's suite. "I grew up in the '70s and '80s, which weren't the best times for American cars," he says as he
walks through the museum. But many of the older cars on display have been a pleasant surprise to him -- like one of his
favorites, a cornflower-blue 1953 Chrysler Special with elegant European curves and an interior with soft leather and
instrument gauges the size of dinner plates. "This is where I learned the rules of Chrysler," Zetsche says. "These are the ca rs
that Chrysler was built on, and that heritage is going to help build the future of the company."
Zetsche's more understated approach to leadership has given executives room for hope, finally, that Chrysler won't
take a nosedive again.




22) Bob Dylan

He was born with a snake above his fist while a hurricane was blowing. You must know that. Know the fact, or the
music, or the truth inside the mythology, spun from roots by his rough magic into cloth of gold, into songs that are the shif ting,
stormy center of American popular music in the second part of the very century when the music was invented.
Bob Dylan couldn't wait for the music to change. He couldn't be only part of the change. He was the change itself.
His legends and home truths, passed along in song, became part of a cultural vocabulary and an ongoing American myth.
Hundreds of songs; more than 500 and counting. Forty-three albums; more than 57 million copies sold. A series of dreams
about America as it once and never was. It was folk music, deep within its core, from the mountains and the delta and the
blacktop of Highway 61. Rhythm and blues, too, and juke-joint rock 'n' roll, and hymns from backwoods churches and gospel
shouts from riverside baptisms. He put all that together, and found words to match it.
At the time Dylan first arrived in New York City from the Midwest, rock music had lost its leader Elvis, in a
series of movie musicals. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson all those
pioneers Dylan had loved and emulated in high school rock-'n'-roll bands had been superseded by a series of well-scrubbed
teen idols who had as much edge as a corsage.
It was a bland-out all across the bandwidth, a kind of musical hangover from the Eisenhower era. Rock 'n' roll had
erupted dead in the heart of Ike's easeful America. In the Kennedy years, when the world started to shake and rattle, the music
suddenly turned as thick and sweet as a malted. Jazz had the power, but jazz was for grownups, and its impact was largely
instrumental. Anyone who wanted to listen to a song, and take something away from it that would last a little longer than a
good-night kiss, turned on to folk.
So Bob Dylan, a rock-'n'-roll American kid who first heard Woody Guthrie while enrolled for a few months at the
University of Minnesota, took up folk. Got a ride to New York. Settled in Greenwich Village. Took any gig he could get.
Within two years tops turned folk inside out. And then abandoned it. Subsumed it, really, inside the raucous, unyielding,
cataclysmic rock 'n' roll that he let loose on an audience that didn't like to be reminded how hidebound it was. What had been
music of comment and protest became songs of unprecedented personal testament, delivered with a literal and savage
electricity.
Dylan got booed when he showed up with rock musicians behind him, and the booing didn't let up until his great
songs like Desolation Row and Like a Rolling Stone pierced the consciousness of a whole new generation, making everyone
realize that rock music could be as direct, as personal and as vital as a novel or a poem. That popular music could be
expression as well as recreation.
Dylan was suddenly a singer no longer. He was a shaman. A lot of people called him a prophet. In a way, it must
have been scarier than being booed. Everything he sang, said, did or even wore took on a specific gravity that made it harder
and harder for him to move. The music became so important to so many people, took on such awesome proportions, that Dylan
could respond only with the ultimate sanity: silence. A dizzying number of changes followed from born-again Christian
testifying to deep blues but Dylan has been consistent only in one thing: he has never stopped making great music.







23) T.S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot who would become the most celebrated English-language poet of the century was born
in Missouri to a businessman and a poet. Although young Tom was brilliantly educated in English and European literature and
in Eastern and Western philosophy and religion, he fled in his mid 20s the career in philosophy awaiting him at Harvard,
and moved to England. There he married (disastrously), met the entrepreneurial Ezra Pound and, while working at Lloyds
Bank, brought out Prufrock and Other Observations. Five years later, after a nervous breakdown and a stay in a Swiss
sanatorium , he published The Waste Land. Modern poetry had struck its note.
Not everyone was impressed. The Waste Land was a deeply unoptimistic, un-Christian and therefore un-American
poem, prefaced by the suicidal words, "I want to die." It is, we could say, the first Euro-poem. In its desolation at the breakup
of the Judeo-Christian past, the poem turns for salvation to the Buddha and his three ethical commandments: Give, Sympathize,
Control. But on the way to its ritually religious close, it films a succession of loveless or violent or failed sexual unions
among the educated and the uneducated, and in the poet's own life. It speaks of an absent God and of a dead father; Eliot's
recently dead father had left capital outright to the other children, but permitted his wayward son only the interest on his
portion.
It annoyed Eliot that The Waste Land was interpreted as a prophetic statement: he referred to it as "just a piece of
rhythmical grumbling." Whether or not Eliot had written down the Armageddon of the West, he had showed up the lightweight
poetry dominating American magazines. Eliot's poem went off like a bomb in a genteel drawing-room, as he intended it to.
How could The Waste Land and the sad poems, almost as peculiar, that followed it succeed to such an extent
that by 1956 the University of Minnesota needed to stage his lecture there in a basketball arena? The astonishing growth of
literacy between 1910 and 1940 certainly helps to explain the rise of an audience for modernist writ ing. But it was an audience
chiefly of fict ion readers. Fiction had claimed "real life," and in 1910 poetry was subsisting, for the most part, on vague
appeals to nature and to God.
Lovers of poetry in the pre-Modernist era had been surviving on a thin diet of either Platonic idealism or a post -'90s
"decadence," and it was felt that barbaric and businesslike America could not equal the sophistication of England. Eliot's
vignettes of modern life (some sardonic, some e legiac), and his meditation on consciousness and its aridit ies, reclaimed for
American poetry a terrain of close observation and complex intelligence that had seemed lost. The heartbreak under the poised
irony of Eliot's work was not lost on his audience, who suddenly felt that in understanding Eliot, they understood themselves.



24) Michael J. Fox

In the five years since the actor Michael J. Fox became a charity leader, his organizat ion has distributed more than
$50-million to fuel scientific study of the degenerative neurological disorder known as Parkinson's disease, which Mr. Fox was
diagnosed with in 1991. The comedic performer who played Alex P. Keaton on the Family Ties television show and Marty
McFly in the blockbuster Back to the Future films does have a fight on his hands in this new role. His goal is succinct: to cure
Parkinson's disease by the end of the decade. Toward this aim, the Fox Foundation seeks to fill research gaps; promotes
cutting-edge, clinical-based studies; and encourages researchers to pursue novel strategies in combating the disease.
The transition from entertainer to disease fighter didn't happen overnight. When Mr. Fox was diagnosed with
Parkinson's in 1991, he chose not to go public with the news for professional and emotional reasons. "I was in shock and
afraid," Mr. Fox says. "I was completely private with it, worried about anything I might do to betray my secret." Carefully
timed doses of medicine provided temporary relief from the illness's symptoms -- which include tremors created by a loss of
muscle control -- and enabled him to keep working before the camera. He continued to make movies, and in 1996 took a role
on the television show Spin City. Only his family and closest associates knew of his illness.
By 1998, Mr. Fox achieved a kind of internal peace with the reality of his illness. But with the disease progressing
and the symptoms harder to mask, Mr. Fox decided to go public with his condition. As Mr. Fox plunged into the world of
Parkinson's research and associated charities, he was troubled by what he found. "I was suddenly talking to scientists who were
expressing this incredible optimism and sense of forward movement and promise in various areas of Parkinson's research, and
I failed to see that reflected in what was happening in the institutions and foundations supporting Parkinson's research," he says.
"The money wasn't rising to the level of the science."
Mr. Fox says that while he did not init ially intend to start a charity, the option ended up making the most sens e the
more he considered it. The last thing he wanted, he says, was to be recruited as some sort of "poster boy" for Parkinson's. "In
so much as no group had art iculated to me an endgame that made sense, I wasn't going to say to any Parkinson's organizatio n,
'Here, here's my face, here's my 20-year career and the relat ionship I have with people. Use it as you see fit and don't confer
with me,'" Mr. Fox says. "I thought, if I'm going to be talking to people and asking them to make a commit ment -- financial,
emotional, intellectual, or otherwise -- I better be able to put the full weight of everything I stand for behind that commit ment
and behind that relationship. And I couldn't see any group that was completely worthy of that investment."
Not that he shunned Parkinson's charities. Indeed, in 1999 he joined members of the nonprofit Parkinson's Action
Network to testify before Congress and request additional federal funds for neurological research. Mr. Fox says that he
applauds the network's work as an advocacy group, promoting public awareness of Parkinson's and seeking government funds
for research. But he had something else in mind. "I just thought there was room for a more guerrilla, grass -roots, low-to-the-
ground, built-for-speed operation," he says.
The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research was founded in 2000. Initially, Mr. Fox didn't want to name
it after himself. "It wasn't about me," Mr. Fox says of his hesitation. "It was about an opportunity for a really big win in
something." Colleagues convinced him that his well-known name could give the new group a high profile.
Mr. Fox laughs when recalling that some of the organization's board members came from an unlikely place: nursery
school. They were fellow parents he had gotten to know at the preschool his twin daughters attended, he explains. "When I
came out with my situation, they asked very nicely if there was something they could do," Mr. Fox says. "They stepped up in a
big way. A lot them were from the financial world and loved the entrepreneurial approach to philanthropy -- looking at it like a
start-up and setting a goal you want to achieve."
While the Fox Foundation has distributed some $50-million for Parkinson's research over the past five years, that
figure is a slight fract ion of what the federal government spends. The National Institutes of Health spent $230-million on
Parkinson's research in 2003 and an estimated $237-million last year. Parkinson's is not considered a fatal disease, but it is
degenerative and can lead to immobility, significant speech difficult ies, and an inability to care for oneself. The disease has no
cure, and most known treatments tend to lose their effectiveness over time.
In awarding grants, the Fox Foundation looks for promising, if somewhat unconventional, areas of research that have
had a hard time getting government funds. It has developed a three-pronged approach to supporting Parkinson's research: (1) A
wide-open Fast Track program invites researchers to seek grants for any Parkinson's -related work they wish to pursue. (2) A
"directive" grant program identifies potentially "high impact" research areas and tailors grants to meet them. (3) The Linked
Efforts to Accelerate Parkinson's Solutions (LEAPS) program makes grants to groups of scientists who agree to collaborate on
a project.
J. William Langston, chief executive officer of the Parkinson's Institute, a 17-year-old research and patient-care
facility in Sunnyvale, Calif., who also serves as the Fox Foundation's chief scientific adviser, says Mr. Fox's organization has
greatly accelerated the pace of Parkinson's -related research. "The real power the Fox Foundation has brought to the field is that
they have gone in in an almost surgically precise manner to find research bottlenecks and fund specific steps to break those
bottlenecks," he says.





25) Aretha Franklin

The fate of gospel music was forever altered in 1956 when a 14-year-old choir girl named Aretha first belted out
"Precious Lord" for a congregation of 4,500 at Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church. What followed this conception of the
legendary "Lady Soul" is nothing short of amazing grace -- more than a dozen million-selling singles, 20 No. 1 R&B hits, a
cover story in Time, a civil rights award from Martin Luther King Jr., a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 15 Grammys
(including a lifetime achievement award in 1995) and a role alongside John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in the cinematic jewel,
The Blues Brothers.
Aretha Franklin's lifetime devotion to song, though often interrupted by personal turmoil and tragedy, created a soul
standard that remains unchallenged and unbroken today. Aretha Franklin was born on March 25, 1942 in Memphis , TN to a
respected gospel singer and powerful orator who encouraged young Aretha, Carolyn and Erma to hone the ir voices and free
their spirits. The three sisters sang in the church choir every Sunday, listening to the sermons of their fat her, Rev. C.L. Franklin.
An untouchable force behind the microphone, Franklin hit a stumbling block when she became a 15 -year-old unwed
mother. By age 17 she had two sons in Detroit and a future waiting in New York, so in 1960, Franklin's grandmother took the
children and loaded their young mother on a bus to Manhattan, where she began recording demonstration tapes and attracting
national attention. After declining offers from Motown and RCA, Franklin was finally snatched up by Columbia Records. The
Columbia years proved controversial and confusing for Franklin, who was shepherded into unfamiliar pop music territory
rather than her native R&B. Crit icized as a white company that did not appreciate Franklin's talent, Columbia produced 10
respectable albums, but only one bonafide pop hit in six years. When her contract expired in 1966, producer Jerry Wexler
pounced on the raw talent, signing her to Atlantic and immediately digging into her R&B roots.
Perhaps the most stimulating song of its time, "Respect," took on several empowering translations during the era of
black activis m, feminism and sexual liberation. A rallying cry for social progress, "Respect," won Franklin two Grammy
awards and an honorary award from Mart in Luther King Jr. -- a man she would later eulogize with an uplifting rendit ion of
"Precious Lord." While fame tumbled down upon her, Franklin led a personal life of hardship hidden from the world.
Her troubled eight-year marriage to White ended in 1969, after they had a son, Teddy Jr. That same year her father
was arrested for possession of marijuana and she was rumored to be drinking heavily, but Franklin did not allow her personal
strife to shut down the hit factory. "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Don't Play That Song," "Spanish Harlem" and "Rock
Steady" were just a few of the hits Franklin scored in the early '70s, during which t ime she also gave birth to a fourth son,
Kecalf, out of wedlock.
Franklin won Grammy awards every year between 1969 and 1975, but by the end of the '70s her record sales were
beginning to dwindle. Franklin gave her career a kick-start in 1980 with a cameo appearance in The Blues Brothers, a movie
that introduced Franklin to a younger audience. That same year she left Atlantic for Arista. Franklin's first Arista album,
'Aretha', released one year after her father died of gunshot wounds suffered during a robbery attempt at his home, became her
highest charting album since 1972.
The next album was a moderate success in 1981. In 1982, she had a hit album, but in 1983, again experienced only
moderate success. After a 2 year hiatus, Aretha had a comeback hit album in 1985. The album won crit ical praise, and Aretha
returned to the top of the Billboard charts with her most successful Arista project, which also earned The Queen a 1985
Grammy Award. This was Aretha's first award since 1974, and her greatness was reaffirmed. While her pop comeback
continued in 1987, Aretha also returned to her gospel roots. In 1987, Aretha Franklin became the first woman inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, while also winning multiple Grammy Awards.


26) Sigmund Freud

There are no neutrals in the Freud wars. Admiration, even downright adulation, on one side; skepticism, even
downright disdain, on the other. A psychoanalyst who is currently trying to enshrine Freud in the pantheon of cultural heroes
must contend with a relentless critic who devotes his days to exposing Freud as a charlatan. But on one thing the contending
parties agree: for good or ill, Sigmund Freud, more than any other explorer of the psyche, has shaped the mind of the 20th
century.
There is nothing new about such embittered confrontations; they have dogged Freud's footsteps since he developed
the cluster of theories he would give the name of psychoanalysis. His fundamental idea that all humans are endowed with
an unconscious in which potent sexual and aggressive drives, and defenses against them, st ruggle for supremacy has struck
many as a scientifically unprovable notion. His contention that the catalog of neurotic ailments to which humans are
susceptible is nearly always the work of sexual maladjustments, and that erotic desire starts not in pube rty but in infancy,
seemed to the respectable nothing less than obscene. His dramatic evocation of a universal Oedipus complex, in which (to put
a complicated issue too simply) the little boy loves his mother and hates his father, seems more like a literar y conceit than a
thesis worthy of a scientifically minded psychologist.
Freud first used the term psychoanalysis in 1896, when he was already 40. He had been driven by ambition from his
earliest days and encouraged by his doting parents to think highly of himself. Born in 1856 to an impecunious Jewish family,
he moved with the rest of a rapidly increasing brood to Vienna. In recognition of his brilliance, his parents privileged him over
his siblings by giving him a room to himself, to study in peace. He did not disappoint them. After an impressive career in
school, he matriculated in 1873 in the University of Vienna and drifted from one philosophical subject to another until he hi t on
medicine. His choice was less that of a dedicated healer than of an inquisitive explorer determined to solve some of nature's
riddles.
Although the second pillar of Freud's psychoanalytic structure, "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (1905),
further alienated him from the mainstream of contemporary psychiatry, he soon found loyal recruits. They met weekly to hash
out interesting case histories, converting themselves into the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1908. Working on the frontier s
of mental science, these often eccentric pioneers had their quarrels.
As he pursued his medical researches, he came to the conclusion that the most intriguing mysteries lay concealed in
the complex operat ions of the mind. By the early 1890s, he was specializing in "neurasthenics" (mainly severe hysterics); the y
taught him much, including the art of patient listening. At the same time he was beginning to write down his dreams,
increasingly convinced that they might offer clues to the workings of the unconscious. He saw himself as a scientist taking
material both from his patients and from himself, through introspection. By the mid-1890s, he was launched on a full-blown
self-analysis, an enterprise for which he had no guidelines and no predecessors.
The book that made his reputation in the profession although it sold poorly was "The Interpretation of Dreams"
(1900), an indefinable masterpiece part dream analysis, part autobiography, part theory of the mind, part history of
contemporary Vienna. The principle that underlay this work was that mental experiences and entities, like physical ones, are
part of nature. This meant that Freud could admit no mere accidents in mental procedures. The most nonsensical notion, the
most casual slip of the tongue, the most fantastic dream, must have a meaning and can be used to unriddle the often
incomprehensible maneuvers we call thinking.
Freud was intent not merely on originating a sweeping theory of mental functioning and malfunctioning. He also
wanted to develop the rules of psychoanalytic therapy and expand his picture of human nature to encompass not just the couch
but the whole culture. As to the first, he created the largely silent listener who encourages the analysand to say whatever c omes
to mind, no matter how foolish, repetitive or outrageous, and who intervenes occasionally to interpret wha t the patient on the
couch is struggling to say. While some adventurous early psychoanalysts thought they could quantify just what proportion of
their analysands went away cured, improved or untouched by analytic therapy, such confident enumerations have more
recently shown themselves untenable. The efficacy of analysis remains a matter of controversy, though the possibility of
mixing psychoanalysis and drug therapy is gaining support.



















27) Alberto Fujimori

When Alberto Fujimori was sworn in as President of Peru on July 28, 1990 it was the first time anyone of Japanese
origin had become head of state of a foreign country. His father, in order to escape from the poverty of his native village i n
southern Japan, had originally wished to emigrat e to Hawaii, but because of very stringent medical tests introduced to curb
Asian immigration he opted for Peru instead.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the privations of his childhood Alberto Fujimori proved to be as hard working as he
was academically gifted. However, it was as the host of a television talk show that he first came to the notice of a wider public
as a shrewd political analyst. In 1989, he founded a new political party, Cambio 90 (Change 90), in preparation for the
presidential elections the following year.
The overwhelming favorite for the 1990 elect ion was one of Latin America's best known novelists, Mario Vargas
Llosa. Fujimori, with his knowledge of agriculture and his own experience of poverty in his childhood, understood the
problems of the Campesinos, the descendants of the original pre-Spanish inhabitants of the land. Like them, Fujimori was
something of an outsider in a country still dominated by people of Spanish descent. Vargas Llosa came to be regarded as the
candidate of an affluent, mainly white minority, and Fujimori as the candidate of the poor, the Indians, the mestizos (people of
mixed Indian and white ancestry), the blacks and people of Asian origin.
When Fujimori became president in 1990 Peru was facing catastrophe. The economy was in the grip of
hyperinflation but, even more seriously, in the countryside a bloody civil war was raging between the army and the guerrilla
movement. To tackle Peru's economic problems Fujimori decided to adopt a program of shock treat ment. Within a year, he
brought down inflation from a peak annual rate of 7,650% to 139%. (In 1999, President Fujimori's last full year in power, the
annual rate of inflat ion fell to 3.7%.). However, the security situation continued to deteriorate. Fujimori lacked a majority in
Congress and therefore on April 5, 1992, he dissolved Congress and suspended the constitution, declaring that he needed a
freer hand to introduce more economic reforms, combat terroris m and drug trafficking and root out corruption. He also
purged the judiciary, dis missing 13 of 23 Supreme Court justices and dozens of other judges. His actions led to the eventual
defeat of the terrorists.
Fujimori's popularity soared but there were influential Peruvians who were troubled by his autocratic rule. On
November 13 General Jaime Salinas led an abortive counter-coup with the aim of restoring democracy but he and the other
leaders of the conspiracy were captured by the security forces. Less than two weeks after the failed counter-coup, elections for
a new Congress were won by Fujimori's party giving him the authority to push through the changes that he wanted. However,
his wife Susana Higuchi proved less amenable to his bidding than Congress. That same year the couple split up and Higuchi
announced her intention of running against her husband in the 1995 presidential elections. Fujimori responded by having a
law passed which prevented close relations of the president from seeking higher office and Higuchi was not able to get
divorced until after the election.
In January 1995 there were clashes between Peruvian and Ecuadorian troops along the border in Cenepa, an area
which had been disputed since the Spanish colonies in South America gained their independence. A cease -fire was arranged in
February and both countries agreed to settle their differences by negotiation. The next month Fujimori was re -elected,
defeating the former secretary general of the United Nations, Javier Perez de Cuellar, by a landslide.
What at first appeared to be a major setback took place on the evening of December 17, 1996. In the official
residence of the Japanese ambassador a party in honor of the Emperor's birthday was in full swing when guerrillas seized the
building and took 452 guests hostage, including Fujimoris brother, the foreign minister, the agriculture minister, and the
Japanese ambassador, and prominent Japanese businessmen. The rebels demanded the release of several hundred guerrillas
who were held in Peruvian prisons. The women among the hostages were soon released and although Fujimori rejected the
rebels' demands the Red Cross acted as an intermediary between the government and the guerrillas. Over the next few months ,
most of the remaining hostages were released but 72 were still being held when, on April 22, 1997, all but one who suffered a
heart attack, were freed in a dramatic raid by Peruvian commandos. All of the 14 rebels died in the assault. The successful
freeing of the hostages boosted Fujimori's popularity to new heights.
President Fujimori had already t inkered with the constitution to allow himself a second term and to disbar estranged
his wife from standing against him. Even so, it was a surprise when in August 1996, quite early in his second term, he
introduced a law that allowed him to interpret the constitution in such a way that the limit to two consecutive terms of office as
president only counted from the end of his first term! Peru's constitutional court disagreed but the Congress dismissed three of
the judges thus removing that obstacle.
The main opposition candidate in the 2000 presidential election was Alejandro Toledo who had been minister of
labour under President Belande (Fujimori's predecessor's predecessor) and had also been the chief economic adviser to the
Central Bank of Peru and had worked for the World Bank. The election in April 2000 was bitterly contested. Officially
Fujimori narrowly failed to get the 50% of the votes required for an outright victory and therefore a second round of voting
was necessary in June but Toledo dropped out, alleging that the election was being rigged in his opponent's favor.
But after his right hand man, Vladimiro Montesinos, the head of the security service, was accused of bribery, money
laundering, arms trafficking and numerous abuses of human rights, Fujimori's career was ended by the wave of scandals and he
left Peru in disgrace to become an exile in Japan. Although the trial of Vladimiro Montesinos is shedding light on one of the
most controversial periods in modern Peruvian history, Fujimori vigorously defended his record from his base in Japan and
began to plan for a return to power. However, on a visit to Chile he was arrested at the behest of the Peruvian authorites wh o
have requested his extradition.


28) Sonia Gandhi

Sonia Gandhi was born Sonia Maino on December 9, 1946, in Italy. In the 1960s, she went to Cambridge, England,
to study English. While there, she met Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of India's first prime minister. They married in 1968 and settl ed
down in India. Sonia Gandhi wholeheartedly adopted her husband's homeland. She learned to speak some Hindi and cook
Indian food, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1983.
While living in New Delhi during the early part of their marriage, the Gandhis traveled in the upper-class echelon.
They wore designer clothes, hosted beef barbecues and enjoyed disco-dancing, which were all activities the Hindu
traditionalists condemned. During this time, Sonia Gandhi developed a close relationship with her mother-in-law, Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi became a kind of personal assistant to the prime minister and traveled with her as she
conducted the country's business. Sonia Gandhi was not, however, fond of the public life politics brought with it. She was
relieved her husband had stayed out of polit ics, letting his brother, Sanjay, carry on the torch of the Gandhi name. However, in
1980, Sanjay Gandhi died in a plane crash, prompting Rajiv Gandhi to enter politics out of a sense of family duty. Sonia
Gandhi opposed the move. "I would rather have my children begging in the streets of Delhi than him becoming a polit ician,"
she once remarked.
Her dislike of politics was heightened in 1984 when Indira Gandhi was shot in the garden of her New Delhi
residence by her own security guards. On the eve of his mother's death, Rajiv Gandhi was elevated to the post of prime
minister. Sonia Gandhi became exceedingly obsessed with her husband's and children's safety. Rajiv Gandhi served as prime
minister until 1989, when his party was defeated following a s candal. A few years later, in 1991, as Rajiv Gandhi was
campaigning to win back the prime minister's post, he was killed by a suicide-bomber.
Within days of her husband's death, Sonia Gandhi was asked to take his place as leader of the Congress Party. She
refused. Supporters gathered in the streets outside her home, urging her to take the position. She continued to decline the
position and lived out the next several years in political seclusion. With the deaths of her mother-in-law, brother-in-law and
husband, Sonia Gandhi remained the only member of the Nehru-Gandhi clan who could carry on in polit ics. The Nehru-
Gandhi family had, after all, supplied the country with its prime minister for 37 of its first 47 years.
In December 1997, Sonia Gandhi announced her intention to campaign on behalf of the Congress Party, hoping to
revive its image and establish its position as a favorable alternative to the right-wing Hindu-nationalist Bharat iya Janata Party.
The Gandhi family had represented the Congress Party for years it was the party the family lived and died for and Sonia
Gandhi could not stand to see it falling apart.
At first, Sonia Gandhi stumbled. Critics raised the issue of her foreign status could someone born outside of India
really speak for its people? She had always been uncomfortable in the public limelight and newspapers had previously dubbed
her the "Sphinx," for her icy demeanor and perpetually somber expression. Eventually, Sonia Gandhi came into her own and
became the passionate political star of the Congress Party.
By the spring of 1998, Sonia Gandhi was president of the Congress Party. The opposition continued to make her
foreignness an issue; however, her foreign-born status did not seem to hurt the party. Sonia Gandhi was such an anomaly that
people flocked to see the Italian woman wearing an Indian sari who spoke Hindi with a foreign accent. In 1999, Sonia Gandhi
won a seat in parliament.
As the 2004 election approached, Sonia Gandhi was still president of the Congress Party and still its most outgoing
speaker. Many assumed that if her party won the elect ion, she would become prime minister, though she never campaigned as
a candidate. The campaign turned nasty. Once again, the Bharat iya Janata Party used Sonia Gandhi's birthplace as a point of
contention. Sonia Gandhi had been an Indian citizen for 20 years, yet opposition leaders questioned her Indian loyalty. While
campaigning, the BJP said that Sonia Gandhi could not consider herself to be an Indian because pasta was her favorite food
and her children spoke fluent Italian.
The heated campaign drew 670 million voters to the polls in India, which is the world's largest democracy. The
people spoke, handing the Congress Party a surprise victory over the right -wing BJP. Congress Party supporters expected Sonia
Gandhi to become the prime minister. Immediately, the grumblings began. As poor losers, the BJP polit icians threatened to
walk out of parliament if Sonia Gandhi became prime minister. They threatened to boycott her swearing -in ceremony. They
also declared that having a foreign-born woman as prime minister would constitute a threat to national security.
Hundreds of millions of voters had chosen her, however, despite her birth status. For them, Sonia Gandhi's steadfast
dedication to her adopted country was apparent, as was her genuine concern for the country's poorest. Soon after the 2004
election, Sonia Gandhi stunned supporters by announcing that her "inner voice" had urged her to turn down the post of prime
minister. Instead, she nominated former finance minister Manmohan Singh for the post. It is easy to understand why Gandhi
turned down the position she likely feared being assassinated like her husband and mother-in-law. Also, the controversy
surrounding her foreign birth would never have gone away and her party would have been stuck dealing with that instead of
dealing with the problems of the country.
Crowds gathered outside Sonia Gandhi's residence urging her to change her mind. Later, opposition leaders charged
that Sonia Gandhi was still calling the shots, even though she was not prime minister. Many believe Sonia Gandhi outsmarted
her opponents when she stepped down. "I think she's the power in front of the throne," Maneka Gandhi told Los Angeles Times
writer Paul Watson. "I don't think she makes any bones about the fact that she has avoided the flak that would have gone with
the position, but she has no intention whatsoever of relinquishing any of the power of the position." Though she turned down
the post of prime minister, Sonia Gandhi remained president of the Congress Party.
29) Mohandas Ghandi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in a s mall town on the western coast of India. Gandhi
was a mediocre student and was excessively shy and timid. After graduating from high school, Gandhi joined the Samaldas
College. After the death of Gandhi's father in 1885, a family member suggested that Gandhi should travel to England to study
for a law degree. Gandhi welcomed the idea but his mother objected. To win his mother's approval, Gandhi took a solemn vow
not to touch wine, women and meat and remained true to it throughout his stay in England.
Gandhi sailed for England on September 4, 1888. Initially he had difficulty in adjusting to English customs and
weather but soon he overcame it. Gandhi completed his law degree in 1891 and returned to India. He decided to set up legal
practice but could not establish himself. At this time Gandhi received an offer from a company to proceed to South Africa on
their behalf to instruct their counsel in a lawsuit. Gandhi jumped at the idea and sailed for South Africa in April 1893.
It was in South Africa that Gandhi's transformation from Mohandas to Mahatma took place. Gandhi soon realized the
oppressive atmosphere of racial snobbishness against Indians who were settled in South Africa in large numbers. Once while
traveling on a t rain, at about 9 p.m. a white passenger who boarded the train objected to the presence of a "colored" man in the
compart ment and Gandhi was ordered by a railway official to shift to third class. When he refused to do so, a constable pushed
him out and his luggage was taken away by the railway authorities. It was winter and bitterly cold. This incident changed
Gandhi's life forever. He decided to fight for the rights of Indians. Gandhi organised the Indian community in South Africa and
asked them to forget all distinctions of religion and caste. He suggested the format ion of an association to look after the I ndian
settlers and offered his free time and services.
During his stay in South Africa, Gandhi's life underwent a change and he developed most of his political ideas.
Gandhi decided to dedicate himself completely to the service of humanity. He realized that absolute continence or
brahmacharya was indispensable for the purpose as one could not live both after the flesh and the spirit. In 1906, Gandhi took a
vow of absolute continence. In the course of his struggle in South Africa, Gandhi, developed the concepts of Ahimsa (non -
violence) and Satyagraha (holding fast to truth or firmness in a righteous cause). Gandhi's struggle bore fruit and in 1914 in an
agreement between Gandhi and the South African Government, the main Indian demands were conceded.
Gandhi returned to India in 1915 and on the advice of his polit ical guru spent the first year touring throughout the
country to know the real India. After a year of wandering, Gandhi settled down. Gandhi's first mission in India was in 1917.
Gandhi responded to the grievances of the much exploited peasants who were compelled by British indigo planters to grow
indigo on 15% of their land and part with the whole crop for rent. Gandhi's mission forced British government to set up an
inquiry into the condition of tenant farmers. The report of the committee of which Gandhi was a member went in fav or of the
tenant farmers.
In 1921, Gandhi gave the call for a Non-cooperation movement against the ills of British rule. Gandhi's call roused
the sleeping nation. Many Indians renounced their titles and honors, lawyers gave up their practice, and students left colleges
and schools. The Non-cooperation movement also brought women into the domain of freedom struggle for the first time. The
Non-cooperation movement severely jolted the Brit ish government. But the movement ended in an anti-climax in February
1922. An outbreak of mob violence in Chauri Chaura so shocked and pained Gandhi that he refused to continue the campaign
and undertook a fast for five days to atone for a crime committed by others in a state of mob hysteria.
Gandhi was sentenced to six years imprisonment but was released in 1924 on medical grounds. For the next five
years Gandhi seemingly retired from active agitational polit ics and devoted himself to the propagation of what he regarded as
the basic national needs, namely, Hindu-Muslim unity, removal of untouchability, equality of women, and the reconstruction of
village economy.
On March 12, 1930 Gandhi started the historic Dandi March to break the law which had deprived the poor man of
his right to make his own salt. On April 6, 1930 Gandhi broke the Salt law at the sea beach at Dandi. This simple act was
immediately followed by a nation-wide defiance of the law. This movement galvanized the whole nation and came to be
known as the "Civil Disobedience Movement". Within a few weeks about a hundred thousand men and women were in jail,
throwing the mighty machinery of the British Government out of gear. This forced the then Viceroy Lord Irwin to call Gandhi
for talks. On March 5, 1931, the Gandhi Irwin Pact was signed. Soon after signing the pact Gandhi went to England to attend
the First Round Table Conference. Soon after his return from England Gandhi was arrested without trial.
After the outbreak of Second World War in 1939, Gandhi again became active in the political arena. British
Government wanted India's help in the war and Congress in return wanted a clear -cut promise of independence from Brit ish
government. But Brit ish government dithered in its response and on August 8, 1942 Gandhi gave the call for the Quit India
Movement. Soon the Brit ish Government arrested Gandhi and other top leaders of Congress. Disorders broke out immediately
all over India and many violent demonstrations took place. While Gandhi was in jail his wife passed away. Gandhi too had a
severe attack of malaria. In view of his deteriorating health he was released from the jail in May 1944.
The Second World War ended in 1945 and Britain emerged victorious. In Britain, the Labour Party came to power,
and Atlee became the Prime Minister. He promised an early realization of self Government in India. A Cabinet Mission arrived
from England to discuss with Indian leaders the future shape of a free and united India, but failed to bring the Congress and
Muslims together. India attained independence but was now partitioned. Communal riots between Hindus and Muslims broke
out in the country in the aftermath of part ition. Gandhi worked ceaselessly to promote unity between Hindus and Muslims.
This angered some Hindu fundamentalists and on January 3, 1948 Gandhi was shot dead by one such fundamentalist.
30) Mikhail Gorbachev

In 1985, when the first rumblings of Gorbachev's thunder disturbed the moldy Soviet silence, the people who always
gather at flea markets and around churches , predicted that the new Czar would rule seven years. They ass ured anyone
interested in listening that Gorbachev was "foretold in the Bible," that he was an apocalyptic figure: he had a mark on his
forehead. The unusual birthmark on the new General Secretary's forehead, combined with his inexplicably radical ac tions, gave
him a mystical aura.
Gorbachev has been discussed in human terms, the usual investigations have been made, his family tree has been
studied. His completely ordinary education, colleagues, friends and past have all been gone over with a fine -tooth comb. By all
accounts, Gorbachev shouldn't have been Gorbachev. No single approach and there have been many can explain
Gorbachev.
After the August 1991 coup, Gorbachev was deprived of power, cast out, laughed at and reproached with all the
misfortunes, tragedies and lesser and greater catastrophes that took place during his rule. Corruption did exist under
Gorbachev; after Gorbachev it blossomed with new fervor. Oppressive poverty did exist under Gorbachev; after Gorbachev it
reached the level of starvation. Under Gorbachev the system of residence permits did fetter the population; after Gorbachev
hundreds upon hundreds of thousands lost their property and the roofs over their heads and set off across the country seeking
refuge from people as angry and hungry as they were. Strangely enough, no one ever thought Gorbachev particularly honest,
fair or noble. But after he was gone, the country was overwhelmed by a flood of dishonesty, corruption, lies and outright
banditry that no one expected. Those who reproached him for petty indulgences at government expense themselves stole
billions; those who were indignant that he sought advice from his wife managed to set up their closest relatives with high -level,
well-paid state jobs. The pettiness of the accusations speaks for itself.
No doubt Gorbachev made mistakes. No doubt his maneuvering between a totalitarian regime and democratic ideas
was far from irreproachable. No doubt he listened to and trusted the wrong people, no doubt his hearing and sight were dull ed
by the enormous pressure and he made many crude, irreversible mistakes. But maybe not.
When Gorbachev was overthrown, for some reason everyone thought it was a good thing. The conservatives were
pleased because in their eyes he was the cause of the regime's demise (they were absolutely right). The radicals were happy
because in their opinion he was an obstacle to the republics' independence and too cautious in enacting economic reforms.
(They too were correct.) This man with the stain on his forehead at tempted simultaneously to contain and transform the
country, to destroy and reconstruct, right on the spot. Surgery was demanded of Gorbachev, but angry shouts broke out
whenever he reached for the scalpel.
Mikhail Gorbachev was born in the village of Privolnoye near Stavropol, Russia. From the age of 13, he worked on a
collective farm, where his father was a mechanic. He was an exceptional student and earned a law degree at Moscow
University where he joined the Communist party and became Secretary of the law depart ment's Young Communist League.
After returning to the Stavropol area he rose in the League hierarchy to become Regional Secretary of the League, and in 1961
first became a delegate to the Party Congress. He spent the 1960s working his way up through the territorial bodies of the Party
and continuing his education in agronomy and economics.
As an agricultural administrator and party leader in his native region, he acquired a reputation for innovation and
incorruptible honesty, and he soon rose in the Party hierarchy. He was first elected to the Supreme Soviet in 1970, and served
on commissions dealing with conservation, youth policy, and foreign affairs. In 1971 he was elected to the Central Committee.
In 1978 he became First Secretary of the Stavropol territorial committee and by 1980 was a full member of the Politburo.
The death of the long-time General Secretary of the Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev, presented a brief
opportunity for change in the Soviet Union. Brezhnev's successor, Yuri Andropov, appeared to be grooming Gorbachev as his
own successor, but after Andropov's unexpected death, Gorbachev was passed over for the top spot and the aged Konstantin
Chernenko came. to power. When Chernenko too died barely a year after taking power, it was at last clear to the Party
hierarchy that younger leadership was needed and Gorbachev became General Secretary. He was ready to make long overdue
reforms in the Soviet system.
For six years Gorbachev carried off a delicate balancing act, forcing reforms on a recalcitrant old guard, while t rying
to contain the demand for change from radical reformers within and without the Communist Party. He permitted an
unprecedented freedom of expression in the USSR and ended the disastrous Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan.
By 1989 the demand for reform had spread to the Soviet satellite states of Central Europe. Gorbachev notified the
Communist leaders of those coutries that he would not intervene militarily to keep them in power as his predecessors had done .
Without the support of the Red Army, these dictatorships were quickly forced to yield to their democratic opposition, and
Gorbachev began the withdrawal of the remaining Soviet forces from Central Europe. In 1990 he was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize for his foreign policy initiatives.
Gorbachev continued to press for democratizat ion in the Soviet Union and permitted free elections in Russia and the
other republics of the Soviet Union. He survived an attempted coup by Communist hardliners in 1991 but relinqu ished office
after the elected presidents of the constituent republics undertook to replace the old Soviet Union with a Confederation of
Independent States.
Since leaving office, he has continued to advocate the development of private ownership in a market economy, and
the non-violent resolution of conflicts in a democratic society. He is President of the International Foundation for Socio -
Economic and Polit ical Studies, known as the Gorbachev Foundation, which conducts political and economic research, and
promotes international exchange. He is recognized around the world as one of the most influential statesmen of the 20th
century.

31) Al Gore

Excerpts from An Inconvenient Truth speech
Former Vice President Al Gore
New York University School of Law (September 18, 2006)

A few days ago, scientists announced alarming new evidence of the rapid melt ing of the perennial ice of the north
polar cap, continuing a trend of the past several years that now confronts us with the prospect that human activities, if
unchecked in the next decade, could destroy one of the earths principle mechanisms for cooling itself. Another group of
scientists presented evidence that human activities are responsible for the dramatic warming of sea surface temperatures in t he
areas of the ocean where hurricanes form. A few weeks earlier, new information from yet another team showed dramat ic
increases in the burning of forests throughout the American West, a trend that has increased decade by decade, as warmer
temperatures have dried out soils and vegetation. All these findings come at the end of a summer with record breaking
temperatures and the hottest twelve month period ever measured in the U.S., with persistent drought in vast areas of our
country. Scientific American introduces the lead article in its special issue this month with the following sentence: The debate
on global warming is over.
Many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several t ipping points that could - within as litt le as
10 years - make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planets habitability for human civilization. In this
regard, just a few weeks ago, another group of scientists reported on the unexpectedly rapid increases in the release of carb on
and methane emissions from frozen tundra in Siberia, now beginning to thaw because of human caused increases in global
temperature. The scientists tell us that the tundra in danger of thawing contains an amount of addit ional global warming
pollution that is equal to the total amount that is already in the earths at mosphere. Similarly, earlier this year, yet another team
of scientists reported that the previous twelve months saw 32 glacial earthquakes on Greenland between 4.6 and 5.1 on the
Richter scale - a disturbing sign that a massive destabilization may now be underway deep within the second largest
accumulat ion of ice on the planet, enough ice to raise sea level 20 feet worldwide if it broke up and slipped into the sea. Each
passing day brings yet more evidence that we are now facing a planetary emergency - a climate crisis that demands immediate
action to sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in order to turn down the earths thermostat and avert catastroph e.
The serious debate over the climate crisis has now moved on to the question of how we can craft emergency solutions in order
to avoid this catastrophic damage.
This debate over solutions has been slow to start in earnest not only because some of our leaders still find it more
convenient to deny the reality of the crisis, but also because the hard truth for the rest of us is that the maximum that seems
politically feasible still falls far short of the minimum that would be effective in solving the crisis. This no -mans land falling
between the farthest reaches of political feasibility and the first beginnings of truly effective change is the area that I would like
to explore in my speech today.
My purpose is not to present a comprehensive and detailed blueprint - for that is a task for our democracy as a whole
- but rather to try to shine some light on a pathway through this terra incognita that lies between where we are and where we
need to go. Because, if we acknowledge candidly that what we need to do is beyond the limits of our current political
capacities, that really is just another way of saying that we have to urgently expand the limits of what is politically possible.
I have no doubt that we can do precisely that, because having served almost three decades in elected office, I believe
I know one thing about Americas political system that some of the pessimists do not: it shares something in common with the
climate system; it can appear to move only at a slow pace, but it can also cross a tipping point beyond which it can move wit h
lightning speed. Just as a single tumbling rock can trigger a massive landslide, America has sometimes experienced sudden
avalanches of political change that had their beginnings with what first seemed like small changes.
Many Americans are now seeing a bright light shining from the far side of this no-mans land that illuminates not
sacrifice and danger, but instead a vision of a bright future that is better for our country in every way - a future with better jobs,
a cleaner environment, a more secure nation, and a safer world.
In order to conquer our fear and walk boldly forward on the path that lies before us, we have to insist on a higher
level of honesty in Americas political dialogue. When we make big mistakes in America, it is usually because the people have
not been given an honest accounting of the choices before us. It also is often because too many members of both parties who
knew better did not have the courage to do better.
Our children have a right to hold us to a higher standard when their future - indeed the future of all human
civilizat ion - is hanging in the balance. They deserve better than the spectacle of censorship of the best scientific evidence
about the truth of our situation and harassment of honest scientists who are trying to warn us about the looming c atastrophe.
They deserve better than politicians who sit on their hands and do nothing to confront the greatest challenge that humankind
has ever faced - even as the danger bears down on us.
We in the United States of America have a particularly important responsibility, after all, because the world still
regards us - in spite of our recent moral lapses - as the natural leader of the community of nations. Simply put, in order for the
world to respond urgently to the climate crisis, the United States must lead the way. No other nation can.
This is an opportunity for bipartisanship and transcendence, an opportunity to find our better selves and in rising to
meet this challenge, create a better brighter future - a future worthy of the generations who come afte r us and who have a right
to be able to depend on us.
32) Billy Graham

William Franklin Graham Jr., known to all the world as Billy, is now 80 years old, and has been our leading religious
revivalist for almost exactly 50 years, ever since his eight -week triumph in Los Angeles in the autumn of 1949. Indeed, for at
least 40 years, Graham has been the Pope of Protestant America (if Protestant is still the right word). Graham's finest momen t
may have been when he appeared at President Bush's side, Bible in hand, as we commenced our war against Iraq in 1991. The
great revivalist's presence symbolized that the Gulf crusade was, if not Christian, at least biblical. Bush was not unique among
our Presidents in displaying Graham. Eisenhower and Kennedy began the tradit ion of consulting the evangelist, but Johnson,
Nixon and Ford intensified the fashion that concluded with Bush's naming him "America's pastor." President Clinton has
increasingly preferred the Rev. Jesse Jackson, but the aura of apostle still hovers around Billy Graham. Harry Truman unkindly
proclaimed Graham a "counterfeit," a mere publicity monger, but while I still remain a Truman Democrat, I think our last
really good President oversimplified the Graham phenomenon.
No one has accused Graham of intellectualism, profound spirituality or social compassion, but he is free of any
association with the Christian right whose prime concerns are abolishing the graduated income tax and a woman's right to
choose abortion (which Graham also opposes). And there have been no scandals, financial or sexual, to darken Graham's
mission. His sincerity, transparent and convincing, cannot be denied. He is an icon essential to a country in which, for two
centuries now, religion has been not the opiate but the poetry of the people. Graham is totally representative of American
religious universalism.
Still, one can ask how so theatrical a preacher became central to the U.S. of the past half-century. Always an
authentic revivalist, Graham has evaded both doctrine and denomination. He sounds not at all like a Fundamentalist, even
though he affirms the fundamentals the literal truth of the Bible: the virgin birth, atoning death and the bodily resurrection
of Christ; the Second Coming; salvation purely through grace by faith and not works.
Graham's coherence and significance depend upon the history of modern evangelical revivalis m in the U.S. That
history began with Charles Grandison Finney, who created a new American form of religious revival, a highly organized,
popular spectacle. The tradit ion was carried on by Dwight Lyman Moody, William Ashley Sunday and Graham. Moody, in
Finney's wake, invented Graham's methods and organizing principles: advance men, advertising, aggressive publicity
campaigns, and a staff of specialists (prayer leaders, singers, counselors, ushers). Graham perfected Moody's transformat ion of
revivalism into mass popular entertainment, superbly executed in the New York City crusade of 1957, with triumphant
performances at Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden.
Politics could have been the destructive element for Graham, since he started his rise in the age of Eisenhower and
for a time was a fervent red hunter, an admirer of Senator Joe McCarthy and an overall basher of the left. Graham, a slow but
sure learner, moved with the spirit of the age, and in the 1980s he became a preacher of world peace, urging reconciliation with
Russia and China. Angry Fundamentalists turned against him, a move that became an anti -Graham passion when he rejected
the program of the Christian right: "I don't think Jesus or the Apostles took sides in the political arenas of their day." The break
between Graham and the Christian right became absolute when he denounced the violence of the antiabortion group Operation
Rescue. "The tactics," Graham declared, "ought to be prayer and discussion."
Though Graham has never, to my knowledge, spoken out on behalf of the poor, it seems legitimate to conclude that
his almost exclusive emphasis upon soul saving is his passionate center, even his authentic obsession. And there, whatever his
inadequacies of intellect or of spiritual discernment, Graham has ministered to a particular American need: the public
testimony of faith. He is the recognized leader of what continues to call itself American evangel ical Protestantism, and his life
and activities have sustained the self-respect of that vast entity. If there is an indigenous American religion and I think there
is, quite distinct from European Protestantism then Graham remains its prime emblem.
Evangelicals constitute about 40 percent of Americans, and the same number believe God speaks to them directly. Such a
belief yearns for a purer and more primit ive church than anyone is likely to see, and something in Graham retains the nostalg ia
for that purity. In old age and in poor health, he is anything but a triumphalist. There is no replacement for him, though he has
hopes for his son Franklin. More than a third of our nation continues to believe in salvation only through a regeneration
founded upon personal conversion to the Gospel, and Graham epitomizes that belief. A great showman, something of a
charismat ic, Graham exploited his gifts as an offering to America's particular way with the spirit. Some might have wished fo r
more, but Graham honestly recognized his limitations, and his career nears its close with poignancy and a sense of
achievement.













33) Martha Graham

The first thing you noticed was the face, a dead-white mask of anguish with black holes for eyes, a curt slash of red
for a mouth and cheekbones as high as the sky. Even if Martha Graham had done nothing else worth mentioning in her 96
years, she might be remembered for that face. But she also made dances to go with it harsh, angular fantasies spun out of
the strange proportions of her short-legged body and the pain and loneliness of her secret heart. If Graham ever gave birth, one
critic quipped, it would be to a cube; instead, she became the mother of American dance.
Graham was far from the first dancer to rip off her toe shoes and break with the rigid conventions of 19th century
ballet. America in the 1910s and '20s was full of young women (modern dance in the beginning was very much a women's
movement) with similar notions. But it was her homegrown technique the fierce pelvic contractions, the rugged "floor
work" that startled those who took for granted that real dancers soared through the air that caught on, becoming the
cornerstone of postwar modern dance. Her methods are routinely taught today in studios the world over, but you need not have
studied them or even have seen any of her dances to be influenced by them. They are part of the air every contemporary dancer
breathes.
Born in 1894 in Allegheny, Pa., Graham moved with her family to California when she was 14. Three years later, she
attended a Los Angeles recital by the dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis. It was the first dance performance of any kind that Graha m
had ever seen, and it overwhelmed her; in 1916 she joined Denishawn, the school and performing troupe that St. Deni s co-led
with her husband Ted Shawn. At 22, dangerously late for an aspiring dancer, Graham had found her destiny.
After seven years with Denishawn, Graham moved to New York City and struck out on her own, giving solo recitals
and eventually launching her own company, in 1929. To raise funds, she danced at the opening of Radio City Music Hall,
modeled furs and later gave classes in which she taught actors how to move. But nothing could deflect her from what she
believed to be her sacred mission: to "chart the graph of the heart" through movement. "That driving force of God that plunges
through me is what I live for," she wrote, and believed every word of it. Others believed too, partly because of the hurrican e-
strength force of her personality the Graham company would always bear an unsettling resemblance to a religious cult, with
the choreographer as high priestess but mainly because she delivered the goods.
Graham came decisively into her own in the '40s, turning out in rapid succession the decade-long series of angst-
ridden dance dramas enacted on symbol-strewn sets and accompanied by scores commissioned from noted composers on
which her reputation now chiefly rests. Cave of the Heart (1946), one of her many modern recastings of ancient Greek myth,
contains a horrific solo in which the hate-crazed Medea gobbles her own entrails perhaps Graham's most sensational coup
de theatre and one recalled with nightmarish clarity by all who saw her bring it off.
"How do you want to be remembered, as a dancer or a choreographer?" Graham was asked by choreographer Antony
Tudor. "As a dancer, of course," she replied. "I pity you," Tudor said. His words proved prophetic. In her prime a performer of
eye-scorching power, Graham insisted on dancing until 1968, long after her onstage appearances had degenerated into grisly
self-caricature. Her unwillingness to let younger soloists take over led her to replace her signature pieces with new dances in
which she substituted calculated effects for convincing movement. Adoring crit ics pretended nothing was wrong, but in fact
she produced virtually no work of lasting interest from 1950 to her death 41 years later.
Her wishes notwithstanding, it is not likely that Graham will be remembered as a dancer, at least not very clearly :
films of her performances are scarce and mostly primit ive. Much of her choreography has failed to wear well. No more than
half a dozen of her dances, most notably Cave of the Heart and Appalachian Spring (1944), her radiant re-creat ion of a pioneer
wedding, seem likely to stand the test of time. The rest are overwrought period pieces whose humorless, lapel-clutching
intensity is less palatable now that their maker is no longer around to bring them to life.
Yet a theatrical legacy cannot always be measured by such seemingly objective yardsticks. Even if her beleaguered
company should someday close its doors and her dances cease to be performed, Graham will doubtless be remembered in
much the same way, for the shadow she cast was fully as long. Did she invent modern dance? No, but she came to embody it,
arrogantly and spectacularly and, it appears, permanently. The legend of Martha Graham long ago became fact, just as her
utterly personal technique has become part of the common vocabulary of dancers everywhere. "The center of the stage is
where I am," she once said. It still is.
















34) Che Guevara

By the time Ernesto Guevara, known to us as Che, was murdered in the jungles of Bolivia in October 1967, he was
already a legend, not only in Latin America but also around the world. Like so many epics, the story of the obscure Argentine
doctor who abandoned his profession and his native land to pursue the emancipation of the poor of the earth began with a
voyage. In 1956, along with Fidel Castro and a handful of others, he had crossed the Caribbean in the rickety yacht Granma on
the mad mission of invading Cuba and overthrowing the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Landing in a hostile swamp, losing most of
their contingent, the survivors fought their way to the Sierra Maestra. A bit over two years later, after a guerrilla campaign in
which Guevara displayed such outrageous bravery and skill that he was named comandante, the insurgents entered Havana and
launched what was to become the first and only victorious socialist revolution in the Americas. The images were thereafter
invariably gigantic. Che the t itan standing up to the Yanquis (Yankees), the world's dominant power. Che the moral guru
proclaiming that a New Man, no ego and all ferocious love for the other, had to be forcibly created out of the ruins of the old
one. Che the romantic mysteriously leaving the revolution to continue, sick though he might be with asthma, the struggle
against oppression and tyranny.
His execution in Vallegrande at the age of 39 only enhanced Guevara's mythical stature. That Christ -like figure laid
out on a bed of death with his uncanny eyes almost about to open; those fearless last words ("Shoot, coward, you're only goin g
to kill a man") that somebody invented or reported; the anonymous burial and the hacked-off hands, as if his killers feared him
more after he was dead than when he had been alive: all of it is scalded into the mind and memory of those defiant times. He
would resurrect, young people shouted in the late '60s. !No lo vamos a olvidar! We won't let him be forgotten.
More than 30 years have passed, and the dead hero has indeed persisted in collect ive memory, but not exactly in the
way the majority of us would have anticipated. Che has become ubiquitous: his figure stares out at us from coffee mugs and
posters, jingles at the end of key rings and jewelry, pops up in rock songs and operas and art shows. This apotheosis of his
image has been accompanied by a parallel disappearance of the real man, swallowed by the myth. Mos t of those who idolize
the incendiary guerrilla with the star on his beret were born long after his demise and have only the sketchiest knowledge of his
goals or his life. Gone is the generous Che who tended wounded enemy soldiers, gone is the vulnerable warrior who wanted to
curtail his love of life lest it make him less effective in combat and gone also is the darker, more turbulent Che who signed
orders to execute prisoners in Cuban jails without a fair trial.
This erasure of complexity is the normal fate of any icon. More paradoxical is that the humanity that worships Che
has by and large turned away from just about everything he believed in. The future he predicted has not been kind to his idea ls
or his ideas. Back in the '60s, we presumed that his self-immolat ion would be commemorated by social action, the
downtrodden rising against the system and creating to use Che's own words two, three, many Vietnams. Thousands of
luminous young men, particularly in Latin America, followed his example into the hills and were slaughtered there or tortured
to death in sad city cellars, never knowing that their dreams of total liberation, like those of Che, would not come true.
Guevara's uncompromising, unrealistic style of struggle, or his ethical absolutism, has not prevailed. The major revolutions of
the past quarter-century (South Africa, Iran, the Philippines, Nicaragua), not to mention the peaceful transitions to democracy
in Latin America, East Asia and the communist world, have all entailed negotiations with former adversaries, a give and take
that could not be farther from Che's unyielding demand for confrontation to the death. How to understand, then, Che Guevara's
pervasive popularity, especially among the affluent young?
Perhaps in these orphaned times of incessantly shifting identities and alliances, the fantasy of an adventurer who
changed countries and crossed borders and broke down limits without once betraying his basic loyalties provides the restless
youth of our era with an optimal combination, grounding them in a fierce center of moral gravity while simultaneously
appealing to their contemporary nomadic impulse. To those who will never follow in his footsteps, submerged as they are in a
world of cynicis m, self-interest and frantic consumption, nothing could be more vicariously gratifying than Che's disdain for
material comfort and everyday desires. One might suggest that it is Che's distance, the apparent impossibility of duplicating his
life anymore, that makes him so attractive.
More than 3 billion human beings on this planet right now live on less than $2 a day. And every day that breaks,
40,000 children more than one every second! succumb to diseases linked to chronic hunger. They are there, always there,
the terrifying conditions of injustice and inequality that led Che many decades ago to start his journey toward that bullet and
that photo awaiting him in Bolivia. The powerful of the earth should take heed: deep inside that T shirt where we have tried to
trap him, the eyes of Che Guevara are still burning with impatience.














35) Jim Henson

Jim Henson can be credited with many accomplishments: he had the most profound influence on children of any
entertainer of his time; he adapted the ancient art of puppetry to the most modern of med iums, television, transforming both; he
created a TV show that was one of the most popular on earth. But Henson's greatest achievement was broader than any of these.
Through his work, he helped sustain the qualities of fancifulness, warmth and consideration that have been so threatened by
our coarse, cynical age.
Born in 1936, Henson grew up in the s mall town of Leland, Miss., where his father worked as an agronomist for the
Federal Government. When Henson was in fifth grade, his father took a job in Washington, and the family moved to a suburb
in Maryland. There, in high school, Henson became fascinated by television. "I loved the idea," he once said, "that what you
saw was taking place somewhere else at the same time." In the summer of 1954, just before he entered the University of
Maryland, he learned that a local station needed someone to perform with puppets on a children's show. Henson wasn't
particularly interested in puppets, but he did want to get into TV, so he and a friend made a couple one was called Pierre the
French Rat and they were hired.
The job didn't last long, but within a few months, Henson was back on TV, puppeteering for another station, the local
NBC affiliate. Soon he had his own five-minute program, called Sam and Friends. It aired live twice a day, once before the
network news with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and later preceding the Tonight show. Remaining in college, where he
studied art and theater design, Henson produced Sam and Friends for six years. Assisting him was a fellow student named Jane
Nebel, whom he married in 1959.
Puppets have been around for thousands of years, but the proto-Muppets that began to appear on Sam and Friends
were different. Kermit was there, looking and sounding much as he would later (until his death Henson always animated
Kermit and provided his voice). Typical hand puppets have solid heads, but Kermit's face was soft and mobile, and he could
move his mouth in synchronization with his speech; he could also gesticulate more facilely than a mario nette, with rods
moving his arms. For television, Henson realized, it was necessary to invent puppets that had "life and sensitivity."
Throughout the early 1960s, the Muppets made appearances on the Today show and a range of variety programs.
Then, in 1969, came Sesame Street. Henson was always careful not to take the credit for Sesame Street's achievements. It was
not his program, after all the Children's Television Workshop hired him. In fact, Henson hesitated to join the show, since he
did not want to become stuck as a children's entertainer. Nonetheless, few would disagree that it was primarily Bert and Ernie,
Big Bird, Grover and the rest who made Sesame Street so captivating.
Since Sesame Street has been on the air for 30 years and has been shown in scores of countries, Henson's Muppets
have entranced hundreds of millions of children. And the audience for the Muppets has not only been huge; it has also been
passionate. In fact, given the number of his fans and the intensity of their devotion, Kermit may possibly be the leading
children's character of the century, more significant than even Peter Pan or Winnie-the-Pooh.
But despite the Muppets' success on Sesame St reet and their demonstrated appeal to adults as well as children, no
U.S. network would give Henson a show of his own. It was a Brit ish producer who finally offered Henson the financing that
enabled him to mount The Muppet Show. The program ran in syndication from 1976 until 1981, when Henson decided to end
it lest its quality begin to decline. At its peak it was watched each week by 235 million viewers around the world.
The beauty of the Muppets, on both Sesame Street and their own show, was that they were cuddly but not too cuddly,
and not only cuddly. There are satire and sly wit; Bert and Ernie quarrel; Miss Piggy behaves unbecomingly; Kermit is
sometimes exasperated. By adding just enough tartness to a sweet overall spirit, Henson purveyed a kind of innocence that was
plausible for the modern imagination. His knowingness allowed us to accept his real gifts: wonder, delight, optimism.
Henson was a kind, infinitely patient man. Those who worked for him say he literally never raised his voice. Frank
Oz, the puppeteer behind Bert, Miss Piggy and many others, was Henson's partner for 27 years. "Jim was not perfect," he says.
"But I'll tell you something he was as close to how you're supposed to behave toward other people as anyone I've ever
known."
Because the works we encounter as children are so potent, Henson may influence the next cen tury as much as this
one, as his viewers grow up carrying his vision within them.

















36) Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay

On May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first human beings to
conquer Mount Everest at 29,028 ft. the highest place on earth. By any rational standards, this was no big deal. Aircraft had
long before flown over the summit, and within a few decades literally hundreds of other people from many nations would
climb Everest too. And what is particularly remarkable, anyway, about getting to the top of a mountain?
Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was
discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they
really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time. The world of th e
early 1950s was still a little punch-drunk from World War II, which had ended less than a decade before. Everything was
changing. Great old powers were falling, virile new ones were rising, and the huge, poor mass of Asia and Africa was stirring
into self-awareness. Hillary and Tenzing went to the Himalayas under the auspices of the Brit ish Empire, then recognizably in
terminal decline. The expedition was the British Everest Expedition, 1953, and it was led by Colonel John Hunt, the truest of
true English gentlemen. It was proper to the historical moment that one of the two climbers immortalized by the event came
from a remote former colony of the Crown and the other from a nation that had long served as a buffer state of the imperial Raj.
They were both very straightforward men. Tenzing was a professional mountaineer f rom the Sherpa community of
the Everest foothills. After several expeditions to the mountain, he certainly wanted to get to the top for vocational reason s, but
he also planned to deposit in the highest of all snows some offerings to the divinit ies that had long made Mt. Everest sacred to
his people. Hillary was by profession a beekeeper, and he would have been less than human if he had not occasionally thought,
buckling his crampons, that reaching the summit would make him famous.
They were not, though, heroes of the old epic kind, dedicated to colossal purposes, tight of jaw and stiff of upper lip.
Hillary and Tenzing were two cheerful and courageous fellows doing what they liked doing, and did, best, and they made an
oddly assorted pair. Hillary was tall, lanky, big-boned and long-faced, and he moved with an incongruous grace, rather like a
giraffe. He habitually wore on his head a homemade cap with a cotton flap behind, as seen in old movies of the French Foreign
Legion. Tenzing was by comparison a Himalayan fashion model: s mall, neat, rather delicate, brown as a berry, with the
confident movements of a cat. Hillary grinned; Tenzing smiled. Hillary guffawed; Tenzing chuckled. Neither of them seemed
particularly perturbed by anything; on the other hand, neither went in for unnecessary bravado.
As it happened, their enterprise involved no great sacrifice. Nobody was killed, maimed or even frostbitten during
the British Everest Expedition of 1953. They were not in the least aggressive, except in a technical s ense. They were
considerate members of a team. The real point of mountain climbing, as of most hard sports, is that it voluntarily tests the
human spirit against the fiercest odds, not that it achieves anything more substantial or even wins the contest, for that matter.
For the most part, its heroism is of a subjective kind. It was the fate of Hillary and Tenzing, though, to become very public
heroes indeed, and it was a measure of the men that over the years they truly grew into the condition. Perhaps th ey thought that
just being the first to climb a hill was hardly qualificat ion for immortality; perhaps they instinctively realized destiny ha d
another place for them. For they both became, in the course of time, representatives not merely of their particular nations but of
half of humanity. Astronauts might justly claim that they were envoys of all humanity; Hillary and Tenzing, in a less
spectacular kind, came to stand for the small nations of the world, the young ones, the tucked-away and the up-and-coming.
Both, of course, were showered with worldly honors, and accepted them with aplomb. Both became the most
celebrated citizens of their respective countries and went around the world on their behalf. But both devoted much of their l ives
to the happiness of an archetypically unprivileged segment of mankind: the Sherpas, Tenzing's people, true natives of the
Everest region. Tenzing, who died in 1986, became their charismat ic champion and a living model of their potential. Grand old
Ed Hillary, who is still robustly with us, has spent years in their country supervising the building of airfields, schools and
hospitals and making the Sherpas' existence better known to the world. Thus the two of them rose above celebrity to stand up
for the unluckier third of humanity, who generally cannot spare the time or energy, let alone the money, to mess around in
mountains.
I liked these men very much when I first met them on the mountain nearly a half-century ago, but I came to admire
them far more in the years that follo wed. I thought their brand of heroism the herois m of example, the heroism of debts
repaid and causes sustained far more inspiring than the gung-ho kind. Did it really mean much to the human race when
Everest was conquered for the first time? Only because there became attached to the memory of the exploit, in the years that
followed, a reputation for decency, kindness and stylish simplicity.












37) Edwin Hubble

During the past 100 years, astronomers have discovered quasars, pulsars, black holes and planets orbiting distant
suns. But all these pale next to the discoveries Edwin Hubble made in a few remarkable years in the 1920s. At the time, most
of his colleagues believed the Milky Way galaxy, a swirling collection of stars a few hundred thousand light-years across, made
up the entire cosmos. But peering deep into space from the chilly summit of Mount Wilson, in Southern California, Hubble
realized that the Milky Way is just one of millions of galaxies that dot an incomparably larger setting.
Hubble went on to trump even that achievement by showing that this galaxy-studded cosmos is expanding
inflating majestically like an unimaginably gigantic balloon. Hubble did nothing less, in short, than invent the idea of the
universe and then provide the first evidence for the Big Bang theory, which describes the birth and evolution of the universe.
He discovered the cosmos, and in doing so founded the science of cosmology.
Hubble's astronomical triumphs earned him worldwide scientific honors and made him the toast of Hollywood
during the 1930s and 1940s. Yet nobody (except perhaps Hubble) could have imagined such a future when the 23-year-old
Oxford graduate began his first job, in New Albany, Ind., in 1913. Hubble majored in science as an undergraduate at t he
University of Chicago. A tall, powerfully built young man, he excelled at basketball and boxing (fight promoters reportedly
tried to talk him into turning pro), and his combination of academic and athletic prowess earned him a Rhodes scholarship to
Oxford. In England, Hubble kept up his muscular pursuits: he fought, ran track and played on one of the first baseball teams
ever organized in the British Isles.
His official academic focus shifted, thanks to a promise made to his dying father that he would s tudy law rather than
science (he also took up literature and Spanish). On his return to America, he took a position as a high school Spanish teach er.
Though he was popular with students Hubble longed to return to science. After a year, he signed on as a graduate student at
Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin and embarked on the work that would one day make him famous: studying faint, hazy blobs
of light called nebulae (from the Latin word for cloud) that are visible through even a modest telescope.
Hubble's skills as an astronomer were impressive enough to earn him an offer from the prestigious Mount Wilson
Observatory. World War I kept him from accepting right away, but in 1919 the newly discharged Major Hubble arrived at
observatory headquarters, still in uniform but ready to start observing with the just completed 100-in. Hooker Telescope, the
most powerful on earth.
Up on the mountain, Hubble encountered his greatest scientific rival, Harlow Shapley, who had already made his
reputation by measuring the size of the Milky Way. Using bright stars called Cepheid variables as standardized light sources,
he had gauged the galaxy as being an astounding 300,000 light -years across 10 times as big as anyone had thought. Yet
Shapley claimed that the Milky Way was the whole cosmic ball of wax. The luminous nebulae were, he insisted, just what they
looked like: clouds of glowing gas that were relatively nearby.
Hubble wasn't so sure. And in 1924, three years after Shapley departed to take over the Harvard Observatory, Hubble
found proof to the contrary. Spotting a Cepheid variable star in the Andromeda nebula, Hubble used Shapley's technique to
show that the nebula was nearly a million light-years away, far beyond the bounds of the Milky Way. It 's now known to be the
full-fledged galaxy closest to our own in a universe that contains tens of billions of galaxies.
Hubble's scientific reputation was made almost overnight by his discovery that the universe is vast and the Milky
Way insignificant. But he had already moved on to a new problem. For years, astronomers had noted that light from the
nebulae was redder than it should be. The most likely cause of this so-called red shifting was motion away from the observer.
(The same sort of thing happens with sound: a police car's siren seems to drop in pitch abruptly as the car races past a listener.)
Hubble and his assistant began measuring the distances to these receding nebulae and found what is now known as
Hubble's Law: the farther away a galaxy is from Earth, the faster it's racing away. Could it be that the universe as a whole is
rapidly expanding? That conclusion was extraordinary, almost mind-blowing, yet seemed inescapable.
When Einstein heard of Hubble's discovery, he was elated. More than a decade earlier, his new general theory of
relativity had told him that the universe must either be expanding or contracting, yet astronomers had told him it was doing
neither. Against his better judgment, Einstein had uglied up his elegant equations with an extra factor he called th e
cosmological term a sort of antigravity force that kept the universe from collapsing in on itself.
But suddenly, the cosmological term was unnecessary. Einstein's instincts had been right, after all. His great blunder
had been to doubt himself, and in 1931, during a visit to Caltech, the great and grateful physicist traveled to the top of Mount
Wilson to see the telescope and thank Hubble personally for delivering him from folly.
With the greatest scientific superstar of the age paying him homage, Hubble became a popular superstar in his own
right. His 1936 book on his discoveries, "The Realm of the Nebulae", cemented his public reputation. Tourists and Hollywood
luminaries alike would drive up the mountain to marvel at the observatory where Hubble had discovered the universe, and he
and his wife Grace were embraced by the elite of California society.
The only recognition that eluded him was a Nobel Prize and not for lack of effort on his part. He tried everything.
In the late 1940s he even hired a publicity agent to promote his cause. Alas, there was no prize for astronomy, and by the time
the Nobel committee decided astronomy could be viewed as a branch of physics, it was too late. Insiders say Hubble was on
the verge of winning when he died. Hubble would have been consoled by the fact that his name adorns the Hubble Space
Telescope, which probes the cosmos to depths he could not have imagined but would have fully appreciated.

38) Lee Iacocca

Lido A. Iacocca was born on October 25, 1924. (Lido would change his name to Lee after going to work for Ford.
He felt it would be easier for business associates and contacts to recognize and understand.) His parents were Italian
immigrants. Lees parents worked hard to provide for their family. Lees father believed in America. He felt in America you
had the freedom to become anything you wanted to be if you were willing to work hard for it, and he did just that. He opened a
hot dog stand called the Orpheum Wiener House, sold real estate, and started the first rental car business called U-Drive-It. He
did all this with only a 4th grade education.
Lee was never afraid of work. When he was 10 years old, he would take his wagon to the grocery store and wait
outside. As shoppers came out he would offer to pull their groceries home for them for a tip. When he turned 16, he worked 16
hours a day in a fruit market. Lee attributes his work ethic to the example set by his father.
The depression hit his family just as hard as the rest of the country. Lee feels the depression had a direct impact on
his life. It turned him into a materialist. When he graduated from college his only goal was to make $10,000 a year by the ti me
he was 25, and then progress to a millionaire. Lee believes the reason he gets upset about waste, wheth er its throwing away
food, having to get rid of clothing just because it s gone out of style, or waste in business is a direct result of the depression. He
also feels this is why most of his financial investments are very conservative. In the back of his mind he knows disaster could
strike without warning.
In grade school Lee came face to face with ethnic intolerance. He was looked down on because he was Italian. He
also had two Jewish friends that were treated even worse than he was. It didnt matter that the three boys were top in the class,
it just mattered that they were different. This made an impression on Lee that he would never forget. He realized the
importance of recognizing people for their contributions and abilities, not their race or nationality.
When Lee tried to enlist in the army to fight in World War II, he was classified as 4F. This was due the rheumatic
fever he had as a child. Instead he went to Lehigh University. After graduating from Lehigh he landed a job with Ford, but pu t
it on hold because he won the Wallace Memorial Fellowship at Princeton. He Graduated from Princeton and started working
for Ford in 1946.
One of the reasons Lee did so well in business was his ability to adapt quickly in any situation. Lee says there is one
word that describes a good manager, and it is DECISIVENESS. You have to think on your feet. This is exactly what he did in
1956. His district was last in sales. He decided to introduce a new program called "56 for 56". This program made it possible to
purchase a new 1956 Ford for 20% down and $56.00 a month for 3 years. The program was a huge success. His district went
from last place in sales to first place. Due to this program it was estimated that an extra 75,000,000 cars were sold.
Another project that Lee undertook was the Fairlane Committee. This committee used research data to decide what
type of new car to produce. The end product was the 1964 Mustang. This project allows us a glimpse of Lee s business
management style. He used good marketing research data, he surrounded himself with good people, and he was willing to
listen to them. He was also willing to take the risk of introducing a new product. All of this combined to make the Mustang a
success. Lee became known as the Father of the Mustang.
After the huge success of the Mustang, Lee was made President of Ford on December 10, 1970. He realized quickly
that his job as President was far different than that of a manager. He now had to cut costs and increase profits instead of s elling,
market ing and design. He initiated a program called "Shuck The Losers". This program gave managers 3 years to make their
departments profitable or sell them off. He was also involved with several other projects while at Ford. By the end of 1975 Lee
began having trouble at Ford. Most of this seemed to be a personality conflict between Henry Ford II and Lee. The tension
continued to escalate, and Lee was fired in July of 1978. He didnt sit around for long. He joined forces with Chrysler on
November 2, 1978.
It didnt take long for Lee to figure out that Chrysler was in a state of emergency. There was a serious lack of
communicat ion, and there was no team work. Each department seemed to be working in a vacuum. He had to make some
drastic decisions. He was forced to fire many of the executives. He tried to set up a partnership between Chrysler and
Volkswagen, but Volkswagen realized how deep in debt Chrysler was and the deal fell through. Lee was not able to pull
everything together and make it work. He had to go to the government to get government backed loans. He also bargained with
the union for cuts in salary and benefits. He reduced his salary to $1.00 per year to show that everyone at the company must be
willing to sacrifice if their company was to survive. This again gives you an idea of his management style. He was able to
understand the worker as well as the executives, and somehow pull them together. By 1983 Lee had Chrysler back on their feet ,
and on July 13, 1983 Chrysler paid back all their government loans. Lee made a public statement, "We at Chrysler borrow
money the old fashioned way. We pay it back."
Lee feels the keys to successful management are the ability to concentrate and use time wisely. Establishing priorities
and being a problem solver are a must. Managers need to be decision makers as well as mot ivators. The best way to motivate
people is to communicate with them. A good manager needs to listen at least as much as he talks. One of the most important
things to remember in business is that every problem can not be structured and reduced to a case study if you want to stay
ahead of the competition in todays global market place. In corporate life there are always people who feel they need additional
research, but after a certain point when most of the relevant facts are in, a decision must be made. A certain amount of risk
taking is necessary. Businesses dont have the luxury of slow decision making today. Lee Iacoccas success in business shows
he not only talks about the above keys to success, but he has practiced them, and for him they have worked well.

39) Hu Jintao

It has been 14 years since Deng Xiaoping promoted Mr Hu to the party's ruling Politburo, thereby earmarking him to
succeed Jiang Zemin as the "core" of the Communist Party's fourth generation of leaders. But in all that time he gave little clue
as to what sort of leader he would be, and after five years in highest office, the picture is not much clearer.
Analysts agree that he has tried to give more consideration to the plight of ordinary people, and one of the key
phrases used has been "yi ren wei ben", or putting people first. There has also been a little more openness, notably at the time
of the Sars outbreak, though Mr Hu has made clear he has no interest in going so far as countenancing West ern-style political
reform.
He has been described as a builder of consensus, bridging competing factions at the top of the party. It may be that
his public persona remains a mystery because he has been careful to move slowly and not antagonise his predecessor, Mr Jiang,
who remains a powerful and influential figure.
Hu Jintao was born in 1942, and he is the first leader whose party career began after the Communist takeover in 1949.
Official biographies say he was born in eastern Anhui province, and joined the party at the height of the Cultural Revolution in
1964 when he was studying hydroelectric engineering at Beijing's prestigious Qinghua University.
After graduating, he worked his way up through the ranks in the Ministry of Water Conservancy and Power. Mr Hu's
party career began to take off after Deng's rise to power in the late 1970s. He was one of several young administrators
promoted rapidly because of their performance or patrons. Hu Jintao has served in key posts in some of China's poorest and
most remote provinces. He headed the Communist Youth League in Gansu and became party chief in Tibet and Guizhou.
In Tibet, he demonstrated his toughness when he responded to separatist protests by declaring martial law. It paved
the way for similarly harsh measures to be used to end the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in Beijing. Many Tibetans even
believe Mr Hu had a hand in the unexpected death of the Panchen Lama, their second highest spiritual leader. They also
criticised him for spending little time in Tibet - the apparent reason being that he suffered from altitude sickness.
When Mr Hu returned to Beijing as a member of the Politburo's seven-man Standing Committee in 1992, he took
over key tasks such as handling personnel matters and supervising the ideological training of top officials. The courses he
introduced on market economics and good governance have led some to speculate that he is at heart a reformer.
Whatever his instincts, he has always been a faithful follower of the party line. One of Mr Hu's few recorded sayings
is that success in life "requires resolve, attention to concrete matters and courage in making decisions".


April 21, 2006
Excerpts from a translation of Chinese President Hu Jintao's remarks at Yale

Today, I would like to speak to you about China's development strategy and its future against the backdrop of the
evolution of the Chinese civilization and China's current development endeavor. In a history that spans more than five
millennia, the Chinese nation has contributed significantly to the progress of human civilization. But its course of national
development has been an arduous one. The Chinese people have fought courageously and unyieldingly to rid themselves of
poverty and backwardness and to realize national rejuvenation, thus profoundly changing the destiny of the Chinese nation.
Ninety-five years ago, the Chinese people launched the Revolution of 1911 that overthrew the feudal autocracy which had
ruled China for thousands of years and opened the door to China's progress .
Fifty-seven years ago, the Chinese people succeeded in winning liberation after protracted and hard struggle and
founded New China in which people became their own masters. Twenty-eight years ago, the Chinese people embarked upon
the historic drive of reform, opening-up and modernization and have made phenomenal progress through unremitting efforts.
By carrying out persistent and hard struggle, the Chinese people have both changed their own destiny and advanced the cause
of human progress.
On the other hand, I need to point out that, despite the success in its development, China remains the world's largest
developing country, with per capita GDP ranking behind the 100th place. The Chinese people are yet to live a well-off life and
China still faces daunting challenges in its development endeavor. Therefore it requires sustained and unremitting efforts to
transform the country and make life better for its people. In the next 15 years, we will strive to make new progress in build ing
a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way that will benefit China's one billion and more population. By then, China's
economy will be better developed and its democracy will be further enhanced. More progress will be made in science and
education. Its culture will be further enriched, the society will become more harmonious and the people will lead a better life.
To realize these goals, China has adopted a new concept of development. That is, to pursue a scientific outlook on
development that makes economic and social development people-oriented, comprehensive, balanced and sustainable. We will
work to strike a proper balance between urban and rural development, development among regions, economic and social
development, development of man and nature, and domestic development and opening wider to the outside world. Greater
emphasis will be put on addressing issues affecting people's livelihood, overcoming imbalances in development and resolving
key problems that have occurred in the course of development. We will pursue a new path to industrialization featuring high
technology, good economic returns, low resource-consumption, low environment pollution and full use of human resources.
We will bring about coordinated economic, polit ical, cultural and social development. And we will endeavor to ensure
sustainable development by boosting production, improving people's life and protecting the environment.
40) Kim Jong Il

As Kim Jong Il continues to elude efforts to constrain his nuclear program, a grudging regard for the North Kor ean
leader's tactical skills is rising. Mr. Kim was once thought to be over his head as a leader. But 12 years after the death of his
father, Kim Il Sung, the son is showing brilliance as a dictator. Some experts say that Kim, in his own way, may be shrewd er
than the father who built the nation.
Certainly, Kim has become a skillful player on the world stage. He retains firm hold of the most totalitarian state on
earth. His nation has survived an epic famine. Kim has astutely nullified a dawning realization among his people that the world
beyond North Korea's borders is a better place. He's even created a new image for himself at home - not as a towering patriarch
- but as a figure of sympathy, a beleaguered, America-taunted leader who eats soldier's gruel and deserves care by the masses.
He's played a smart propaganda game in South Korea, where some elites admire him as a nationalist torchbearer for "true
Korean-ness," and for outwitting the great powers.
Now, Kim has tested a nuclear weapon - the eighth nation to publicly do so - and has developed a ballistic missile
program. Abroad, Kim is seen as enigmatic, reclusive - part fox, part oddball. He's reported to hold all-night part ies that serve
as loyalty tests. He chain-smokes, loves Ferraris, goes gaga over gourmet food, has 30 homes, wears 12-centimeter high (4.7
inch) platform shoes, kidnaps the occasional South Korean actress, and is crazy about karaoke, James Bond films, and the
Internet.
Yet that image, though partly true, is itself propaganda, say former Pyongyang diplomats, high-level defectors, and
Korea experts. They say the real Kim is a bit unsure, frightened of China and the US, and may suffer from a learning disability.
Kim's sister-in-law told a diplomat that Kim is "often timid."
Kim may suffer from stage fright. Surprisingly for a state leader, especially a "godhead," Kim's voice has been heard
only once by the nation, for a total of nine words. "Glory to the heroic soldiers of the People's Army," he said in 1992 at a n
obscure rally at a military base. Invitations to one state reception noted that one may speak to Kim, but that Kim would "not
speak in reply," a Eastern European diplomat remembers. Kim has never appeared live on TV. Even in the period of mourning
after the death of his father, the " Great Leader" - when posters stated mystically that "Kim Jong Il is now Kim Il Sung" - there
was no fireside chat by Kim junior to his people.
Yet Kim reportedly micromanages the entire country. His state is a hermet ically sealed cult that allows n o debate;
even top generals and their extended families undergo loyalty tests. A half -dozen concentration camps hold 200,000 inmates, a
dozen intelligence units spy on the people and each other. North Korea has the world's fifth-largest army.
One side of Kim only now emerging is how closely he stays in touch with the people. The Dear Leader is on the road,
working the crowds, a great deal. Studies of Korean media show Kim averages about 150 local visits a year. He may not make
live televised speeches, but he's at a school, a factory, a farm, a military base - every three days. (He shows up at a military unit
once a week.) This suggests a populist streak.
Kim also appears today to be intensifying his ethnic nationalist message: Korea is different, special, unique, pure -
and must remain so. The message has more affinity with Imperial -era race-based fascism in Japan, than to the Stalinism he's
often depicted as emulating. There's another fact often overlooked, say North watchers: Kim is getting older. There may be a
new urgency to resolve the nuclear question, to seal his dynasty.
Kim was born "Uri" or George, in Khabarovsk lower Siberia in 1942 or '43 (the date is disputed), in a medicine
supply house of the Soviet 88th Reconnaissance Brigade. Kim Il Sung's guerrilla brigade had been bloodied in Manchuria by
the Japanese, and he escaped to Russia with his wife. Young Kim was cared for by Korean and Russian servants. This early
mix of foreign contact continued later in Pyongyang, so Kim never entirely imbibed Korean habits, where "sameness" is prized.
He was early an individualist - adopting different hair-styles, dress, shoes, and behavior.
That "difference" has helped set Kim apart. Now he has nuclear capability. Yet the depths of Kim's pride, how he
views his place in history, or how he would react in a threatening crisis, is not clear. In the former Soviet Union and China, and
presumably in India and Pakistan, nuclear weapons are held by " mediating structures" of party and military decisionmaking
committees. But Kim alone controls the dreaded button in the North.
It is unknown if Kim might ever find it "rat ional" to use his weapons, say experts. Mostly, it is felt that Kim wants to
avoid the fate that befell dictators such as Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, who was overthrown and killed.
Despite Kim's adroit nuclear card playing, Asia watchers say any appraisal must weighed against what Kim might
have done with his rule. Fifteen years ago, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, there was genuine hope in Asia tha t Kim might
be a new kind of leader. He might open up the economy, tone down the cult worship, act more like former Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev. Kim could have created special economic zones as China did. Yet Kim has systematically quashed his own
reforms, including those of a brilliant technocrat, Kim Dal Hyon, former deputy prime minister of the economy who
experimented with the free market in the Tumen River project. In one sense, Kim is prisoner to his own fantastic ideology of
isolation. To allow outside influences into the regime could snap the spell of his own Oz-like deification, experts say.







41) Steven Jobs (Apple Computers)

Excerpts from Stanfords Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animat ion Studios
(June 12, 2005)

I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want
to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed
around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to
put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to
be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really
wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpecte d
baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never
graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers .
She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all
of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I
had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was
spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work o ut
OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I
could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for
the 5 deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at
the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be
priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus
every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take
the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefa ces,
about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was
beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any pract ical applicat ion in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the
first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautif ul
typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had mult iple typefaces or
proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If
I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the
wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But
it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to
trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny, life, karma,
whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started
Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a
garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation the Macintosh a
year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple
grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went
well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of
Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone ,
and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down -
that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away
from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not
changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever hap pened to
me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It
freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT and another company named Pixar. Pixar went on to
create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animat ion studio in the
world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at
the heart of Apple's current renaissance.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but
I guess the patient needed it. Somet imes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only
thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. Your work is going to fill a large pa rt of
your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to
love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you
find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't
settle.
My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it
was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I
have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I
am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change
something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices
in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just
fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I
know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your
heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on
my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is
incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that
evening I had a biopsy and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they
viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic can cer
that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived
through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No
one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all
share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Lif e. It is
Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from
now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma which is living with
the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most
important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles
of my generation. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with
typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along:
it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
When it had run its course, a final issue was put out. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of
their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you
were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." And I have always wished that for myself. And
now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

























42) James Joyce

James Joyce once told a friend, "One of the things I could never get accustomed to in my youth was the difference I
found between life and literature." All serious young readers notice this difference. Joyce dedicated his career to erasing i t and
in the process revolutionized 20th century fiction.
The life he would put into his literature was chiefly his own. Born near Dublin in 1882, James Augustine Aloysius
was the eldest of the 10 surviving children of John and Mary Jane Joyce. His father was irascible, witty, hard drinking and
ruinously improvident; his mother, a devout Roman Catholic, helplessly watched her husband and family slide into near
poverty and hoped for a happier life in the hereafter. James' entire education came at the hands of the Jesuits, who did a be tter
job with him than they may have intended. By the time the young Joyce graduated from University College, Dublin, in 1902,
he decided he had learned enough to reject his religion and all his obligations to family, homeland and the British who ruled
there. Literature would be his vocation and his bid for immortality.
He fled Ireland into self-imposed exile late in 1904, taking with him Nora Barnacle, a young woman from Galway
who was working as a hotel chambermaid in Dublin when Joyce met her earlier that year. (On hear ing that his son had run off
with a girl named Barnacle, John Joyce remarked, playing on her last name, "She'll never leave him." And, proving puns can
be prophetic, she never did.)
Joyce departed Dublin with nearly all the narratives he would ever write already stored in his memory. What
remained for him to do was transform this cache into an art that could measure up to his own expectations.
As he and Nora and then their two children moved among and around European cities , Joyce found clerical and
teaching jobs that provided subsistence to his family and his writing. His first published book of fiction, Dubliners (1914),
contained 15 stories short on conventional plots but long on evocative atmosphere and language. A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man (1916) provided a remarkably objective and linguistically complex account of Stephen Dedalus, i.e. James Joyce,
from his birth to his decision to leave Dublin in pursuit of his art.
Portrait did not sell well enough to relieve Joyce's chronic financial worries, but his work by then had attracted the
attention of a number of influential avant-gardists, most notably the expatriate American poet Ezra Pound, who believed a new
century demanded new art, poetry, fiction, music everything. Such supporters rallied to promote Joyce and his experimental
writings, and he did not disappoint them.
He began Ulysses in 1914; portions of it in progress appeared in the Egoist in England and the Little Review in the
U.S., until the Post Office, on grounds of alleged obscenity, confiscated three issues containing Joyce's excerpts and fined the
editors $100. The censorship flap only heightened curiosity about Joyce's forthcoming book. Even before Ulysses was
published, critics were comparing Joyce's breakthroughs to those of Einstein and Freud.
The clearest and most concise description of Joyce's technique came from the critic Edmund Wilson: "Joyce has
attempted in Ulysses to render as exhaustively, as precisely and as direct ly as it is possible in words to do, what our
participation in life is like or rather, what it seems to us like as from moment to moment we live."
A first reading of Ulysses can thus be a baffling experience, although no book more generously rewards patience and
fortitude. Stephen Dedalus reappears, still stuck in Dublin, dreaming of escape. Then we meet Leopold Bloom, or rather we
meet his thoughts as he prepares breakfast for his wife Molly.
Ulysses is the account of one day in Dublin June 16, 1904, Joyce's private tribute to Nora, since that was the date
on which they first went out together. The book follows the movements of not only Stephen and Bloom but also hundreds of
other Dubliners as they walk the streets, meet and talk, then talk some more in restaurants and pubs. All this activity seems
random, a record of urban happenstance.
But nothing in Ulysses is truly random. Beneath the surface realism of the novel, its apparently artless transcription
of life's flow, lurks a complicated plan. Friends who were in on the secret of Ulysses urged Joyce to share it, to make things
easier for his readers. He resisted at first: "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for
centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of ensuring one's immortality."
Joyce later relented, and so the world learned that Ulysses was, among many other things, a modern retelling of
Homer's Odyssey, with Bloom as the wandering hero, Stephen as Telemachus and Molly as a Penelope decidedly less faithful
than the original. Ulysses made Joyce famous. But more important, Ulysses became a source book for 20th century literature.
It expanded the domain of permissible subjects in fiction, following Bloom not only into his secret erotic fantasies but his
outdoor privy as well.
Its multiple narrative voices and ext ravagant wordplay made Ulysses a virtual thesaurus of styles for writers
wrestling with the problem of rendering contemporary life. Aspects of Joyce's accomplishment in Ulysses can be seen in the
works of William Faulkner, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison, all of
whom, unlike Joyce, won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
But the only author who t ried to surpass the encyclopedic scope of Ulysses was Joyce himself. He spent 17 year s
working on Finnegans Wake, a book intended to portray Dublin's sleeping life as thoroughly as Ulysses had explored the wide -
awake city. This task, Joyce decided, required the invention of a new language that would mime the experience of dreaming.
As excerpts from the new work, crammed with multilingual puns and Jabberwocky-like sentences, began appearing in print,
even Joyce's champions expressed doubts. To Pound's complaint about obscurity, Joyce replied, "The action of my new work
takes place at night. It's natural things should not be so clear at night, isn't it now?" Today, only dedicated Joyceans regularly
attend the Wake. A century from now, his readers may catch up with him.

43) John Maynard Keynes

He hardly seemed cut out to be a workingman's revolutionary. A Cambridge University don with a flair for making
money, a graduate of England's exclusive Eton prep school, a collector of modern art, the darling of Virginia Woolf and her
intellectually avant-garde Bloomsbury Group, the chairman of a life -insurance company, later a director of the Bank of
England, married to a ballerina, John Maynard Keynes tall, charming and self-confident nonetheless transformed the
dismal science into a revolutionary engine of social progress.
Before Keynes, economists were gloomy naysayers. "Nothing can be done," "Don't interfere," "It will never work,"
they intoned with Eeyore-like pessimis m. But Keynes was an unswerving optimist. Of course we can lick unemployment!
There's no reason to put up with recessions and depressions!
Born in Cambridge, England, in 1883, Keynes probably saved capitalis m from itself. His father was a noted
Cambridge economist. His mother became mayor of Cambridge. Young John was a brilliant student but didn't immediately
aspire to either academic or public life. He wanted to run a railroad. But no railway came along, and Keynes ended up taking
the civil service exam. His lowest mark was in economics. "I evidently knew more about Economics than my examiners," he
later explained.
Keynes was posted to the India Office, but the civil service proved deadly dull, and he soon left. He lectured at
Cambridge, edited an influential journal, socialized with his Bloomsbury friends, surrounded himself with artists and writers
and led an altogether dilettantish life until World War I. Keynes was called to Britain's Treasury to work on overseas finances,
where he quickly shone. Even his art istic tastes came in handy. He figured a way to balance the French accounts by having
Britain's National Gallery buy paintings by Manet, Corot and Delacroix at bargain prices.
His first brush with fame came soon after the war, when he was selected to be a delegate to the Paris Peace
Conference of 1918-19. The young Keynes held his tongue as Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George a nd Georges
Clemenceau imposed vindictive war reparations on Germany. But he let out a roar when he returned to England, immediately
writing a short book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. The Germans, he wrote acerbically, could not possibly pay
what the victors were demanding. Calling Wilson a "blind, deaf Don Quixote" and Clemenceau a xenophobe with "one illusion
France, and one disillusion mankind", an outraged Keynes prophesied that the reparations would keep Germany
impoverished and ultimately threaten all Europe.
His little book sold 84,000 copies, caused a huge stir and made Keynes an instant celebrity. But its real import was to
be felt decades later, after the end of World War II. Instead of repeating the mistake made almost three decades before, the U.S.
and Britain bore in mind Keynes' earlier admonit ion. The surest pathway to a lasting peace, they then understood, was to help
the vanquished rebuild. Public investing on a grand scale would create trading partners that could turn around a nd buy the
victors' exports, and also build solid middle-class democracies in Germany, Italy and Japan.
Yet Keynes' largest influence came from a badly organized tome published in 1936, during the depths of the Great
Depression. It was called "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money." Keynes' basic idea was simple. In order
to keep people fully employed, governments have to run deficits when the economy is slowing. That's because the private
sector won't invest enough. As their markets become saturated, businesses reduce their investments, setting in motion a
dangerous cycle: less investment, fewer jobs, less consumption and even less reason for business to invest. The economy may
reach perfect balance, but at a cost of high unemployment and social misery. Better for governments to avoid the pain in the
first place by taking up the slack.
The notion that government deficits are good has an odd ring these days. But some 60 years ago, when 1 out of 4
adults couldn't find work, the problem was lac k of demand. Even then, Keynes had a hard sell. Most economists of the era
rejected his idea and favored balanced budgets. Most politicians didn't understand his idea to begin with. In the 1932
presidential elect ion, F.D.R. had blasted Herbert Hoover for running a deficit, and promised he would balance the budget if
elected. Keynes' visit to the White House two years later to urge F.D.R. to do more deficit spending wasn't exactly a blazing
success.
As the Depression wore on, Roosevelt tried public works, farm subsidies and other devices to restart the economy,
but he never completely gave up trying to balance the budget. In 1938 the Depression deepened. Reluctantly, F.D.R. embraced
the only new idea he hadn't yet tried, that of the bewildering Keynes. As the President explained in a fireside chat, "We suffer
primarily from a failure of consumer demand because of a lack of buying power." It was therefore up to the government to
"create an economic upturn" by making "additions to the purchasing power of the nation."
Yet not until the U.S. entered World War II did F.D.R. try Keynes' idea on a scale necessary to pull the nation out of
the doldrums and Roosevelt, of course, had little choice. The big surprise was just how productive America could be when
given the chance. Between 1939 and 1944 (the peak of wartime production), the nation's output almost doubled, and
unemployment plummeted from more than 17% to just over 1%.
Never before had an economic theory been so dramatically tested. Even granted the special circumstances of war
mobilization, it seemed to work exactly as Keynes predicted. The grand experiment even won over many Republicans.
America's Employment Act of 1946 the year Keynes died codified the new wisdom, making it "the continuing policy
and responsibility of the Federal Government ...to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power."
And so the Federal Government did, for the next quarter-century. As the U.S. economy boomed, the government
became the nation's economic manager and the President its Manager in Chief. It became accepted wisdom that government
could "fine-tune" the economy, pushing the twin accelerators of fiscal and monetary policy in order to avoid slowdowns, and
applying the brakes when necessary to avoid overheating. Americans still take for granted that Washington has responsibility
for steering the economy clear of the shoals.
44) Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini

To Westerners, his hooded eyes and severe demeanor, his unkempt gray beard and his black turban and robes
conveyed an avenger's wrath. The image is the man. Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, the dour cleric who led an Islamic
revolution in Iran, perceived himself above all as an avenger of the humiliat ions that the West had for more than a century
inflicted on the Muslims of the Middle East.
He was among many Muslim autocrats in this century to embrace a mission designed as a corrective to the West.
Khomeini's strategy was to reject Western ways, keeping Iran close to its Islamic roots. Some ask, focusing on this strategy,
whether Khomeini was riding a popular wave in global affairs. In the late 20th century, Muslims were not alone in organizing
to restore religious belief to government. Christians in America, Jews in Israel, even Hindus in India were promoting the same
end. Did Khomeini's triumph augur an intellectual shift of global magnitude?
While historians ponder this question, it is enough to say that Khomeini presided brilliantly over the overthrow of a
wounded regime. He was merciless and cunning. His well-advertised piety complemented a prodigious skill in grasping and
shaping Iran's complex polit ics. Most important, he knew how to exploit the feelings of nationalist resentment that
characterized his time.
Ruhollah Khomeini his given name means "inspired of God" was born to a family of Shi'ite scholars in a
village near Tehran in 1902. Shi'is m, a minority sect in Islam, is Iran's official religion. Like his father, he moved from
theological studies to a career as an Islamic jurist. Throughout his life, he was acclaimed for the depth of his religious learning.
As a young seminary teacher, Khomeini was no act ivist. From the 1920s to the 1940s, he watched passively as Reza
Shah, a monarch who took Ataturk as his model, promoted secularization and narrowed clerical powers. Similarly, Khomeini
was detached from the great crisis of the 1950s in which Reza Shah's son Mohammed Reza Pahlavi turned to America to save
himself from demonstrators on Tehran's streets who were clamoring for democratic reform.
Khomeini was then the disciple of Iran's pre-eminent cleric, Ayatullah Mohammed Boroujerdi, a defender of the
tradition of clerical deference to established power. But in 1962, after Boroujerdi's death, Khomeini revealed his long -hidden
wrath and acquired a substantial following as a sharp-tongued antagonist of the Shah's.
Khomeini was clearly at home with populist demagogy. He taunted the Shah for his ties with Israel, warning that the
Jews were seeking to take over Iran. He denounced as non-Islamic a bill to grant the vote to women. He called a proposal to
permit American servicemen based in Iran to be tried in U.S. military courts "a document for Iran's enslavement." In 1964 he
was banished by the Shah to Turkey, then was permitted to relocate in the Shi'it e holy city of An Najaf in Iraq. But the Shah
erred in thinking Khomeini would be forgotten. In An Najaf, he received Iranians of every station and sent home tape cassette s
of sermons to be peddled in the bazaars. In exile, Khomeini became the acknowledged leader of the opposition.
In An Najaf, Khomeini also shaped a revolutionary doctrine. Shi'ism, historically, demanded of the state only that it
keep itself open to clerical guidance. Though relations between clergy and state were often tense, they were rarely belligerent.
Khomeini, condemning the Shah's servility to America and his secularis m, deviated from accepted tenets to attack the regime's
legitimacy, calling for a clerical state, which had no Islamic precedent.
In late 1978 huge street demonstrations calling for the Shah's abdication ignited the government's implosion.
Students, the middle class, bazaar merchants, workers, the army the pillars of society successively abandoned the regime.
The Shah had nowhere to turn for help but to Washington. Yet the more he did, the more isolated he became. In January 1979
he fled to the West. Two weeks later, Khomeini returned home in triumph.
Popularly acclaimed as leader, Khomeini set out to confirm his authority and lay the groundwork for a clerical stat e.
With revolutionary fervor riding high, armed vigilante bands and kangaroo courts made bloody work of the Shah's last
partisans. Khomeini canceled an experiment with parliamentarism and ordered an Assembly of Experts to draft an Islamic
constitution. Overriding reservations from the Shi'ite hierarchy, the delegates designed a state that Khomeini would command
and the clergy would run, enforcing religious law. In November, Khomeini part isans, with anti-American passions still rising,
seized the U.S. embassy and held 52 hostages.
Over the remaining decade of his life, Khomeini consolidated his rule. Proving himself as ruthless as the Shah had
been, he had thousands killed while stamping out a rebellion of the secular left. He stacked the state bureaucracies with faithful
clerics and drenched the schools and the media with his personal doctrines. After purging the military and security services, he
rebuilt them to ensure their loyalty to the clerical state.
Khomeini also launched a campaign to "export" the term was his the revolution to surrounding Muslim
countries. His provocations of Iraq in 1980 helped start a war that lasted eight years, at the cost of a million lives, and t hat
ended only after America intervened to sink several Iranian warships in the Persian Gulf. Iranians asked whether God had
revoked his blessing of the revolution. Khomeini described the defeat as "more deadly than taking poison."
Khomeini died a few months later. What is Khomeini's legacy? The revolution, no longer at risk, still revels in
having repeatedly, with impunity, defied the American Satan. The Islamic state was proof to the faithful that the Western
system need not be a universal model. Yet Khomeini rejected a parallel between his doctrines and the fundamentalis m
propounded by other Muslim dissidents. He never described himself as fundamentalist. He often said that Islam is not for 14
centuries ago in Arabia but for all time. Since Khomeini's death, the popular appeal of an Islamic state and of
fundamentalism has surely dimmed. Thinkers still debate and warriors kill, but no country seems prepared to emulate Iran.

45) Estee Lauder

Leonard Lauder, chief executive of the company his mother founded, says she always thought she "was growing a
nice little business." And that it is. A little business that controls 45% of the cosmetics market in U.S. department stores. A litt le
business that sells in 118 countries and last year grew to be $3.6 billion big in sales. The Lauder family's shares are worth more
than $6 billion.
But early on, there wasn't a burgeoning business, there weren't houses in New York, Palm Beach, Fla., or the south of
France. It is said that at one point there was one person to answer the telephones who changed her voice to become the
shipping or billing department as needed.
You more or less know the Este Lauder story because it's a chapter from the book of American business folklore. In
short, Josephine Esther Mentzer, daughter of immigrants, lived above her father's hardware store in Corona, a section o f
Queens in New York City. She started her enterprise by selling skin creams concocted by her uncle, a chemist, in beauty shops ,
beach clubs and resorts.
No doubt the potions were good Este Lauder was a quality fanatic but the saleslady was better. Much better.
And she simply outworked everyone else in the cosmet ics industry. She stalked the bosses of New York City depart ment stores
until she got some counter space at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1948. And once in that space, she utilized a personal selling a pproach
that proved as potent as the promise of her skin regimens and perfumes.
"Ambition." Ask Leonard for one defining word about his mother, and that's his choice. Even after 40 years in
business, Este Lauder would attend every launch of a new cosmet ics counter or shop, traveling to such places as Moscow and
other East European cities. Every Saturday she would go to her grandson's Origins store in Manhattan's hip SoHo district and
say, "Let me teach you how to sell." Only declining health has halted those visits during the past few years.
Did Lauder ever stop selling in her prime? She would give her famous friends and acquaintances small samples of
her products for their handbags; she wanted her brand in the hands of people who were known for having "t he best." She
personified the mantra of "think globally, act locally." You can't get any more local than Este Lauder's turning up at Saks on a
Saturday, showing the sales staff how to give customers personal attention and a free gift. The latter promotion , by the way,
proved to be a work of utter genius. Now an army of young women and men, exquisitely turned out and properly trained, do
the same in every department store that's worthy of the brands.
The global enterprise of the Este Lauder Cos. is centered on the 40th floor of the General Motors Building in
Manhattan. Here the realm of very Big Business meets the world of Estee Lauder focused, refined, every woman's dream
office. It has been the office of a businesswoman and mother, where work and family mingled seamlessly for decades in a
major corporation the Holy Grail of many working women today. Carol Phillips, who founded the Clinique line for the
company, describes Lauder's management style as highly creative. She conducted business in subtly elegant comfort. "Her
conference room was like a dining room, and everything was perfect. In the office were all the pleasant things that go with
running a household."
And what households she did have. Este Lauder loved to "entertain," as giving large dinner parties was once called.
She enjoyed "beautiful people" celebrities, the rich and famous and could invite them to dine with her at a table that
could seat 30 without extensions. The food and the wines, lovely. She didn't miss a thing. She learned as she grew up. She
watched; she enjoyed her world.
A word that must be added to the definition of Lauder: focus. She kept her eye on the world around her and on all
women wherever they might be. She "liked to think about beauty and was determined to give women the opportunity to feel
beautiful," says Leonard.
Beautiful didn't necessarily mean fashionable. The company never made any effort to be the makeup choice in the
fashion shows. What you had with Este Lauder was the quality of her view, of her demand for an ultrafeminine portrayal of
the product. Every woman in every ad was the essence of femininity. Hers is a product with a focus it's not MTV.
You will recognize the brand names, and what they stand for, as you would a friend's name: Este Lauder,
Prescriptives, Clinique, Origins and Aramis. The company has even bought hot new lines such as M.A.C., Bobbi Brown
Essentials and Tommy Hilfiger fragrances. Lauder's company may not be able to set trends, but it is never going to be left
behind by them. The boss and her son after her would never allow it. Says the company's vice chairman Jeanette
Wagner: "No matter how she aged in years, she was still the youngest thinker in the room."

















46) V. I. Lenin

Not long after the Bolsheviks had seized power in 1917, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin filled out a bureaucratic questionnaire.
For occupation, he wrote "man of letters." So it was that a son of the Russian intelligentsia, a radical, became the author of
mass terror and the first concentration camps ever built on the European Continent.
Lenin was the initiator of the central drama the tragedy of our era, the rise of totalitarian states. A bookish man
with a scholar's habits and a general's tactical instincts, Lenin introduced to the 20th century t he practice of taking an all-
embracing ideology and imposing it on an entire society rapidly and mercilessly; he created a regime that erased politics,
erased historical memory, erased opposition. In his short career in power, from 1917 until his death in 1924, Lenin created a
model not merely for his successor, Stalin, but for Mao, for Hitler, for Pol Pot.
And while in this way Lenin may be the central actor who begins the 20th century, he is the least knowable of
characters. As a boy growing up in Simbirsk, Lenin distinguished himself in Lat in and Greek. The signal event of his youth
the event that radicalized him came in 1887, when his eldest brother Alexander, a student at the University of St. Petersburg,
was hanged for conspiring to help assassinate Czar Alexander III. As a lawyer, Lenin became increasingly involved in radical
politics, and after completing a three-year term of Siberian exile, he began his rise as the leading communist theorist, tactician
and party organizer.
In his personal relations with colleagues, family and friends, Lenin was relat ively open and generous. Unlike many
tyrants, he did not crave a tyrant's riches. Even when we strip Lenin of the cult that was created all around him after his d eath,
when we strip away the myths of his "superhuman kindness," he remains a peculiarly modest figure who wore a shabby
waistcoat, worked 16-hour days and read extensively.
Before he became the general of the revolution, Lenin was its pedant, the journalist -scholar who married Marxist
theory to an incisive analysis of insurrectionist tactics. His theories of what society ought to be and how that ideal must be
achieved were the products of thousands of hours spent reading.
"The incomprehensibility of Lenin is precisely this all-consuming intellectuality the fact that from his calculat ions,
from his neat pen, flowed seas of blood, whereas by nature this was not an evil person," writes Andrei Sinyavsky, one of the
key dissidents of the 1960s. "On the contrary, Vladimir Ilyich was a rather kind person whose cruelty was stipulated by science
and incontrovertible historical laws. As were his love of power and his political intolerance."
For all his learning, Lenin began the Bolshevik tradit ion of waging war on intellectual dissidents of exiling,
imprisoning and executing thinkers and artists who dared oppose the regime. In the years before and after the October 1917
coup, Lenin was the avatar of a group of radical intellectuals who sought a revolution that did not merely attempt to redress the
economic balances under czarism. Instead, Lenin made a perverse reading of the Enlightenment view of man as modeling clay
and sought to create a new model of human nature and behavior through social engineering of the most radical kind.
"Bolshevism was the most audacious attempt in history to subject the entire life of a country to a master plan," writes
Richard Pipes at the end of his two-volume history of the revolution. "It sought to sweep aside as useless rubbish the wisdom
that mankind had accumulated over millennia. In that sense, it was a unique effort to apply science to human affairs: and it was
pursued with the zeal characteristic of the breed of intellectuals who regard resistance to their ideas as proof that they ar e
sound."
It is, perhaps, impossible to calculate just how many tens of millions of murders "flowed" from Leninism. It was
Lenin who built the first camps; Lenin who set off artificial famine as a polit ical weapon; Lenin who disbanded the last vest ige
of democratic government, the Constituent Assembly, and devised the Communist Party as the apex of a totalitarian structure;
Lenin who first waged war on the intelligentsia and on religious believers, wiping out any traces of civil liberty and a free press.
Since the Soviet archives became public, we have been able to read the extent of Lenin's cruelty, the depths of its
vehemence. Here he is in 1918, in a letter instructing Bolshevik leaders to attack peasant leaders who did not accept the
revolution: "Comrades! ... Hang (hang without fail, so that people will see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men,
bloodsuckers ... Do it in such a way that ... for hundreds of versts around, the people will see, tremble, know, shout: 'They are
strangling and will strangle to death the bloodsucker kulaks' ... Yours, Lenin."
Among those artists and writers who survived the revolution and its aftermath, many wrote paeans to Lenin's
intelligence that sound like nothing so much as religious songs of praise. By the Brezhnev era, Lenin's dream st ate had
devolved into a corrupt and failing dictatorship. Only the Lenin cult persisted. The ubiquitous Lenin was a symbol of the
repressive society itself.














47) Charles Lindbergh

While growing up on a farm near the s mall midwestern town of Twin Falls, Minnesota, Charles Lindbergh was
fascinated by speed. As a teenager, the thin, socially awkward young man acquired a motorcycle, which he raced around town,
testing the limits of his courage--and honing his skills at the controls of a speeding machine. Two years after enrolling at the
University of Wisconsin to study mechanical engineering, the 20-year-old Lindbergh dropped out and began a life of aerial
adventure. He toured the country with a veteran barnstormer who taught him how to wingwalk and parachute jump. In 1923,
Lindbergh borrowed $500 from his father and bought a World War One surplus Curt iss "Jenny" biplane, in which he finally
made his first solo flight.
Although just 22 years old, Lindbergh was already a skilled pilot when he enlisted in the Army Air Service in 1924.
A year later, he graduated from flight training school in San Antonio at the top of his class. After completing his army serv ice,
he took a job as chief pilot with the Robertson Aircraft Corporation in St. Louis. By his mid-t wenties, Lindbergh had logged
hundreds of hours in the air and been forced to parachute to safety at least four times. Still, the fearless young flyer's greatest--
and most dangerous--adventure was yet to come.
In 1919, Raymond Orteig, a New York hotel-owner, had offered $25,000 to the first aviator to fly nonstop from New
York to Paris. Eight years later, with the prize money still unclaimed, Lindbergh persuaded nine St. Louis businessmen to sha re
the $10,580 cost of custom-building an airplane, expressly to go after it. He named the M-2 strut-based monoplane the Spirit of
St. Louis.
About two hours after sunrise on May 20, 1927, Lindbergh taxied his small, single -engine aircraft down the rainy
runway at Long Island's Roosevelt Field. It was so loaded down with fuel that it almost touched the trees and telephone wires
near the field during its 7:52 a.m. takeoff. Using a magnetic compass to navigate, the 25-year-old aviator--dubbed "the Flying
Kid" or "the Flying Fool" by a skeptical press corps --charted a course north-northeast over the Atlantic.
Nearly a day later, with great relief, Lindbergh spotted the southwestern coast of Ireland. He flew over the British
Commonwealth republic, then over England and the English Channel. Thirty-three and one-half hours and 3,610 miles after
leaving New York, Lindbergh made aviat ion history when he landed at Le Bourget field near Paris at 10:21 p.m. The exhausted
young flyer was instantly mobbed by thousands of jubilant admirers from whom he literally had to be rescued by French police.
After being feted by British and European monarchs, Lindbergh returned to New York, where he received a hero's
welcome from four million people. In Washington, President Calvin Coolidge awarded Lindbergh the first -ever Distinguished
Flying Cross. The U.S. Congress presented him with the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was promoted from lieutenant to
colonel in the Army Air Corps reserves.
For the next five years, "Lucky Lindy" or "the Lone Eagle," as Lindbergh now was known to an adoring public,
continued to live a hero's life. He flew the Spirit of St. Louis to all 48 states to promote the neophyte commercial aviation
industry, then took it on a goodwill tour of Latin America.
During a stopover in Mexico City, he was hosted by U.S. Ambassador Dwight Morrow. Lindbergh was smitten by
the wealthy man's shy, beautiful 21-year-old daughter, Anne. They were married in May 1929. In June 1930 their first child,
Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., was born. Respected and adulated by millions, Char les and Anne Lindbergh were living what
seemed a fairy-tale perfect life. Less than two years later, however, America's Golden Couple was visited by tragedy. Bruno
Hauptmann, a German immigrant carpenter, kidnapped Charles Jr. from their suburban New Jersey home. Although a ransom
was demanded and paid, the Lindbergh's 20-month-old son was never returned and was later found dead. Hauptmann was
subsequently arrested, tried, convicted on capital charges, and executed.
The kidnapping and murder of the first-born son of America's hero brought wide and sensational press coverage. To
escape the unwelcome publicity, Lindbergh moved his family--which now included three-year-old son Jon--to Kent, England.
While living in Europe, Lindbergh was invited by the Nazi government to inspect the German aircraft industry, whose size and
capabilit ies for building advanced combat aircraft greatly impressed him. Adolf Hitler awarded the famed American aviator a
German medal of honor. Although Lindbergh was harshly criticized by U.S. crit ics of the Nazi regime, he refused to return the
medal, and later described the German dictator as "undoubtedly a great man."
In 1941, Lindbergh became a spokesman for the America First movement. He gave speeches and radio broadcasts for
the isolationist group, in which he criticized Jews, the British, and supporters of President Franklin D. Roosevelt for allegedly
trying to drag the United States into the burgeoning world war. Publicly castigated by the president as a traitor and defeati st,
Lindbergh angrily resigned his commission in the Army Air Corps.
But after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Lindbergh stopped his speechmaking and tried to
rejoin the military. Roosevelt blocked the move. However, in 1944, in the guise of civilian test pilot, Lindbergh flew some 50
combat missions over the South Pacific before senior commanders learned of the ruse and grounded him.
In May 1945, following the Allied victory in Europe, Lindbergh received a rare chance to officially redeem himse lf.
The U.S. government asked him to once again assess Germany's air capabilities, this time focusing on its V-2 rocket program.
Lindbergh gratefully obliged. Aware of Lindbergh's war service and his historic contributions to flight, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower later restored Lindbergh's military commission, promoting him to the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Air
Force Reserve.





48) Nelson Mandela

In the revolution led by Mandela to transform a model of racial division and oppression into an open democracy, he
demonstrated that he didn't flinch from taking up arms, but his real qualities came to the fore after his time as an activist
during his 27 years in prison and in the eight years since his release, when he had to negotiate the challeng e of turning a myth
into a man.
Rolihlahla Mandela was born deep in the black homeland of Transkei on July 18, 1918. His first name could be
interpreted, prophetically, as "troublemaker." The Nelson was added later, by a primary school teacher with delusi ons of
imperial splendor. Mandela's boyhood was peaceful enough, spent on cattle herding and other rural pursuits, until the death of
his father landed him in the care of a powerful relative. But it was only after he left the missionary College of Fort Hare, where
he had become involved in student protests against the white colonial rule of the institution, that he set out on the long wa lk
toward personal and national liberation.
Having run away from his guardian to avoid an arranged marriage, he joined a law firm in Johannesburg as an
apprentice. Years of daily exposure to the inhumanities of apartheid, where being black reduced one to the status of a
nonperson, kindled in him a kind of absurd courage to change the world. It meant that instead of the easy life in a rural setting
he'd been brought up for, or even a modest measure of success as a lawyer, his only future certainties would be sacrifice and
suffering, with little hope of success in a country in which centuries of colonial rule had concentrated all political and military
power, all access to education, and most of the wealth in the hands of the white minority. The classic conditions for a
successful revolution were almost wholly absent: the great mass of have-nots had been humbled into docile collusion, the
geographic expanse of the country hampered communicat ion and mobility, and the prospects of a race war were not only
unrealistic but also horrendous.
In these circumstances Mandela opted for nonviolence as a strategy. He joined the Youth League of the African
National Congress and became involved in programs of passive resistance against the laws that forced blacks to carry passes
and kept them in a position of permanent servility. Exasperated, the government mounted a massive treason trial against its
main opponents, Mandela among them. It dragged on for five years, until 1961, ending in the acquittal of all 156 accused. But
by that time the country had been convulsed by the massacre of peaceful black demonstrators at Sharpeville in March 1960,
and the government was intent on crushing all opposition. Most liberation movements, including the A.N.C., were banned.
Mandela went underground for more than a year and traveled abroad to enlist support for the A.N.C.
Soon after his return, he was arrested and sentenced to imprisonment on Robben Island for five years; within months
practically all the leaders of the A.N.C. were arrested. Mandela was hauled from prison to face with them an almost certain
death sentence. His statement from the dock was dest ined to smolder in the homes and servant quarters, the shacks and
shebeens and huts and hovels of the oppressed, and to burn in the conscience of the world: " During my lifetime I have
dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black
domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and wit h
equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared
to die."
Without any attempt to find a legal way out, Mandela assumed his full responsibility. This conferred a new status of
moral dignity on his leadership, which became evident from the moment he was returned to Robben Island. Even on his first
arrival, two years before, he had set an example by refusing to obey an order to jog from the harbor, where the ferry docked, to
the prison gates. The warden in charge warned him bluntly that unless he started obeying, he might quite simply be killed and
that no one on the mainland would ever be the wiser. Whereupon Mandela quietly retorted, "If you so much as lay a hand on
me, I will take you to the highest court in the land, and when I finish with you, you will be as poor as a church mouse."
Amazingly, the warden backed off. "Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose," Mandela later wrote in
notes smuggled out by friends.
His major response to the indignities of the prison was a creative denial of victimhood, expressed most remarkably
by a system of self-education. As the prisoners left their cells in the morning to toil in the extremes of summer and winter,
buffeted by the merciless southeaster or broiled by the African sun (whose glare in the limestone quarry permanently impaired
Mandela's vision), each team was assigned an instructor in history, economics, politics, philosophy, whatever. Previously
barren recreation hours were filled with cultural activities.
After more than two decades in prison, confident that on some crucial issues a leader must make decisions on his
own, Mandela decided on a new approach. And after painstaking preliminaries, the most famous prisoner in the world was
escorted, in the greatest secrecy, to the State President's office to start negotiating not only his own release but also the nation's
transition from apartheid to democracy. On Feb. 2, 1990, President F.W. de Klerk lifted the ban on the A.N.C. and announced
Mandela's imminent release.
Then began the real test. Every inch of the way, Mandela had to win the support of his own followers. More difficult
still was the process of allaying white fears. But the patience, the wisdom, the visionary quality Mandela brought to his
struggle, and above all the moral integrity with which he set about to unify a divided people, resulted in the country's first
democratic elections and his selection as President.
The road since then has not been easy. In the process he has undeniably made mistakes, based on a stubborn belief in
himself. Yet his stature and integrity remain such that these failings tend to enhance rather than diminish his humanity. Thr ough
his willingness to walk the road of sacrifice, he has reaffirmed our common potential to move toward a new age.

49) Ho Chi Minh

An emaciated, goateed figure in a threadbare bush jacket and frayed rubber sandals, Ho Chi Minh cultivated the
image of a humble, benign "Uncle Ho." But he was a seasoned revolutionary and passionate nationalist obsessed by a single
goal: independence for his country. Sharing his fervor, his tattered guerrillas vaulted daunting obstacles to crush France's
desperate attempt to retrieve its empire in Indochina; later, built into a largely conventional army, they frustrated the mas sive
U.S. effort to prevent Ho's communist followers from controlling Vietnam. For Americans, it was the longest war and the
first defeat in their history, and it drastically changed the way they perceived their role in the world.
To Western eyes, it seemed inconceivable that Ho would make the tremendous sacrifices he did. But in 1946, as war
with the French loomed, he cautioned them, "You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds,
you will lose and I will win." The French, convinced of their superiority, ignored his warning and suffered grievously as a
result. Senior American officers similarly nurtured the illusion that their sophisticated weapons would inevitably break enemy
morale. But Ho's principal concern had been victory. The human toll was horrendous. An estimated 3 million North and South
Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died.
The youngest of three children, Ho was born Nguyen Sinh Cung in 1890 in a village in central Vietnam. The area
was indirectly ruled by the French through a puppet emperor. Its impoverished peasants, traditional dissidents, opposed
France's presence; and Ho's father, a functionary at the imperial court, manifested his sympathy for them by quitting his
position and becoming an itinerant teacher. Inherit ing his father's rebellious bent, Ho participated in a series of tax revolts,
acquiring a reputation as a troublemaker. But he was familiar with the lofty French principles of libert, galit, fraternit and
yearned to see them in pract ice in France. In 1911 he sailed for Marseilles as a galley boy aboard a passenger liner. His record
of dissent had already earned him a file in the French police dossiers.
In Paris, Ho worked as a photo retoucher. The city's fancy restaurants were beyond his means, but he indulged in one
luxury American cigarettes, preferably Camels or Lucky Strikes. Occasionally he would drop into a music hall to listen to
Maurice Chevalier, whose charming songs he would never forget.
In 1919, Woodrow Wilson arrived in France to s ign the treaty ending World War I, and Ho, supposing that the
President's doctrine of self-determination applied to Asia, donned a cutaway coat and tried to present Wilson with a lengthy list
of French abuses in Vietnam. Rebuffed, Ho joined the newly creat ed French Communist Party. "It was patriotis m, not
communism, that inspired me," he later explained.
Soon Ho was roaming the earth as a covert agent for Moscow. Disguised as a Chinese journalist or a Buddhist monk,
he would surface in Canton, Rangoon or Calcutta then vanish to nurse his tuberculosis and other chronic diseases. As befit a
professional conspirator, he employed a baffling assortment of aliases. Again and again, he was reported dead, only to pop up
in a new place. In 1929 he assembled a few militants in Hong Kong and formed the Indochinese Communist Party. He
portrayed himself as a celibate, a pose calculated to epitomize his moral fiber, but he had at least two wives or perhaps
concubines.
In 1940, Japan's legions swept into Indochina and French officials in Vietnam, loyal to the pro-German Vichy
administration in France, collaborated with them. Nat ionalists in the region greeted the Japanese as liberators, but to Ho th ey
were no better than the French. Slipping across the Chinese frontier into Vietnam his first return home in three decades
he urged his disciples to fight both the Japanese and the French. There, in a remote camp, he founded the Viet Minh, an
acronym for the Vietnam Independence League, from which he derived his nom de guerre, Ho Chi Minh roughly "Bringer
of Light."
What he brought was a spirit of rebellion against first the French and later the Americans. As Ho's war escalated
in the mid-1960s, it became clear to Lyndon Johnson that Vietnam would imperil his presidency. In 1965, Johnson tried a
diplomatic approach. Accustomed to dispensing patronage to recalcitrant Congressmen, he was confident that the tactic would
work. "Old Ho can't turn me down," L.B.J. said. But Ho did. Any settlement, he realized, would mean acc epting a permanent
partition and forfeiting his dream to unify Vietnam under his flag.
There was no flexibility in Ho's beliefs, no bending of his will. Even as the war increasingly destroyed the country,
he remained committed to Vietnam's independence. And millions of Vietnamese fought and died to attain the same goal. Ho
died on Sept. 2, 1969, at the age of 79, some six years before his battalions surged into Saigon.















50) Michael Moore

American filmmaker Michael Moore introduced his confrontational style of documentary-making with the 1989 film
"Roger & Me". Moore's goal with the film, which chronicles the devastating effects of auto plant closures in Moore's
hometown of Flint, Michigan, was to prove that documentaries can simultaneously inform and entertain. Moore spent the
entire film attempting to interview General Motors Corporation president Roger Smith, and his antics often provoked laughter.
Moore applied the same ethos to his subsequent films, generating controversy and major box office success with "The Big One,
Bowling for Columbine", and "Farenheit 9/11.
Moore was born in 1954, in Davison, Michigan, a suburb of Flint, a working-class city. While Moore graduated from
Davison High School, he attended Catholic schools until age 14 and enrolled in the seminary in Saginaw, Michigan, for a time.
His interest in priesthood evolved from the same concern for social justice that his films reflected. Moore also revealed his
political leanings at an early age. As an Eagle Scout, he won a merit badge for a slide show exposing corporate polluters, and
in 1972, when 18-year-olds were first granted the right to vote, he successfully ran for the Davison County school board,
becoming one of the youngest elected officials in the United States.
Following his high school graduation, Moore briefly attended the University of Michigan-Flint, but soon dropped out.
He then founded a crisis-intervention hotline and began writing for an alternative newspaper, the Flint Voice. The paper later
became the Michigan Voice, and Moore its editor, leading to a job in San Francisco as editor at the left -wing Mother Jones
magazine.
Moore briefly worked for consumer activist Ralph Nader, and then returned to Flint, where auto -plant cutbacks and
closures amid a nationwide recession had crippled the economy. Soon after Moore's homecoming, GM, the city's largest
employer, announced plans for additional layoffs. Using money from a wrongful termination lawsuit against Mother Jones as
well as funds from the sale of his house and regular bingo games he organized, he began laying the groundwork for a film that
would explore the effect of the layoffs. Consulting with respected documentarians, Moore received a crash course in
filmmaking and set about attempting to secure an on-camera interview with GM CEO Smith in a manner that elicited both
shock and laughter. The result was Roger & Me, a crit ically lauded film released in 1989 that established Moore's now-
trademark confrontational and entertaining approach. "I think that if you make the art or the music or the film engaging,
entertaining, the message comes through much stronger than if the message is primary and entertainment is secondary," he said .
The formula worked: Warner Brothers bought the film, which Moore made for $250,000, for $3 million and it made $7 million
at the box office. As part of his deal with Warner Brothers, the studio paid for new homes for four unemployed autoworkers
featured in the film who had been evicted from their homes.
Moore next served as an interviewer in Rafferty's film Blood in the Face, a documentary about white power groups,
and directed Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint, a short follow-up to Roger & Me. In 1994, Moore brought his renegade style to
television with NBC's TV Nat ion, a show featuring many techniques Moore used in Roger & Me as it examined the high costs
of the American healthcare system, the shipping of garbage to poor communities, and the exclusivity of gated subdivisions,
among other topics. NBC dropped TV Nation after its first year, as did Fox after one season.
In 1996, Moore published Downsize This: Random Threats from an Unarmed American, a chronicle of various
pranks aimed at corporations he deemed greedy and unethical. During his tour for the book, which became a surprise bestseller,
Moore took a camera crew and visited numerous low-wage workers and their employers, most notably Phil Knight, chief
executive of shoe manufacturer Nike Incorporated. The result was the film The Big One. Moore told Tikkun he believed his
unassuming appearance the heavy-set filmmaker typically sports jeans, a windbreaker, and a baseball cap convinced
corporate executives they could outsmart him. "I just don't look like the kind of filmmaker that's going to give them any
trouble," he said. "So, without even thinking about it, they assume: whatever he shoots won't be shown because the system isn't
set up to service him getting to the point where his film would actually be on the screen. So, they're completely relaxed."
Moore returned to television in 1999, with The Awful Truth, a TV Nation-style show that ran for two seasons on the
cable network Bravo. His next book, Stupid White Men . . . And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation, a vehement
criticis m of President George W. Bush and his administration, was scheduled for publication in 2001. But after the September
11 terrorist attacks that year on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Moore's publisher, Random House, asked Moore to
alter several passages and threatened to drop the book when Moore refused. The book was ult imately published, however, after
several librarians supported Moore through an e-mail campaign. It quickly became a bestseller.
Moore released his third full-length documentary, Bowling for Columbine, in 2002. The film examines gun violence
in America against the backdrop of a 1999 school shooting in Littleton, Colorado, that left 15 people dead. In February of 20 03,
Moore received an Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film. He sharply crit icized Bush, who ha d just launched a
war in Iraq, in his acceptance speech.
Moore's rebuttal came in his next film, his most successful to date. Farenheit 9/11 crit icizes Bush's responses to the
terrorist attacks, especially his decision to launch a war in Iraq. The prospect of a major theatrical release appeared
questionable for a time, after the Walt Disney Company refused to let the film's distributor, Miramax, release the film.
Ult imately, Miramax heads Bob and Harvey Weinstein were permitted to purchase the film from Disney, and they in turn sold
it to IFC Entertainment and Lion's Gate Entertainment. The film made almost $22 million the weekend it was released, topping
the previous box-office record for a documentary set by Bowling for Columbine. Moore made no secret of hoping his film
inspired Americans to vote Bush out of office. He pushed for a summer release of the film and an October release of the DVD
to reach as many viewers as possible before the November 2004 U.S. presidential election.
51) Rupert Murdoch

To some he is little less than the devil incarnate, to others, the most progressive mover-and-shaker in the media
business. Whatever the case, as head of a global broadcasting empire, Rupert Murdoch continues to provoke strong emotions.
Rupert Murdoch is as ambit ious as ever, still planning to expand his business, News Corporation (News Corp), and
intent on establishing his children as worthy successors to their old man. From Page Three through the Simpsons and BSkyB to
Twentieth Century Fox and digital television, Murdoch has created a personal media empire. But, his many detractors would
say, Murdoch's success has resulted in the dumbing-down of the media, with quality entertainment and journalis m replaced by
mindless vulgarity. Beyond this, they mutter darkly about his emergence as a voracious political wheeler-dealer.
Keith Rupert Murdoch was born in Australia in 1931. His father, Sir Keith, was a regional newspaper magnate, based
in Melbourne, and the family enjoyed considerable wealth. Even as a child, Murdoch knew his own mind. He was, his mother
recalls, "not the sort of person who liked playing in a team". Groomed by his father, young Rupert was educated at Oxford. But ,
aged just 22, Sir Keith died and Murdoch returned to Australia to take charge of the family business.
Taking charge, not of his father's more prestigious titles, but of the Adelaide News, a loss making newspaper based in
the provinces, Rupert Murdoch began his spectacular rise. Soon he had expanded his legacy into a nation-wide business,
encompassing newspapers, magazines and television stations. He also found time to found Australia's first national newspaper,
the Australian. Even then, he was accused of peddling sleaze.
1968 brought a major breakthrough, when Murdoch beat Robert Maxwell to buy London's News of the World. He
later incorporated the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times into his News International group. It was the Sun which introduced
bare breasts to the breakfast table.
Murdoch went from strength to strength. Moving to New Yor k in the '70s, he snapped up, and revitalised, both the
New York Post and New York magazine. But it was the 1980s which, in many people's minds, defined Murdoch. Leaving Fleet
Street for good, he re-located to Wapping in London's East End, refused to recognise unions and sacked 5000 workers.
Vowing to "shock people into a new attitude", Murdoch fought a year-long battle which, though eventually victorious,
made him into a bogey-man for many on the left. But Andrew Neil, his former right-hand man at the Sunday Times and Sky
Television, called Murdoch "probably the most inventive, the bravest deal-maker the world has ever known".
But it is the United States which has proved Murdoch's happiest hunting ground. He even became a US cit izen in
1985 to comply with the country's media ownership laws. As owner of Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox television network,
he has been responsible for both the Simpsons and the feature film, Titanic. The Dirty Digger of popular repute now enjoys a
global reach, using a sophisticated system of communications satellites to reach his audience, whether in Baltimore,
Basingstoke or Beijing.
An early apostle of digital broadcasting, Murdoch entered the internet business just as the smart money left town. It
is clear that he still sees plenty of dragons ripe for slaying. With no intention of retiring, Rupert Murdoch's many fans and
enemies may well have to put up with the Digger for some time yet.








52) Pablo Neruda

This Chilean poet, and diplomat, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. His original name was Neftali
Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, but he used the pen name Pablo Neruda for over 20 years before adopting it legally in 1946. Neruda is
the most widely read of the Spanish American poets. From the 1940s on, his works reflected the political struggle of the left
and the socio-historical developments in South America.
Neftal Ricardo Reyes Basoalto was born in Parral, a s mall town in central Chile. His father was a poor railway
worker and his mother was a schoolteacher, who died of tuberculosis when Neruda was an infant. Neruda started to write
poetry when he was ten years old. At the age of 12 he met the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, who encouraged his literary
efforts. The American poet Walt Whit man, whose framed portrait Neruda later kept on his table, become a major influence on
his work.
Neruda's first serious literary achievement, an article, appeared in 1917 in the magazine La Manana. It was followed
by the poem, 'Mis ojos', which appeared in 1918 in Corre-Vuela. In 1920 he published poems in the magazine Selva Austral,
using the pen name Pablo Neruda to avoid conflict with his family, who disapproved his literary ambit ions. From 1921 he
studied French at the Instituto Pedaggico in Santiago. In 1924 Neruda gained international fame as an writer with Veinte
Poemas de Amor y Una Cancion, which is his most widely read work.
At the age of only 23 Neruda was appointed by the Chilean government as consul to Burma (now Myanmar). He
held diplomatic posts in various East Asian and European Countries. Neruda continued to write for several literary and other
magazine. He also started to edit in 1935 a literary magazine.
Neruda's first volume of Recidencia en la Tierre (1933) was a visionary work, written in the Far East but emerging
from the birth of European fascism. In 1935-36 he was in Spain but he resigned from his post because he sided with the
Spanish Republicans. After the leftist candidate don Pedro Aguirre Cerda won the presidental election, Neruda again was
appointed consul, this time to Paris, where he helped Spanish refugees by re-settling them in Chile.
Neruda joined the Communist Party, and in 1945 he was elected to the Chilean Senate. He attacked President
Gonzlez Videla in print and when the government was taken by right-wing extremists, he fled to Mexico. He travelled to the
Soviet Union, where he was warmly received, and in other Eastern European countries. Neruda was especially impressed by
the vastness of Russia, its birch forests, and rivers. The Soviet Union was for Neruda a country, where libraries, universities,
and theatres were open for all.
In exile Neruda produced Canto General (1950), a monumental work of 340 poems. In this work Neruda examined
Latin American history from a Marxist point of view, and showed his deep knowledge about the history, geography and politics
of the continent. The central theme is the struggle for social justice.
While in exile, Neruda travelled in Italy, where he lived for a while. After the victory of the anti-Videla forces and
the order to arrest leftist was rescinded, Neruda returned to Chile. In 1953 Neruda was awarded the Stalin Prize. He remained
faithful to "el part ido" when other intellectual had rejected Moscow's leash; poetry was not for Neruda simply an expression of
emotions and personality, it was "a deep inner calling in man; from it came liturgy, the psalms, and also the content of
religions." However, Neruda's faith was deeply shaken in 1956 by Khrushchev's revelation at the Twentieth Party Congress of
the crimes committed during the Stalin regime. His collection Ext ravagario (1958) reflects this change in his works. In it
Neruda turned to his youth. He presents the reader with his daily life and examines critically his Marxist beliefs.




53) Manuel Noriega

Manuel Antonio Noriega was born the son of an accountant and his maid in a poor barrio of Panama City in 1934. At
the age of five he was given up for adoption to a schoolteacher. He attended the National Institute with the intention of
becoming a doctor, but a lack of financial resources prevented fulfillment of this career choice. Instead, Noriega accepted a
scholarship to attend the Peruvian Military Academy. He graduated in 1962 with a degree in engineering. Returning to Panama,
he was commissioned a sub-lieutenant in the National Guard and assigned to a unit at Colon, the city lying near the Caribbean
terminus of the Panama Canal.
From that moment, Noriega's career blossomed. In 1971 he became useful to U.S. intelligence and, at the behest of
the Nixon administration, went to Havana to obtain the release of crewmen of two American freighters seized by Fidel Castro's
government. He was also already involved in narcotics trafficking. As head of G-2, Panama's military intelligence command,
Noriega was the second most powerful man in Panama.
In late 1983, following his promotion to general and commander of the Nat ional Guard, the guard was combined
with the navy and air force into the Panama Defense Forces (which also included the national police). The following year
Noriega's choice for president, Nicols Ardito Barletta, won a narrow victory over Arnulfo Arias. But there was widespread
fraud in the election. Barletta tried manfully to grapple with the country's growing economic woes, he failed, and Nor iega
forced him out.
The reason had less to do with Barletta's economic policies than his alleged threat to investigate the brutal slaying of
Hugo Spadafora, who had publicly accused Noriega of being a drug trafficker. G-2 agents had taken him from a bus near the
Costa Rican border. In September 1985 searchers found his tortured, decapitated body stuffed in a U.S. mailbag on the Costa
Rican side of the border. In June 1986 it was reported that U.S. Defense Intelligence agents had evidence implicating Noriega
in Spadafora's death and that in the mid-1970s Noriega had obtained National Security Agency classified material from a U.S.
Army sergeant and had given it to the Cubans. In addition, Noriega had used his position to facilitate sale of restricted U.S .
technology to Eastern European governments. In the process, he had earned $3 million.
Noriega denounced these and other allegations as a conspiracy of right -wing U.S. politicians looking for a way to
undo the Panama Canal treaties before the canal became Panamanian property. It was becoming evident that Noriega had
outfoxed his U.S. benefactors. Although Noriega was a gun-runner, money-launderer, drug trafficker, and double agent, he was
still useful to the U.S. government.
The furor caused by the allegations diminished but revived when Noriega's former chief of staff, forced into
retirement, stated that Noriega had fixed the 1984 election and ordered Spadafora's killing. Middle-class Panamanians
organized street demonstrations. Noriega responded by declaring a national emergency. He suspended constitutional rights,
closed newspapers and radio stations, and drove his political enemies into exile. Church leaders, businessmen, and students
organized into the National Civil Crusade, dressed in white, and went into the streets banging pots and pans. The riot squads
dispersed them. By now Americans were outraged, and in June 1987 the U.S. Senate called for Noriega's removal. Noriega
retaliated by removing police protection from the U.S. embassy. A pro-Noriega mob attacked the building and caused $100,000
in damages.
From that day, the administration of President Ronald Reagan began looking for a way to bring Noriega down. U.S.
economic aid and military assistance ended. Secret negotiations between U.S. officials and Noriega's representatives called for
him to resign and leave the country. As matters turned out, the Justice Depart ment filed indict ments against Noriega in federal
court in early 1988, which was intended as a warning. Assistant Secretary of State Eliot Abrams went to Panama in a futile
effort to get President Eric Del Valle to fire Noriega. Instead, Noriega forced out Del Valle and named a puppet president,
Manuel Solis Palma.
After assuming office, President Bush increased pressure. Economic sanctions severely hurt Noriega but did not
bring him down. In May 1989 Noriega declined to run in the election but chose yet another puppet candidate, Carlos Duque.
The opposition Panameista Party nominated Guillermo Endara. Sensing opportunity, the Bush administ ration provided
Endara with $10 million. Former President Jimmy Carter and other foreign representatives went to Panama to monitor the
election. But as soon as Noriega realized that Duque was losing, he ordered the PDF to seize ballot boxes. When the oppos ition
took to the streets in protest, "dignity battalions" of Noriega goons assaulted them. Endara and a vice -presidential candidate,
Guillermo Ford, were severely beaten.
Noriega declared the elect ion void, installed another puppet as provisional president, and, in October 1989, survived
a coup hatched among discontented PDF officers and openly supported by U.S. forces. In the aftermath, Noriega was vengeful
and boastful; President Bush, humiliated. In this despair over the nation's declining internationa l image and concern that
Noriega was in a position to name a crony as canal administrator, Bush acted. Using as pretext Noriega's declaration that U.S .
actions had created a virtual state of war, fear that Noriega would jeopardize the security of the canal (which was untrue), and
the firing on U.S. soldiers passing the PDF headquarters, the United States launched a full-scale attack (Operation Just Cause)
with 24,000 troops on December 20, 1989.
Fighting continued for four days, at times heavy, with U.S. casualties running into the hundreds and Panamanian into
the thousands. Noriega evaded capture for a few days but ultimately took refuge in the Papal Nunciature. Under pressure from
Vatican officials, Noriega surrendered to the Vatican Embassy in Panama Cit y on January 3, 1990. In a deal worked out with
the U.S.-created government headed by Guillermo Endara, U.S. authorities brought Noriega to Miami for trial. However, legal
obstacles and technicalit ies delayed the trial into the early 1990s. He was convicted of cocaine trafficking, racketeering and
money laundering. He was sentenced to 40 years in a Miami p rison, and was ordered to pay $44 million to the Panamanian
government.

54) Georgia OKeeffe

Among the great American artists of the 20th-century, Georgia O'Keeffe stands as one of the most compelling. For
nearly a century, O'Keeffe's representations of the beauty of the American landscape were a brave counterpoint to the chaotic
images embraced by the art world. Her cityscapes and still lifes filled the canvas with wild energy that gained her a following
among the crit ics as well as the public. Though she has had many imitators, no one since has been able to paint with such
intimacy and stark precision.
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was born in a farmhouse on a large dairy farm outside of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin on
November 15, 1887. Education for women was a family t radition. Georgia's own mother, Ida had been educated in the East. All
the daughters but one became professional women, attesting to her influence on t hem.
In 1902 her parents moved to Virginia and were joined by the children in 1903. By the age of 16 Georgia had 5 years
of private art lessons at various schools in Wisconsin and Virginia. One particular teacher, Elizabeth Willis encouraged her to
work at her own pace and afforded her opportunities that the other students felt unfair. At times she would work intensely, and
at other times she would not work for days. When it was brought to the attention of the principal, she would reply..."When th e
spirit moves Georgia, she can do more in a day than you can do in a week."
After receiving her diploma in 1905 she left for Chicago to live with an aunt and attend the Art Institute of Chicago.
She did not return to the Institute the following year after a bout with Typhoid Fever. Instead, in 1907 she enrolled at the Art
Student League in New York City. Discouraged with her work, she did not return to the League in the fall of 1908, but moved
to Chicago and found work as a commercial artist. During this period Georgia did not pick up a brush, and said that the smell
of turpentine made her sick.
She moved back to her family in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1909 and later enrolled at a nearby college. In 1912 a
friend in Texas wrote that a teaching position was open in Amarillo, Texas for a "drawing supervisor". Georgia applied for the
position and was hired for the fall semester. She would remain here t ill 1914, making trips to Virginia in the summer months to
teach at the University of Virginia.
After resigning her job in Amarillo, Georgia moved to New York City to attend Columbia Teachers College until
accepting a teaching position at Columbia College in South Carolina. Having a light schedule, she felt it would be an ideal
position that would give her t ime to paint. Here she was to strip away what she had been taught to paint and began to paint as
she felt. "I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me...shapes and ideas so near to me...so natural to
my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down..."
Early in 1916, Anita Pollit zer took some of Georgia's drawings to Alfred Stieglit z's 291 gallery. He was to exclaim,
"At last, a woman on paper!". He told Anita the drawings were the "purest, finest, sincerest things that had entered 291 in a
long while.", and that he would like to show them. In April St ieglitz exhibited 10 of her drawings. She had not been consulte d
before the exhibit and only learned about it through an acquaintance.
Needing a job, and missing the wide, flat spaces of northern Texas, Georgia accepted a teaching job at West Texas
State Normal College in the fall of 1916. She would often make trips to the nearby Palo Duro Canyon, hiking down the steep
slopes to observe the sandstone format ions with white gypsum, and orange mudstone above the rich green canyon floor. At
least 50 watercolors were painted during the time spent in Canyon, Texas. "It was all so far away...there was quiet and an
untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased."
Georgia's first solo show opened at 291 in April 1917. Most of the exhibit were the watercolors from Texas. During
the winter Georgia became ill with the flu that was sweeping the country. She took a leave of absence from the teaching job
and later resigned. It's possible that there was pressure from the community to encourage her resignation, as she had what was
considered radical views about the United States entry into the war in Europe...along with other non -mainstream opinions
shocking this small Texas town.
She was encouraged by Stieglitz to return to New York. She boarded a train in June of 1918 to return to New York
and Stieglitz...and to a new life that would make her into one of the most important artist of the century.
In 1985 she received the Medal of the Arts from President Ronald Reagan. In March of the next year, at the age of 98,
O'Keeffe passed away at St. Vincent's Hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Georgia O'Keeffe's work remains a prominent part of
major national and international museums. For many, her paintings represent the beginnings of a new American art free from
the irony and cynicism of the late 20th century.













55) Barack Obama

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a
small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.
Barack's mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in small -town Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression, and then
signed up for World War II after Pearl Harbor, where he marched across Europe in Patton's army. Her mother went to work on
a bomber assembly line, and after the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program,
and moved west to Hawaii.
It was there, at the University of Hawaii, where Barack's parents met. His mother was a student there, and his father
had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams in America.
His father left when Obama was 2 years old, and Barack was raised in Hawaii by his Kansas grandparents, except for
a strange and adventurous four-year interlude when he lived in Indonesia with his mother and her second husband. As a
teenager at Hawaii's exclusive Punahou prep school and lat er as a college student, Obama road tested black rage, but it was
never a very good fit. There was none of the crippling psychological legacy of slavery in his family's past. He was African a nd
American, as opposed to African American, although he certainly endured the casual cruelties of everyday life he speaks of
white people mistaking him for a valet -parking attendant--that are visited upon nonwhites in America . Later, he moved to New
York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.
"I had to reconcile a lot of different threads growing up--race, class," he told me. "For example, I was going to a
fancy prep school, and my mother was on food stamps while she was getting her Ph.D." Obama believes his inability to fit
neatly into any group or category explains his relentless efforts to understand and reconcile opposing views.
Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught him, Barack put law school and corporate life
on hold after college and moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group
seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment. The group had some
success, but Barack had come to realize that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that community and other
communities, it would take not just a change at the local level, but a change in our laws and in our politics.
He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of
the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law.
Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years. In 2004, he be came the
third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.
It has been the rich and varied experiences of Barack Obama's life - growing up in different places with people who
had differing ideas - that have animated his political journey. But then Obama is nothing if not candid about his uncertainties
and imperfect ions. He admits to cocaine and marijuana use and also to attending socialist meetings. Amid the part isanship and
bickering of today's public debate, he still believes in the ability to unite people around a polit ics of purpose - a politics that
puts solving the challenges of everyday Americans ahead of partisan calculation and political gain.
In the Illinois State Senate, this meant working with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get
ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax
cuts to families across the state. He also pushed through an expansion of early childhood educat ion, and after a number of
inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping
of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.
In the U.S. Senate, he has focused on tackling the challenges of a globalized, 21st century world with fresh thinking
and a politics that no longer settles for the lowest common denominator. His first law was passed with Republican Tom Coburn,
a measure to rebuild t rust in government by allowing every American to go online and see how and where every dime of their
tax dollars is spent. He has also been the lead voice in championing ethics reform that would root out Jack Abramoff -style
corruption in Congress.
As a member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, Senator Obama has fought to help Illinois veterans get the
disability pay they were promised, while working to prepare the VA for the return of the thousands of veterans who will need
care after Iraq and Afghanistan. Recognizing the terrorist threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, he traveled to Russia
with Republican Dick Lugar to begin a new generation of non-proliferation efforts designed to find and secure deadly weapons
around the world. And knowing the threat we face to our economy and our security from America's addiction to oil, he's
working to bring auto companies, unions, farmers, businesses and politicians of both parties together to promote the greater use
of alternative fuels and higher fuel standards in our cars.
Whether it's the poverty exposed by Katrina, the genocide in Darfur, or the role of faith in our polit ics, Barack
Obama continues to speak out on the issues that will define America in the 21st century. But above all his accomplishments
and experiences, he is most proud and grateful for his family.








56) Sandra Day OConnor

The first woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice, O'Connor is also known for her keen mind, conservatism, and
strict constructionist views.
Sandra Day O'Connor was born on March 26, 1930, in El Paso, Texas. Her family owned a 155,000-acre ranch in
southeastern Arizona. As a youngster, Sandra rode horses, helped with the cattle, and did many things boys did. Because of th e
ranch's isolation, her parents sent her to El Paso when she was five; there, she l ived with her grandmother and attended
Radford School, a private school for girls. Because of her love for the ranch, she returned at thirteen to attend school. The
nearest school was twenty-two miles away, and commuting meant leaving before daylight and returning in the dark, so the next
year she was back at Radford. After a year, she switched to Austin High School and was graduated at age sixteen.
Sandra laid the foundation for her later success at Stanford University. There she majored in economics, earn ed a
B.A. degree with honors in 1950, and went to law school. She earned the LL.B. degree in t wo years, ranked third out of the
102 students in her class, and was an editor of the Stanford Law Review. One of the students in the class below hers was John
Jay O'Connor. The two married soon after Sandra's graduation in 1952.
During the early years of her marriage, O'Connor accommodated her career to the demands of family life. During her
husband's last year of law school, she tried to get a job with a law firm in California but was unsuccessful because of the
reluctance of many firms to hire a female attorney. She found government more accepting of women and worked for the first
year of her marriage as a deputy attorney for San Mateo County. After John O'Connor graduated, he worked for three years in
Frankfurt, West Germany, in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the United States Army. His wife joined him in Frankfurt
as a civilian quartermaster corps attorney, specializing in contracts. The O'Connors then re turned to the Maricopa
County/Phoenix area, because its size and growth rate offered opportunities to newcomers.
For several years, O'Connor worked part-time with a partner in their own law office, and she became active in civic
affairs. She served on the Maricopa County Board of Adjustments and Appeals, was on the Governor's Committee on Marriage
and Family, worked for the Arizona State Hospital as an administrator, and volunteered for the Salvation Army and a school fo r
minorities. Other volunteer activities with professional implications included acting as a court referee in juvenile cases and
making recommendations to the judge, establishing a legal referral service for the county bar, and writing and grading bar
exams for the state bar. She also became act ive in the Republican Party, serving as district chair. By 1965, when she decided to
resume her career full-t ime, O'Connor had an established family, excellent legal credentials, and a variety of experiences in
public service. Bright, gracious, and attractive, she was also a hard worker.
Initially, O'Connor's career centered on state government. In the Arizona senate, O'Connor was known for her careful
work, her attention to factual accuracy, and her ability to handle her staff well and get things done. When she became majority
leader in 1972, she was the first woman in that post in the United States. Her voting record ranged from moderate to
conservative. In 1974, O'Connor decided on another career change and ran successfully for election as a judge on the Maricopa
County Superior Court. On the bench, she acquired a reputation for being both tough and fair. She did not shirk from imposing
the death penalty. She also favored open hearings and indicated concern for prison conditions.
O'Connor remained polit ically active. She was an alternate delegate to the 1972 Republican National Convention and
cochaired Richard M. Nixon's reelection committee in Arizona. In 1976, she backed Ronald Reagan in his losing attempt to
wrest the nomination from President Gerald Ford.
Her judicial career continued to prosper. In 1979, she won appointment to Arizona's Court of Appeals. O'Connor was
the right woman at the right moment. To offset crit icis m of his opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment in 1980, Reagan
promised to appoint the first woman to the Supreme Court. Reagan chose O'Connor, probably because of her conservative
credentials, her strict constructionist views of the Constitution, and her ability to elicit widespread support. The nominati on
was hailed by senators. Feminists anticipated a justice who would support legalized abortion and other issues of the women's
movement. The American Bar Association was not overwhelmingly impressed but did say that she met the qualifications. The
Senate approved her nomination with ninety-one votes, in time for O'Connor to join the other justices in deciding which cases
they would hear during the 1981-1982 term.
During O'Connor's first year on the Court, she made it clear that she was a conservative. She watched out for and
defended states' rights and acted to curb excessive appeals . She was rarely accused of creatively reading into a law what was
not explicitly there. As the first woman on the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor has acted much as any conservative male
justice might have done. It is difficult to attribute any aspect of her judicial record to her being female. Yet, if she had not been
a woman, she probably would not have been appointed to the Court. Her judicial experience simply was not that extensive or
outstanding, yet she was undeniably competent, and her appeal was bolstered by political connections and a personal
friendship with Justice Rehnquist. Timing was also a factor. The women's movement was prominent enough to make an issue
out of the fact that no woman had ever before served on the Court, and Reagan needed a feminist issue in 1980. If her
decisions have not always been to the liking of feminists, she has in other ways been an excellent role model for women in
general.






57) J. Robert Oppenheimer

Any single one of the following contributions would have marked Oppenheimer as a pre-eminent scientist: his own
research work in physics; his influence as a teacher; his leadership at Los Alamos; the growth of the Institute of Advanced
Studies as a leading center of theoretical physics under his directorship; and his efforts to promote a more common
understanding of science. When all is combined, we honor Oppenheimer as a great leader of science. When all is interwoven
with the dramat ic events that centered around him we remember Oppenheimer as one of the most remarkable personalities of
this century.
On April 22, 1904, J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose father was a German immigrant and wealthy textile importer, was
born in New York City. From an early age, he demonstrated remarkable intellectual prowess and began collecting minerals at
the age of five. By age 11, his collection and knowledge were so considerable that he was elected to membership in the New
York Mineralogy Society. After attending the Ethical Culture School in New York, where his lifelong devotion to literature, the
arts, and science was nurtured, he entered Harvard University in 1922 and completed his bachelor's degree in 3 years. He
required only 2 additional years of study at Cambridge University and the University of Gttingen to complete his doctoral
degree in 1927.
Following 2 years of postdoctoral study at home and abroad on fellowships, Oppenheimer became associate
professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Almost immediately, however, he began spending
part of each academic year at the University of California at Berkeley, and he simultaneously rose through the academic ranks
at both institutions. His teaching and research abilit ies were so exceptional and his personal magnetism was so great that many
of his students followed him in his annual Berkeley-Pasadena pilgrimages, often willingly repeating the courses he offered. In
general, by attracting and training an unusually large number of highly competent physicis ts, Oppenheimer, more than any
other individual, was responsible for moving theoretical physics in America from a position of obscurity into one of
preeminence in the world.
To the general public, Oppenheimer, as a scientist, is best known for his role in directing the development of the
atomic bomb at Los Alamos, the laboratory high on a New Mexican mesa at a site he chose. Many of America's foremost
physicists were persuaded to come with their families to this isolated laboratory to beat the Germans in t he development of the
most awesome weapon of destruction in human history. When all of the huge and unique problems were solved, and the test
bomb was exploded on July 16, 1945, in the desert near Alamogordo, N. Mex., Oppenheimer was deeply shaken. Not muc h
later Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated.
Starting precisely at 5:30 A.M., Mountain War Time, July 16, 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer lived the remainder of
his life in the blinding light and the crepusculine shadow of the world's first manmade atomic explosion, an event for which he
was largely responsible. And, from the moment that the test bomb exploded, he was haunted by the implications for man in the
unleashing of the basic forces of the universe. Two years later, he was still beset by the moral consequences of the bomb,
which, he told fellow physicists, had "dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war." "In some sort of
crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatements can quite ext inguish," he went on, "the physicis ts have known
sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose."
Oppenheimer was a complex man, one who could inspire distrust as well as utter devotion, and one who could
commit indiscretions as well as be a scientist of faultless integrity. After the war, his early left-wing sympathies, inflated by
Senator Joseph McCarthy and his coterie of witch-hunters, made Oppenheimer the defendant in perhaps the most celebrated
trial since the time of Galileo. In spite of the fact that Oppenheimer's past associat ions had aroused no undue concern earlier -
he had received the coveted Presidential Medal of Merit in 1946 and had been serving on the highest policy -making
committees - his security clearance was revoked, deeply shocking the vast majority of his fellow s cientists. Not until 1961,
when President John F. Kennedy made the decision to give the Fermi Award to Oppenheimer (it was actually presented in 1963
by President Lyndon B. Johnson), was a significant attempt made to publicly clear Oppenheimer's name. In t he interim,
Oppenheimer had been serving as the director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, giving his splendid
administrative and technical talents to the young group of highly gifted physicists who had gathered there.
Oppenheimer will remain a subject of study, discussion, controversy, and admiration for years to come. His profound
concern for uniting the intellectual community, and humanity in general, is evident from the vast number of lectures and
articles he devoted to the subject. He died of cancer in Princeton on Feb. 18, 1967.















58) The Google Guys: Larry Page and Sergey Brin

The founders of the Google internet search engine - Larry Page and Sergey Brin - are the type of young men most
parents would dream of their daughters bringing home. And far from simply because they will both be billionaires following a
stock market flotation of Google. Instead, most moms and dads would also be drawn to the facts that both men are very clean
cut in appearance, undeniably hard working and intelligent, and seem, well, just "nice". They are your text book, well
presented, quietly well behaved "boys next door" from a smart middle class American suburb. Only a lot richer.
Yet far from living an extravagant lifestyle, complete with yachts and private jets like fellow software leader Oracle
boss Larry Ellison, Page, 31, and Brin, 30, are both reported to continue to live modest, unassuming lifestyles. They don't even
have sports cars, and instead are said to each drive a Toyota Prius, a plain-looking but rather environmentally friendly saloon
that is half electric-powered, and growing in popularity among green-minded Americans.
Page and Brin just happen to be geniuses with computers and, by extension, the founders of the world's most popular
internet search engine. Today both barely in their thirties, the two first met at Stanford University in the mid-1990s, where they
were doing doctorates in computer sciences. Apparently, they did not immediately hit it off, but they became friends while
developing a new system of internet search engine from their college dormitory.
Initially called BackRub, they created a software system whereby the search engine would list results according to
the popularity of the pages, after realizing that more times than not the most popular result would also be the most useful. So
after changing its name to Google they dropped out of college and the rest, as they say, is history. Pulling together $1 million
from family, friends and other investors, on September 7, 1998 Google was commercially launched from a friend's garage.
Growth was quick. Initially, Google got 10,000 queries per day compared with 200 million today.
Both Page and Brin come from an academic and computer science or mathematical background.
Larry Page was born and raised in Michigan, the son of Carl Page, a pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence.
Page Senior earned a doctoral degree in computer science in 1965, back when the subject was still in its infancy, and went on
to become a computer science professor at Michigan State University. His wife, and Larry Page's mother, also worked in
computers, teaching computer programming. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Larry Page says he fell in love with computers at the
tender age of six.
Brin is a Muscovite by birth, the son of a Soviet mathematician economist. His family, who are Jewish, emigrated to
the US in 1979 to escape persecution, and Brin went on to get a degree in mathemat ics and computer science from the
University of Maryland, before enrolling at Stanford University as a postgraduate.
Google today has its headquarters at Mountain View in the heart of California's famous Silicon Valley, where certain
quirks are in place to keep staff happy. These include weekly games of roller-hockey in the car park, an on-site masseuse and a
piano. And each member of the team is given one day a week to spend on their own pet projects. In a nod to the county's
former hippy past, the company's head chef is said to have formerly worked for the rock band Grat eful Dead.
There is also something very 1960s California about what Page and Brin say is their philosophy.
As Page recently explained to ABC News: "We have a mantra: 'Don't be evil', which is to do the best things we know how for
our users, for our customers, for everyone. "So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing."






59) Emmeline Pankhurst

Not even the noisiest proponents of women's proper place back in the home could seriously suggest today that
women should not have the vote. Yet "the mother half of the human family," in Emmeline Pankhurst's phrase, was fully
enfranchised only in this century. In Britain, so proud to claim "the Mother of Parliaments," universal suffrage including
women's was granted only in the year of her death, 1928. Mrs. Pankhurst was born a Victorian Englishwoman, but she
shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back.
The struggle to get votes for women, led by Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel at the head of the militant
suffragists, convulsed Britain from 1905 to 1914. The opposition the Liberal government put up looks incomprehensible today,
and it provoked, among all classes and conditions of women, furious and passionate protests. The response of the police, the
courts and sometimes the crowds of suffragist opponents still makes shocking reading. Women were battered in demonstrations
and, on hunger strikes, brutally force-fed in prison. When these measures risked taking lives , the infamous Cat & Mouse Act
was passed so that a dangerously weakened hunger striker would be released and then rearrested when strong enough to
continue her sentence. Under its terms, Mrs. Pankhurst, age 54 in 1912, went to prison 12 times that year. No wonder she railed,
"The militancy of men, through all the centuries, has drenched the world with blood. The militancy of women has harmed no
human life save the lives of those who fought the battle of righteousness."
Pankhurst's father was a Manchester manufacturer with radical sympathies. When she was small, she was consuming
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," "John Bunyan" and abolitionist materials; her earliest memories included hearing Elizabeth Cady
Stanton speak. Her father was keen on amateur theatricals in the home; his daughter later enthralled the suffragists with her
oratory and her voice.
Richard Pankhurst, whom she married in 1879, when she was 20 and he was 40, was a brilliant lawyer, selflessly
dedicated to reform, who drafted pioneering legislation granting women independent control of their finances. Emmeline bore
five children but lost two sons, and when Richard died suddenly in 1898, she was left to bring up her children alone, with no
private means.
The surviving Pankhurst women formed an intrepid, determined, powerfully gifted band. In 1903 they founded the
Women's Social and Political Union. It was, Emmeline Pankhurst wrote later, "simply a suffrage army in the field." The
charismat ic, dictatorial eldest daughter Christabel emerged in her teens as the W.S.P.U.'s strategist and an indomitable activist,
with nerves of tungsten. Pankhurst's second daughter Sylvia, the artist, pioneered the corporate logo: as designer and scene
painter of the W.S.P.U., she created banners, costumes and badges in the suffragist livery of white, purple and green. Though
the family split later over policy, their combined talents powered from the beginning an astonishingly versatile tactical mac hine.
The W.S.P.U. adopted a French Revolutionary sense of crowd management, public spectacle and symbolic ceremony.
They would greet one of their number on release from prison and draw her t riumphantly in a flower-decked wagon through the
streets, and they staged elaborate allegorical pageants and torchlight processions, with Pankhurst proudly walking at their head
(if she wasn't in jail). Her example was followed internationally.
The political leaders of Edwardian Britain were utterly confounded by the energy and violence of this female
rebellion, by the barrage of mockery, interruptions and demands the suffragists hurled and, later, by the sight of viragoes in silk
petticoats, matrons with hammers, ladies with stones in their kid gloves, mothers and mill girls unbowed before the forces of
judges, policemen and prison wardens. Many suffragists in Britain and the U.S. argued that the Pankhursts' violence arson,
window smashing, picture slashing and hunger strikes was counterproductive to the cause and fueled misogynistic views of
female hysteria. Though the question remains open, the historical record shows shameless government procrastination, broken
pledges and obstruction long before the suffragists abandoned heckling for acting up.
Pankhurst took the suffragist thinking far and wide: she even managed to slip in a lecture tour of the U.S. between
spells of a Cat & Mouse jail sentence. In her tireless public speaking, suffrage meant more than equality with men. While she
was bent on sweeping away the limits of gender, she envisioned society transformed by feminine energies, abo ve all by
chastity, far surpassing the male's. In this, she is the foremother of the separatist wing of feminis m today: the battle for the vote
was for her a battle for the bedroom. She wrote, "We want to help women...We want to gain for them all the right s and
protection that laws can give them. And, above all, we want the good influence of women to tell to its greatest extent in the
social and moral questions of the time. But we cannot do this unless we have the vote and are recognised as citizens and voi ces
to be listened to." Her plea to the court in 1912 ringingly concluded, "We are here, not because we are lawbreakers; we are h ere
in our efforts to become lawmakers." It is hard today not to sigh at the ardor of her hope in what voting could achieve, not to be
amazed at the confidence she showed in political reform. But heroism looks to the future, and heroes hold to their faith.











60) Rosa Parks

We know the story. One December evening, a woman left work and boarded a bus for home. She was tired; her feet
ached. But this was Montgomery, Ala., in 1955, and as the bus became crowded, the woman, a black woman, was ordered to
give up her seat to a white passenger. When she remained seated, that simple decision eventually led to the disintegration of
institutionalized segregation in the South, ushering in a new era of the civil rights movement.
David slaying the giant Goliath. And perhaps it is precisely the lure of fairy-tale retribution that colors the lens we
look back through. Parks was 42 years old when she refused to give up her seat. She has insisted that her feet were not aching;
she was, by her own testimony, no more tired than usual. And she did not plan her fateful act: "I did not get on the bus to g et
arrested," she has said. "I got on the bus to go home."
Montgomery's segregation laws were complex: blacks were required to pay their fare to the driver, then get off and
reboard through the back door. Sometimes the bus would drive off before the paid-up customers made it to the back entrance.
If the white section was full and another white customer entered, blacks were required to give up their seats and move farthe r
to the back; a black person was not even allowed to sit across the aisle from whites. These humiliations were compounded by
the fact that two-thirds of the bus riders in Montgomery were black.
Parks was not the first to be detained for this offense. Eight months earlier, Claudette Colvin, 15, refused to give up
her seat and was arrested. Black act ivists met with this girl to determine if she would make a good test case as secretary of
the local N.A.A.C.P., Parks attended the meeting but it was decided that a more "upstanding" candidate was necessary to
withstand the scrutiny of the courts and the press. And then in October, a young woman named Mary Louise Smith was
arrested; N.A.A.C.P. leaders rejected her too as their vehicle, looking for someone more able to withstand media scrutiny.
Smith paid the fine and was released.
Six weeks later, the time was ripe. The facts, rubbed shiny for retelling, are these: On December. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks,
seamstress for the Montgomery Fair depart ment store, boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus. She took a seat in the fifth row
the first row of the "Colored Section." The driver was the same one who had put her off a bus 12 years earlier for refusing to
get off and reboard through the back door. Did that make her stubborn? Or had her work in the N.A.A.C.P. sharpened her
sensibilit ies so that she knew what to do or more precisely, what not to do: Don't frown, don't struggle, don't shout, don't
pay the fine?
At the news of the arrest, local civil rights leader E.D. Nixon exclaimed, "My God, look what segregation has put in
my hands!" Parks was not only above moral reproach (securely married, reasonably employed) but possessed a quiet fort itude
as well as political savvy in short, she was the ideal plaintiff for a test case.
She was arrested on a Thursday; bail was posted by Clifford Durr, the white lawyer whose wife had employed Parks
as a seamstress. That evening, after talking it over with her mother and husband, Rosa Parks agreed to challenge the
constitutionality of Montgomery's segregation laws. During a midnight meet ing of the Women's Polit ical Council, 35,000
handbills were mimeographed for distribution to all black schools the next morning. The message was simple:
"We are...asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial... You can afford to stay
out of school for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on
Monday. Please stay off the buses Monday."
Monday came. Rain threatened, yet the black population of Montgomery stayed off the buses, either walking or
catching one of the black cabs stopping at every municipal bus stop for 10 cents per customer standard bus fare. Meanwhile,
Parks was scheduled to appear in court. As she made her way through the throngs at the courthouse, a demure figure in a long -
sleeved black dress with white collar and cuffs, a trim black velvet hat, gray coat and white gloves.
The trial lasted 30 min., with the expected conviction and penalty. That afternoon, the Montgomery Improvement
Association was formed. So as not to ruffle any local activists' feathers, the members elected as their president a relative
newcomer to Montgomery, the young minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. That evening,
addressing a crowd gathered at the Holt Street Baptist Church, King declared in that sonorous , ringing voice millions the world
over would soon thrill to: "There comes a time that people get tired." When he was finished, Parks stood up so the audience
could see her. She did not speak; there was no need to. Here I am, her silence said, among you.
And she has been with us ever since as a persistent symbol of human dignity in the face of brutal authority. History is
often portrayed as a string of arias in a grand opera, all baritone intrigues and tenor heroics. Some of the most tumultuous
events, however, have been provoked by serendipity the assassination of an inconsequential archduke spawned World War I,
a kicked-over lantern may have sparked the Great Chicago Fire. One cannot help wondering what role Martin Luther King Jr.
would have played in the civil rights movement if the opportunity had not presented itself that first evening of the boycott if
Rosa Parks had chosen a row farther back from the outset, or if she had missed the bus altogether.
At the end of this millennium (and a particularly noisy century), it is the modesty of Rosa Parks' example that
sustains us. It is no less than the belief in the power of the individual, that cornerstone of the American Dream, that she inspires,
along with the hope that all of us even the least of us could be that brave, that serenely human, when crunch time comes.




61) Pele

Heroes walk alone, but they become myths when they ennoble the lives and touch the hearts of all of us. For those
who love soccer, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, generally known as Pele, is a hero.
Performance at a high level in any sport is to exceed the ordinary human scale. But Pel's performance transcended
that of the ordinary star by as much as the star exceeds ordinary performance. He scored an average of a goal in every
international game he played the equivalent of a baseball player's hitting a home run in every World Series game over 15
years. Between 1956 and 1974, Pel scored a total of 1,220 goals not unlike hitting an average of 70 home runs every year
for a decade and a half.
While he played, Brazil won the World Cup three times in 12 years. He scored five goals in a game six times, four
goals 30 times and three goals 90 times. And he did so not aloofly or disdainfully as do many modern stars but with an
infectious joy that caused even the teams over which he triumphed to share in his pleasure, for it is no disgrace to be defeated
by a phenomenon defying emulation.
He was born across the mountains from the great coastal cities of Brazil, in the impoverished t own of Tres Coracoes.
Nicknamed Dico by his family, he was called Pele by soccer friends, a word whose origins escape him. Dico shined shoes until
he was discovered at the age of 11 by one of the country's premier players, Waldemar de Brito. Four years lat er, De Brito
brought Pel to Sao Paulo and declared to the disbelieving directors of the professional team in Santos, "This boy will be th e
greatest soccer player in the world." He was quickly legend. By the next season, he was the top scorer in his league . He has
been known to stop war: both sides in Nigeria's civil war called a 48-hour cease-fire in 1967 so Pele could play an exhibition
match in the capital of Lagos.
To understand Pel's role in soccer, some discussion of the nature of the game is necess ary. No team sport evokes the
same sort of primal, universal passion as soccer. During the World Cup, the matches of the national football teams impose
television schedules on the rhythm of life. When France finally won the World Cup, Paris was paralyzed with joy for nearly 48
hours, Brazil by dejection for a similar period of time. In Brazil in 1962 when the national team won the World Cup in Chile ,
everything stopped for two days while Rio celebrated a premature carnival.
There is no comparable phenomenon in the U.S. Our fans do not identify with their teams in such a way partly
because American team sports are more cerebral and require a degree of skill that is beyond the reach of the layman. Baseball ,
for instance, requires a bundle of disparate skills: hitt ing a ball thrown at 90 m.p.h., catching a ball flying at the speed of a
bullet, and throwing long distances with great accuracy. Football requires a different set of skills for each of its 11 posit ions.
The U.S. spectator thus finds himself viewing t wo discrete events: what is actually taking place on the playing field and the
translation of it into detailed and minute statistics. He wants his team to win, but he is also committed to the statistical triumph
of the star he admires.
Soccer is an altogether different sort of game. All 11 players must possess the same type of skills especially in
modern soccer, where the distinction between offensive and defensive players has dissolved. Being continuous, the game does
not lend itself to being broken down into a series of component plays that, as in football or baseball, can be practiced. Baseball
and football thrill by the perfection of their repetitions, soccer by the improvisation of solutions to ever changing strateg ic
necessities. Soccer requires little equipment, other than a pair of shoes. Everybody believes he can play soccer. And it can be
played by any number of players as a pickup game. Thus soccer outside North America is truly a game for the masses, which
can identify with its passions, its sudden triumphs and its inevitable disillusionments. Baseball and football are an exaltation of
the human experience; soccer is its incarnation.
Pele is therefore a different phenomenon from the baseball or football star. Soccer stars are dependent on their teams
even while transcending them. To achieve mythic status as a soccer player is especially difficult because the peak performanc e
is generally quite short only the fewest players perform at the top of their game for more than five years. Incredibly, Pele
performed at the highest level for 18 years, scoring 52 goals in 1973, his 17th year. Contemporary soccer superstars never
reach even 50 goals a season. For Pele, who had thrice scored more than 100 goals a year, it signaled retirement.
The mythic status of Pele derives as well from the way he incarnated the character of Brazil's national team. Its style
affirms that virtue without joy is a contradiction in terms. Its players are the most acrobatic, if not always the most profi cient.
Brazilian teams play with a contagious exuberance. When those yellow shirts go on the attack which is most of the time
and their fans cheer to the intoxicating beat of samba bands, soccer becomes a ritual of fluidity and grace. In Pel e's day, the
Brazilians epitomized soccer as fantasy.














62) Eva Peron

Wife and political partner of President Juan Peron of Argentina. Born May 7, 1919, the youngest of five children, in
the little village of Los Toldos in Buenos Aires province, Argentiina.Following the death of her father, the family moved to the
larger nearby town of Junin, where her mother ran a boarding house. At the age of 16, Evita, as she was often affectionately
called, left school and went to Buenos Aires with the dream of becoming an actress. Lacking any theatrical training, she
obtained a few bit parts in motion pictures and on the radio, until she was finally employed on a regular basis with one of t he
larger radio stations in Buenos Aires.
In November 1943 she met Colonel Juan Peron, who had just assumed the post of secretary of labor and social
welfare in the military government which had come to power the previous June. Eva developed an intimate relationship with
the widowed Peron, who was beginning to organize the Argentine workers in support of his own bid for the presidency.
Becoming Peron's loyal political confidante and partner, she rendered him valuable assistance in gaining support among the
masses. In October 1945, following Peron's arrest and imprisonment by a group of military men opposed to his political
ascendancy, she helped to organize a mass demonstration that led to his release. A few days later, on October 21, 1945, Eva a nd
Juan Peron were married. Now polit ically stronger than ever, Peron became the government candidate in the presi dential
election set for February 1946. In an action unprecedented for Argentine women, Senora de Peron participated actively in the
ensuing campaign, directing her appeal to the less privileged groups of Argentine society, whom she labeled los descamisado s
("the shirtless ones").
Following Peron's election, Eva began to play an increasingly important role in the political affairs of the nation.
During the early months of the Peron administration she launched an active campaign for national woman suffrage, which had
been promised in Peron's electoral platform. Due largely to her efforts, suffrage for women was enacted in 1947, and in 1951
women voted for the first time in a national election.
Eva also assumed the task of consolidating the support of the working classes and controlling organized labor.
Taking over a suite of offices in the Secretariate of Labor, Peron's former center of power, she used her influence to seat a nd
unseat ministers of labor and top officials of the General Confederation of Labor, the chief labor organizat ion in Argentina. For
all pract ical purposes she became the secretary of labor, supporting workers' claims for higher wages and sponsoring a host o f
social welfare measures.
Because of her own lower-class background, Eva readily identified with the working classes and was fervently
committed to improving their lot. She devoted several hours every day to audiences with the poor and visits to hospitals,
orphanages, and factories. She also supervised the newly created Ministry of Health, which built many new hospitals and
established a remarkably successful program to eradicate such diseases as tuberculosis, malaria, and leprosy.
The Maria Eva Duarte De Peron Welfare Foundation established in June 1947 carried out a large part of he r work
with the poor. Financed by contributions, often forcefully exacted, from trade unions, businesses, and industrial firms, it g rew
into an enormous semi-official welfare agency which distributed food, clothing, medicine, and money to needy people
throughout Argentina, and even upon occasion to those suffering from disasters in other Latin American countries. Enjoying
great popularity among the descamisados, Eva Peron aided significantly in making the masses feel indebted to the Peron
regime. On the other hand, her program of social welfare and her campaign for female suffrage aroused considerable
opposition among the gente bien(social elite), to whom Eva was unacceptable because of her own humble background and
earlier activit ies. Eva was driven by the desire to master those members of the oligarchy that had rejected her and she could be
ruthless and vindictive with her enemies.
In June 1951 it was announced that Eva would be the vice -presidential candidate on the re-elect ion ticket with Peron
in the upcoming national election. Eva's candidacy was strongly supported by the General Confederation of Labor. But
opposition within the military and her own failing health caused her to decline the nomination. Already suffering from cancer ,
Eva died on July 26, 1952, at the age of 32.
After Eva's death, which produced an almost unprecedented display of public grief, Peron's political fortunes began
to deteriorate, and he was finally overthrown by a military coup in September 1955.
Eva Peron remains a controversial figure in Argentine history. Diminutive, attractive, and highly vivacious, both her
friends and her enemies agreed that she was a woman of great personal charm. Her supporters have elevated her to popular
sainthood as the patroness of the lower-classes, and the sympathetic portrayal of her in the 1997 film Evita, starring
American actress and singer Madonna, reintroduced Eva to the American public. By the oligarchy and a large part of the
officer corps of the military, however, she is greatly detested. There is still considerable difference of opinion regarding her
true role in the Peron regime and her ultimate place in Argentine history.












63) Pablo Picasso

To say that Pablo Picasso dominated Western art in the 20th century is, by now, the meres t commonplace. Before his
50th birthday, the little Spaniard from Malaga had become the very prototype of the modern art ist as public figure. No painte r
before him had had a mass audience in his own lifetime. Picasso's audience meaning people who had heard of him and seen
his work, at least in reproduction was in the tens, possibly hundreds, of millions. He and his work were the subjects of
unending analysis, gossip, dislike, adoration and rumor.
He was a superstitious, sarcastic man, somet imes rotten to his children, often beastly to his women. He had contempt
for women artists. His famous remark about women being "goddesses or doormats" has rendered him odious to feminists, but
women tended to walk into both roles open-eyed and eagerly, for his charm was legendary.
He was also polit ically lucky. Though to Nazis his work was the epitome of "degenerate art," his fame protected him
during the German occupation of Paris, where he lived; and after the war, when artists and writers were thought disgraced by
the slightest affiliat ion with Nazism or fascis m, Picasso gave enthusiastic endorsement to Joseph Stalin, a mass murderer on a
scale far beyond Hitler's, and scarcely received a word of criticism for it, even in cold war America.
No painter or sculptor had been as famous as this in his own lifetime. And it is quite possible that none ever will be
again. Picasso, the Spaniard was the last great beneficiary of the belief that the language of painting and sculpture really
mattered to people other than their devotees. And he was the first artist to enjoy the obsessive attention of mass media. He
stood at the intersection of these two worlds. If that had not been so, his restless changes of style, his constant pushing o f the
envelope, would not have created such controversy and thus such celebrity.
In today's art world, a place without living culture heroes, you can't even imagine such a monster arising. His output
was vast. Picasso left permanent marks on every discipline he entered. His work expanded fractally, one image breeding new
clusters of others, right up to his death. Moreover, he was the artist with whom virtually every other artist had to reckon, and
there was scarcely a 20th century movement that he didn't inspire, contribute to or in the case of Cubis m, which he co-
invented with Georges Braque beget.
Picasso was regarded as a boy genius, but if he had died before 1906, his 25th year, his mark on 20th century art
would have been slight. It was the experience of modernity that created his modernism, and that happened in Paris. There,
mass production and reproduction had come to the forefront of ordinary life: newspapers, printed labels, the overlay of poste rs
on walls the dizzily intense public life of signs, simultaneous, high-speed and layered. This was the cityscape of Cubism.
Picasso was not a philosopher or a mathematician, but the work he and Braque did between 1911 and 1918 was
intuitively bound to the perceptions of thinkers like Einstein: that reality is not figure and void, it is a ll relat ionships, a
twinkling field of interdependent events. Picasso latched on to the magnetism of mass culture and how high art could refresh
itself through common vernaculars. Cubis m was hard to read, willfully ambiguous, and yet demotic too. It remain s the most
influential art dialect of the early 20th century. As if to distance himself from his imitators, Picasso then went to the opp osite
extreme of embracing the classical past, with his paintings of huge dropsical women dreaming Mediterranean dreams .
His "classical" mode, which he would revert to for decades to come, can also be seen as a gesture of independence.
After his collaboration with Braque ended with his comment that "Braque is my wife" words that were as disparaging to
women as to Braque Picasso remained a loner for the rest of his career. His close relationships tended to be with poets and
writers.
Though the public saw him as the archetypal modernist, he was disconnected from much modern art. Some of the
greatest modern painters saw their work as an instrument of evolution and human development. But Picasso had no Utopian
streak. The idea that art evolved, or had any kind of historical mission, struck him as ridiculous. "All I have ever made," h e
once said, "was made for the present and in the hope that it will always remain in the present. When I have found something to
express, I have done it without thinking of the past or the future." Interestingly, he also stood against the Expressionist b elief
that the work of art gains value by disclosing the truth, the inner being, of its author. "How can anyone enter into my dreams,
my instincts, my desires, my thoughts ... and above all grasp from them what I have been about perhaps against my own
will?" he exclaimed.
To make art was to achieve a tyrannous freedom from self-explanation. "Painting is stronger than me, it makes me do
what it wants." To Picasso, the idea that painting did itself through him meant that it wasn't subject to cultural etiquette. In his
work, everything is staked on sensation and desire. His aim was not to argue coherence but to go for the strongest level of
feeling. He conveyed it with tremendous plastic force, making you feel the weight of forms and the tension of their
relationships mainly by drawing and tonal structure. He was never a great colorist, but through metaphor, he crammed layers of
meaning together to produce flashes of revelation. In the process, he reversed one of the currents of modern art. Modernis m
had rejected storytelling: what mattered was forma l relationships. But Picasso brought it back in a disguised form, as a psychic
narrative, told through metaphors, puns and equivalences.








64) Augusto Pinochet

Augusto Pinochet Ugarte was born into an upper-middle-class family in Valparaiso, Chile, on Nov. 25, 1915. After
graduating from the Chilean military academy in 1936 and receiving a commission in the infantry, he studied law and social
sciences at the University of Chile in Santiago. He had several appointments as an instructor in military schools. He was the
author of standard texts on Chile's geography and its history. In the 1950s, he was assigned as a military attache in Washing ton
and Quito, Ecuador. He was promoted to brigadier general in 1968.
Pinochet assumed power on Sept. 11, 1973, in a bloody coup supported by the United States that toppled the elected
government of Salvador Allende, a Marxist who had pledged to lead his country "down the democratic road to socialism."
First as head of a four-man military junta and then as president, Pinochet served until 1990, leaving a legacy of abuse
that took successive governments years to catalogue. According to a government report that included testimony from more
than 30,000 people, his government killed at least 3,197 people and tortured about 29,000. Two-thirds of the cases listed in the
report happened in 1973.
An austere figure who claimed to be guided by "the spiritual force of God as a believer," Pinochet regarded himself
as a soldier rather than a polit ician. With his stern visage and fondness for military uniforms and dark glasses, he seemed to
personify implacable authority. He was both an opponent of communis m and a critic of "orthodox democracy," which he said
was "too easy to infiltrate and destroy."
"I would like to be remembered as a man who served his country, who served Chile throughout his entire life on this
earth," he once told an interviewer. "And what he did was always done thinking about the welfare of Chile and never
sacrificing my tradition to hand it to other countries."
Pinochet relinquished the presidency in 1990, but he retained the powerful position of head of the army until 1997,
when he became a senator for life. He gave up that position in 2002, claiming mild dementia and physical infirmities --
ailments that helped him avoid trials in hundreds of court cases filed against him in recent years. But legal actions against
Pinochet had gathered momentum in the t wo years preceding his death, as courts locked several of his key subordinates behind
bars and raised hopes among victims' families that Pinochet would meet a similar fate. He had been placed under house arrest
in Santiago five times.
Throughout his later years, Pinochet retained loyal supporters, who credited his government with instituting a fiscal
discipline that helped make Chile's economy the region's strongest. But he lost many of those backers after mult iple probes in
recent years revealed financial corruption, including the discovery of millions of dollars in state funds held in numerous se cret
overseas accounts.
Pinochet remained defiant in the face of the accusations, consistently refusing to apologize for his actions as
president. Among the crimes attributed to Pinochet during his reign were several high-profile murders that stretched beyond
Chile's borders, many carried out by the Directorate of Nat ional Intelligence, or DINA, a fear-inspiring secret police agency
that Pinochet organized in 1974.
Prosecutors in Washington in 1999 began investigating Pinochet's possible role in the September 1976 car b ombing
on Embassy Row that killed Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean foreign minister, and his 25-year-old American assistant, Ronni
Karpen Moffitt. Six people were imprisoned for the attack, but the case was reopened after Pinochet was arrested in London in
1998 and held for 17 months on a warrant seeking his extradit ion to Spain on charges of murdering and torturing Spanish
citizens in Chile.
His arrest set off a chain of events that led to his return in 1999 to Chile, where the Supreme Court stripped him of
immunity the following year. However, a court ruling in 2002 acknowledged that he had vascular dementia and prevented the
cases from going to trial. Chile's courts reversed the ruling of dementia in 2004, deeming him fit to stand trial.
To his supporters, Pinochet was a patriot who saved his country from political and economic chaos under the threat
of communis m, restored order and led it into a period of unprecedented prosperity. In their view, the harsh measures taken
under his leadership were justified by the violence of the opposition and the threat of civil war. Finally, they credited Pinochet
with restoring the country to civilian leadership under democratic and constitutional principles.



















65) Max Planck

Max Planck was told that there was nothing new to be discovered in physics. He was about to embark on a career in
physics that would set that idea on its ear. Max Planck was born in Kiel, Germany, on April 23, 1858. Planck studied at the
Universities of Munich and Berlin, and received his doctorate of philosophy at Munich in 1879. Planck's earliest work was on
the subject of thermodynamics. He published papers on entropy, on thermoelectricity and on the theory of dilute solutions.
At the same t ime also the problems of radiation processes engaged his attention and he showed that these were to be
considered as electromagnetic in nature. From these studies he was led to the problem of the distribution of energy in the
spectrum of full radiat ion. Experimental observations on the wavelength distribution of the energy emitted by a black body as a
function of temperature were at variance with the predictions of classical physics. Planck was able to deduce th e relationship
between the energy and the frequency of radiat ion. In a paper published in 1900, he announced his derivation of the
relationship: this was based on the revolutionary idea that the energy emitted by a resonator could only take on discrete val ues
or quanta. The energy for a resonator of frequency is now called Planck's cons tant.
Planck's work on the quantum theory, as it came to be known, was not only Planck's most important work but also
marked a turning point in the history of physics. The importance of the discovery, with its far-reaching effect on classical
physics, was not appreciated at first. However the evidence for its validity gradually became overwhelming as its application
accounted for many discrepancies between observed phenomena and classical theory. Among these applications and
developments may be mentioned Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect.
Planck faced a troubled and tragic period in his life during the period of the Nazi government in Germany, when he
felt it his duty to remain in his country but was openly opposed to some of the Government's policies, particularly as regards
the persecution of the Jews. In the last weeks of the war he suffered great hardship after his home was destroyed by bombing.
He was revered by his colleagues not only for the importance of his discoveries but for his great personal qualities.
He was also a gifted pianist and is said to have at one time considered music as a career.
He suffered a personal tragedy when one of them was executed for his part in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler in
1944. He died at Gttingen on October 4, 1947.







66) James K. Polk

As the expansionist eleventh President of the United States, James K. Polk was perhaps more responsible than any
other single person for setting the boundaries of what came to be the American West.
Born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in 1795, Polk was one of ten children of a prosperous farm family.
Although his family had moved to Tennessee when he was eleven, the bookish young man chose to return to the University of
North Carolina for his college education. He came back to Tennessee to study for a legal career, quickly establishing a
successful practice and solid reputation.
In 1825, Polk won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and quickly became a proteg of Andrew Jackson,
staunchly supporting both state's rights and Jackson's efforts to destroy the national bank. Polk rose to become Speaker of the
House from 1835 to 1839, when he was elected governor of Tennessee. But Polk was defeated in 1841 and 1843 runs for the
governorship, and it seemed that his political career had stalled.
Fortunately, Polk's ardent enthusiasm for westward expansion saved his career, gaining him the Democratic
Presidential nomination in 1844. In his campaign, he advocated the annexation of Oregon and Te xas, although either measure
might well mean a war, and once elected, albeit with a minority of the total vote, he went on to implement his plans for
expansion.
Through a combination of military threats and diplomacy, Polk managed to arrive at a compromis e with England that
set the 49th parallel as the Oregon Territory's northern boundary. Acquiring the rest of the West was a more bloody affair, a nd
the newly admitted state of Texas was at the heart of the matter.
Although thousands of Spanish and Mexican documents showed that Texas' western boundary had traditionally been
the Nueces River, Polk backed the Texans' claim that their western border was the Rio Grande. Since Texas claimed the river
all the way to its source, their position implied that half of present-day New Mexico and Colorado was rightfully theirs. The
Mexican government found this unacceptable and refused the United States' offer of about forty million dollars for New
Mexico and California. When U.S. General Zachary Taylor led an army acros s the disputed area to the banks of the Rio Grande
in 1846, Mexican troops attacked his units and killed sixteen of his men. Polk seized upon this incident as proof of Mexican
treachery, and quickly secured a declaration of war from Congress.
Although the United States ultimately defeated Mexico's poorly-armed troops in some of the most destructive
warfare ever witnessed to that time, the acquisition of the West was, ironically, little help to Polk. The inescapable issue of
slavery soon darkened the nation's expansionist prospects, as Congress took up legislat ion that would prohibit slavery in all
newly-acquired territories. The United States, though larger and richer with the discover of gold in California, was on the road
to civil war. Polk himself did not live to see it; long suffering from exhaustion and overwork, he died several months after the
end of his term, on June 15, 1849.
67) Colin Powell

Colin Powell is a man perpetually in motion. Jetting from East Coast to West, the way most people jump on the
morning commuter train, the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff juggles a variety of business
interests with charitable work, public speaking--pretty much whatever strikes his fancy and seems worthwhile. For most of his
adult life, people have been drawn to Powell, attracted by his enthusiasm and can-do demeanor, captivated, as he rose to the
highest levels of power in Washington, by the improbable arc of his personal life.
Powell describes himself as "a black kid of no early promise from an immigrant family of limited means." The
audiences who pay dearly to hear Powell speak these days understandably believe that the man who rose from such
unpromising beginnings to become one of the most admired public figures in the world must have grasped the secrets of
leadership early on. He clung to them dearly as he became the youngest general in the Army, then found his way to the seventh
floor of the State Department.
Colin Luther Powell was born in Harlem in 1937. His parents were Jamaican immigrants who stressed the
importance of education and personal achievement. Powell grew up in the South Bronx, where he graduated from high school
without having formed any definite ambit ion or direction in life. He entered the City College of Ne w York to study geology
and it was there, by his own account, that he found his calling when he joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC).
He became commander of his unit's precision drill team and graduated in 1958 at the top of his ROTC class, with the rank of
cadet colonel, the highest rank in the corps.
Powell was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army, and was one of the 16,000 military
advisors dispatched to South Vietnam by President Kennedy in 1962. In 1963, Lieutenant Powell was wounded by a punji-stick
booby trap while patrolling the Vietnamese border with Laos. He was awarded the Purple Heart, and later that year, the Bronze
Star.
Powell served a second tour of duty in Vietnam in 1968-69. During this second tour he was injured in a helicopter
crash. Despite his own injuries, he managed to rescue his comrades from the burning helicopter and was awarded the Soldier's
Medal. In all, he has received 11 decorations, including the Legion of Merit.
Powell earned an MBA at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and after being promoted to major,
won a White House fellowship. Powell was assigned to the Office of Management and Budget during the administration of
President Nixon, and here he made a lasting impression on the Director and Deputy Director of the Office: Casper Weinberger
and Frank Carlucci. Both of these men were to call on Powell when they served as Secretary of Defense and Nat ional Security
Advisor, respectively, under President Reagan.
Powell, now a Colonel, followed his term as White House Fellow with service as a battalion commander in Korea
and with a staff job at the Pentagon. After study at the Army War College, he was promoted to Brigadier General and
commanded a Brigade of the 101st Airborne Divis ion.
In the administration of President Carter, Powell was an assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and to the
Secretary of Energy. He was promoted to Major General. He again assisted Frank Carlucci at the Defense Department during
the transition from the Carter to Reagan administrations.
Powell served as assistant commander and deputy commander of infantry divisions in Colorado and Kansas before
returning to Washington to become senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, whom he assisted
during the invasion of Grenada and the raid on Libya.
Powell was called upon to testify before Congress in private session about the covert shipment of American arms to
Iran; he was one of only five persons in the Pentagon who knew about the operation. Powell was not implicated in any
wrongdoing in the matter.
In 1986, Powell left Washington to serve as commander of the Fifth Corps in Frankfurt, Germany, but was recalled to
Washington to serve as deputy to Frank Carlucci, after Carlucci was appointed national security adviser in the wake of the
Iranian arms scandal. A year later, Carlucci was appointed Secretary of Defense and Powell, now a Lieutenant General, became
the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In this capacity, he coordinated technical and policy advisers during
President Reagan's summit meetings with Soviet President Gorbachev. He was the first African -American to serve in this
position, as he has been in every office he has held since.
In 1991, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Bush, Powell became a national figure during the
successful Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations which expelled the Iraqi army from Kuwait.
General Powell continued as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the first months of the Clinton administration,
publicly disagreeing with the President's plan to permit gay men and women to serve in the military, although he eventually
accepted a compromise on the issue. Powell retired from the military shortly thereafter and returned to private life.
In 1994, Powell joined former President Carter and Senator Sam Nunn on a last -minute peace-making expedit ion to
Haiti, which resulted in the end of military rule and the peaceful return to power of the elected government of that country.
In his years in public service, General Powell never disclosed his political sympathies; he was registered to vote as
an independent. Although he was known to have supported the 1964 campaign of President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, he
had served in both Republican and Democratic administrations.





68) Steve Prefontaine

Steve Prefontaine was an American Olympic runner. Prefontaine was primarily a long distance runner, and at one
point held the American record in every running event from the 2000 meters to the 10,000 meters. Pre had one leg longer then
the other, and due to this he was told to give up on his dream of being the fastest runner on earth. He is considered one of the
greatest American runners of all time, having inspired a running boom during the 1970s. He is known for his extremely
aggressive "front-running" racing style and always believing in giving a full effort. Steve Prefontaine is known for never
pacing himself, slowing down or giving up.
Steve Prefontaine was born January 25, 1951 in the small town of Coos Bay, Oregon. He was a typical high school
boy and wanted to play football and the traditional sports. Prefontaine, though, was too small for these sports and decided to
run. He started his running career at Marshfield High School and became one the most sought after runners in the United States.
He was undefeated in cross country and track his junior and senior year. Pre was very versatile and could run a 1:54 800 mete r
to a 13:52 5000 meter race. His senior year at Marshfield High School he set the American record in the two mile run.
Coach Bill Bowerman of the University of Oregon took notice of Pres talent and recruited him heavily. The fall of
1969 Steve Prefontaine showed up on campus and ran cross country in the fall. By the time he finished his career at Oregon
University he won an impressive seven NCAA national titles: three in cross country and four in the three-mile in track. Steve
Prefontaine was also the first athlete to win four consecutive NCAA track t itles in the same event. He also held eight collegiate
records including the 3 mile and 6 mile races in which have not been broken.
Steve Prefontaine continued on with his running career and made the 1972 Olympic team in the 5000 meter run. He
ran a gutsy race and led most of the last mile, but ended up 4th, one place out of the medals. Pre was an icon in Oregon and
people would fill the seats at Hayward Field to watch Steve run. He never lost a race at Hayward field and graced the cover o f
Sports Illustrated magazine. His fans would cheer from him at the mere site of him. Before it was said and done Steve
Prefontaine broke his own or other American records 14 different times.
Steve Prefontaine was also involved with his community. He volunteered at Roosevelt Junior High School and
started a running club at the Oregon State Prison. He often corresponded with many of the inmates to give them hope. He was
very outspoken about how the Amateur Athletic Association (AAU) treated the amateur athletes. If it were not for him track
and field athletes of today would not be in the bargaining position they are in.
Steve Prefontaine died on May 30, 1975 driving home from a track meet he put on earlier that day. He had just set
the American record in the 5000 meter race and his MG convertible sports car hit a rock and overturned killing him. Pre was
only 24 years old. The news of his death shocked the running community world wide.
Steve Prefontaines legacy will live on forever. There have been two movies about his life and there is a track meet
held in his honor every year. As long as there is track and field Steve Prefontaine will always be remembered.










69) Queen Elizabeth II

Elizabeth II was born on April 21, 1926, in London, the oldest child of the Duke of Yor k and his wife, Elizabeth. Her
father became King George VI, of Great Britain and Ireland in 1936 when his older brother Edward VIII abdicated the throne.
Elizabeth married Philip Mountbatten in November 1947, and they had four children - Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince
Andrew, and Prince Edward.
Since the 1960s criticism of the monarchy and of the queen has been both positive and negative. Indeed, it may be
said that is precisely because the monarchy has not "created a truly classless and Commonwealth court" that it has been an
institution of inestimable value to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth in the second half of the 20th century. Britain i s
not noticeably less a "deferential society" now, and there can be no doubt that considerable spirit ual consolation can be derived
from symbolic continuity with past glory in rapidly changing and often all too inglorious times. There have, however, been
subtle changes in the monarchy. The work of the monarch and the monarchy has increased, and the queen accordingly shared
some of her duties with her children, upon whom more public attention was focused. She pursued her functions along lines laid
out by her father, George VI: diligence, duty, dignity, and compassion. Her involvement of the whole family in her duties also
reflected the influence of her father, who used to speak of his family as "The Firm."
In addition, the queen, perhaps in part influenced by her strong-willed and perceptive husband, started some new
trends toward modernization and openness in the monarchy. Her efforts were not unsuccessful. The queen and her activit ies
commanded international attention and widespread respect. The prime ministers who served under her were impressed by her
knowledge of state affairs - gained by conscientious reading of state papers. Her popularity at home and abroad was
indisputable.
At least part of this popularity could be attributed to her far -flung travels as the embodiment of Commonwealth unity
and British nationalis m. Her interested and gracious demeanor on these travels contributed to the warmth and enthusiasm of
the receptions which greeted her. Changes in the queen's circumstances and events in her private life necessarily had a publi c
impact. In the early 1970s there was considerable controversy over her request for an increase in her civil list funding.
Although it was not unreasonable that she would require additional funds to carry out her public duties in the style to which her
subjects had become accustomed and in an era of rampant inflat ion, some crit ics considered her request tactless because she
was one of the world's wealthiest women. Despite the crit ics, however (and perhaps also because of them: the public outcry
over their disloyal attitude was loud), funding was increased.
In the early 1980s personal security around the queen was increased after two unpleasant incidents . Happier events
also had their public impact. Perhaps the happiest event was the queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977, marked by an outpouring of
devotion to the queen, her family, and the institution of the British monarchy in the form of innumerable sporting events,
festivals, carnivals, races, concerts, commemorat ive stamps, and other activities in her honor. The queen indicated her conce rn
for her subjects by voicing her desire that the Silver Jubilee year be a special time "for people who find themselves the victims
of human conflict," by travelling extensively to meet her subjects during the year, and by establishing the Silver Jubilee Tr ust
Fund, headed by the Prince of Wales, which was designed "to help the young to help others."
After her accession the queen endeavored in her own way to make the British monarchy more modern, more open,
and more accessible. She replaced the noxious presentation of debutantes with informal Buckingham Palace luncheons to
which a variety of figures eminent in diverse fields ranging from industry to the stage to sports to Scotland Yard were invit ed.
The guest lists at her garden parties became increasingly eclectic. She showed interest and skil l in use of the broadcast media.
Perhaps the most popular of her attempts was the "walkabout," in which she left her car or entourage to meet, shake hands, an d
chat with ordinary people in the crowds which gathered around her. These spontaneous strolls, which she started in 1970 while
on a trip to New Zealand, revealed her conviction that "I have to be seen to be believed."
70) Condoleeza Rice

She is the first African-American woman to become the U.S. secretary of state. She advises the leader of the world's
largest superpower and has an unparalleled level of trust with and access to the president. And she has served two other U.S.
presidents, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. For all of these reasons, and more, Rice, 50, is the most powerful woman in
the world.
Condoleezza Rice is the first woman to occupy the key post of national security adviser. She is the most academic
member of the Bush foreign affairs team and - because of her gender, background and youth - one of the most distinctive. She
is personally close to Mr. Bush. And, as a well-liked and trusted policy adviser, she has proved a useful ally for a president
with little experience of foreign affairs.
Rice's influence over the new administration's early foreign policy strategy has been considerable. She led the tricky
negotiations with Russia (her academic speciali zation) over missile defense, and is thought to have spearheaded the
unilateralist tone of the first months of the Bush presidency. Her uncompromising positions on missile defense, Russia and the
environment won respect. However, Ms Rice, like many in the administration, thinks of US foreign policy largely in terms of
US national and strategic interest, and she is no fan of the US acting as a paternalistic nation-builder.
Rice was born in 1954 and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama under the shadow of segregation.
Her father, John Wesley Rice, was a school guidance counselor during the week and a Presbyterian minister on the weekends.
Her mother, Angelena, was a schoolteacher. The family lived in a middle-class, black community, where education was a high
priority for children who were expected to succeed regardless of any prejudices or boundaries. John and Angelena Rice t ried to
give everything possible to their young daughter, providing intangible support by developing her sense of pride, faith, and
responsibility. John Rice coached football and taught his daughter everything he could about tactics and strategy. Rice grew to
love the game and would follow football wherever she went. She has often said that to get ahead she had to be "twice as good"
and her childhood chiseled her strong determination and self-respect. Taught by her parents that education provided armor
against segregation and prejudice, Rice worked her way to college by the age of 15. She graduated at 19 from the University of
Denver with a degree in political science.
It was at Denver that Rice first became interested in international relations and the study of the Soviet Union. Her
inspiration came from a course taught by the Czech refugee, Josef Korbel, father to the United States' first woman Secretary of
State, Madeleine Albright. A masters and doctorate followed and, at the age of 26, Rice became a fellow at Stanford
University's Centre for International Security and Arms Control. After serving as the Soviet affairs adviser on Bush Senior's
National Security Council, Condoleezza Rice returned to Stanford in 1991 and, in 1993, became the youngest, the first female
and first non-white provost.
It is difficult to make generalizations about Condoleezza Rice. She is an African-American Nat ional Security Adviser,
but for a Republican administration that won just 10% of the black vote. Some profiles of Rice describe her as precise and
prissy. But she is also a pianist, ice skater and sports fan.
Rice's belief in education and self-improvement seem to be the key to understanding her. In an interview with
Newsweek magazine, Rice said that despite growing up with racial segregation, personal expectations were high. "My parents
had me absolutely convinced that, well, you may not be able to have a hamburger at Woolworth's but you can be president of
the United States."




71) Jackie Robinson

In 1947 life in America at least Jackies America was segregation. It was two worlds that were afraid of each
other. There were separate schools for blacks and whites, separate restaurants, separate hotels, separate drinking fountains and
separate baseball leagues. Life was unkind to black people who tried to bring those worlds together. It could be hateful. But
Jackie Robinson was bigger than all of that.
Jackie Robinson had to be bigger than life. He had to be bigger than the Brooklyn teammates who got up a petition to
keep him off the ball club, bigger than the pitchers who threw at him or the base runners who dug their spikes into his shin,
bigger than the bench jockeys who hollered for him to carry their bags and shine their shoes, bigger than the so -called fans who
mocked him with mops on their heads and wrote him death threats.
When Branch Rickey first met with Jackie about joining the Dodgers, he told him that for three years he would have
to turn the other cheek and silently suffer all the vile things that would come his way. It wasn't Jackie's nature to do that. He
was a fighter, a proud and competitive person. This was a man who, as a lieutenant in the Army, risked a court -mart ial by
refusing to sit in the back of a military bus. But when Rickey read to him from The Life of Christ, Jackie understood the
wisdom and the necessity of forbearance.
To this day, it is hard to understand how he withstood the things he did without lashing back. Somehow, though,
Jackie had the strength to suppress his instincts, to sacrifice his pride for his people's. It was an incredible act of selflessness
that brought the races closer together than ever before and shaped the dreams of an entire generation.
Jackie's character was much more important than his batting average, but it certainly helped that he was a great
ballplayer, a .311 career hitter whose trademark was rattling pitchers and fielders with his daring base running. He wasn't the
best Negro League talent at the t ime he was chosen, and baseball wasn't really his best sport he had been a football and
track star at UCLA but he played the game with a ferocious creativity that gave the country a good idea of what it had been
missing all those years. With Jackie in the infield, the Dodgers won six National League pennants.
Every black person in America had a piece of those pennants. There's never been another ballplayer who touched
people as Jackie did. He took his community over segregation's threshold into a new land whose scenery made every black
person stop and stare in reverence. The circulation of the Pittsburgh Courier, the leading black newsp aper, increased by
100,000 when it began reporting on him regularly. All over the country, black preachers would call together their congregatio ns
just to pray for Jackie and urge them to demonstrate the same forbearance that he did.
Later in his career, when the "Great Experiment" had proved to be successful and other black players had joined him,
Jackie allowed his instincts to take over in issues of race. He began striking back and speaking out. And when Jackie Robinso n
spoke, every black player got the message. He made it clear that he was playing for the people. Even after he retired in 1956
and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1962, Jackie continued to chop along the path that was still a long way from being
cleared. He campaigned for baseball to hire a black third-base coach, then a black manager. In 1969 he refused an invitation to
play in an old-timers' game at Yankee Stadium to protest the lack of progress along those lines.
One of the great players, Frank Robinson (who was related to Jackie only in spirit), finally became the first black
manager, in 1975. Jackie was gone by then. His last public appearance was at the 1972 World Series, where he showed up with
white hair, carrying a cane and going blind from diabetes. He died nine days later. Most of the black players from Jackie's day
were at the funeral, but it was appalling how few of the younger players showed up to pay him tribute.




72) Eleanor Roosevelt

As the years have passed, Eleanor Roosevelt's influence and stature have continued to grow. Today she remains a
powerful inspiration to leaders in both the civil rights and women's movements. Eleanor shattered the ceremonial mold in
which the role of the First Lady had traditionally been fashioned, and reshaped it around her own skills and he r deep
commit ment to social reform. She gave a voice to people who did not have access to power. She was the first woman to speak
in front of a national convention, to write a syndicated column, to earn money as a lecturer, to be a radio commentator and t o
hold regular press conferences.
The path to this unique position of power had not been easy. The only daughter of an alcoholic father and a beautiful
but aloof mother who was openly disappointed by Eleanor's lack of a pretty face, Eleanor was plagued by insecurity and
shyness. An early marriage to Franklin Roosevelt increased her insecurity and took away her one source of confidence: her
work in a New York City settlement house. "For 10 years, I was always just getting over having a baby or about to have
another one," she later lamented, "so my occupations were considerably restricted."
But 13 years after her marriage, and after bearing six children, Eleanor resumed the search for her identity. The
voyage began with a shock: the discovery in 1918 of love letters revealing that Franklin was involved with Lucy Mercer. There
was talk of divorce, but when Franklin promised never to see Lucy again, the marriage continued. For Eleanor a new path had
opened, a possibility of standing apart from Franklin. No longer would she define herself solely in terms of his wants and
needs. A new relationship was forged, on terms wholly different from the old.
She turned her energies to a variety of reformist organizations, joining a circle of postsuffrage feminists dedicated to
the abolition of child labor, the establishment of a minimum wage and the passage of legislation to protect workers. In the
process she discovered that she had talents --for public speaking, for organizing, for art iculating social problems. She formed an
extraordinary constellation of lifelong female friends, who helped to assuage an enduring sense of loneliness. When Franklin
was paralyzed by polio in 1921, her polit ical activis m became an even more vital force. She became Franklin's "eyes and ears, "
traveling the country gathering the grass -roots knowledge he needed to understand the people.
They made an exceptional team. She was more earnest, less devious, less patient, more uncompromisingly moral; he
possessed the more trustworthy political talent, the more finely tuned sense of timing, the smarter understanding of how to get
things done. Together they mobilized the American people to effect enduring changes in the political and social landscape of
the nation.
Nowhere was Eleanor's influence greater than in civil rights. In her travels around the country, she developed a
sophisticated understanding of race relations. When she first began inspecting New Deal programs in the South, she was
stunned to find that blacks were being systematically discriminated against at every turn. Citing statistics to back up her story,
she would interrupt her husband at any time, cross -examining him at dinner, handing him memos to read late at night. But her
confrontational style compelled him to sign a series of Executive Orders barring discrimination in the administration of various
New Deal projects. From that point on, Eleanor's independent legacy began to grow.
During World War II, Eleanor remained an uncompromising voice on civil rights, insisting that America could not
fight racis m abroad while tolerating it at home. Progress was slow, but her continuing intervention led to broadened
opportunities for blacks in the factories and shipyards at home and in the armed forces overseas. Eleanor's positions on civi l
rights were far in advance of her time: 10 years before the Supreme Court rejected the "separate but equal" doctrine, Eleanor
argued that equal facilities were not enough: "The basic fact of segregation, which warps and twists the lives of our Negro
population, [is] itself discriminatory."
There were other warps and twists that caught her eye. Long before the contemporary women's movement provided
ideological arguments for women's rights, Eleanor instinctively challenged institutions that failed to provide equal opportunity
for women. As First Lady, she held more than 300 press conferences that she cleverly restricted to women journalists, knowing
that news organizations all over the country would be forced to hire their first female reporter in order to have acce ss to the
First Lady.
Through her speeches and her columns, she provided a powerful voice in the campaign to recruit women workers to
the factories during the war. "If I were of debutante age, I would go into a factory, where I could learn a skill and be useful,"
Eleanor told young women, cautioning them against marrying too hastily before they had a chance to expand their horizons.
She was instrumental in securing the first government funds ever allotted for the building of child -care centers. And when
women workers were unceremoniously fired as the war came to an end, she fought to stem the tide. She argued on principle
that everyone who wanted to work had a right to be productive, and she railed against the closing of the child -care centers as a
shortsighted response to a fundamental social need. What the women workers needed, she said, was the courage to ask for their
rights with a loud voice.
For her own part, she never let the intense criticis m that she encountered silence her. "If I ... worried about
mudslinging, I would have been dead long ago." Yet she insisted that she was not a feminist. She did not believe, she
maintained, that "women should be judged, when it comes to appointing them or electing them, purely because they are
women." She wanted to see the country "get away from considering a man or woman from the point of view of religion, color
or sex." But the story of her life--her insistence on her right to an identity of her own apart from her husband and her family,
her constant struggle against depression and insecurity, her ability to turn her vulnerabilities into strengths --provides an
enduring example of a feminist who transcended the dictates of her times to become one of the century's most powerful and
effective advocates for social justice.


73) Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Dmocracy is not self-executing. It takes leadership to bring democracy to life. Great democratic leaders are
visionaries. They have an instinct for their nation's future. Through their capacity for persuasion, they win t he consent of their
people and call forth democracy's inner resources.
Democracy has been around for a bit, but the 20th century has been the crucial century of its trial, testing and
triumph. The Second World War found democracy fighting for its life. By 1941 there were only a dozen or so democrat ic states
left on earth. But great leadership emerged in time to rally the democratic cause. Future historians, looking back at this mo st
bloody of centuries, will very likely regard the 32nd President of the U.S., Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as the leader most
responsible for mobilizing democratic energies and faith first against economic collapse and then against military terror.
F.D.R. was the best loved and most hated American President of the 20th century. He was loved because, though
patrician by birth, upbringing and style, he believed in and fought for plain people for the "forgotten man" (and woman), for
the "third of the nation, ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." He was loved because he radiated personal charm, joy in his work,
optimism for the future. But he was hated too hated because he called for change, and the changes he proposed reduced the
power, status, income and self-esteem of those who profited most from the old order. Hatred is happily more fleeting than love.
F.D.R. was not a perfect man. In the service of his objectives, he could be, and often was, devious, guileful,
manipulative, evasive, dissembling, underhanded, even ruthless. But he had great strengths. He relished power and organized,
or disorganized, his Administration so that conflict among his subordinates would ensure that the big decisions would come to
him. A politician to his fingertips, he rejoiced in party combat. An optimist who fought his own brave way back from polio , he
brought confidence and hope to a scared and stricken nation.
He was a realist in means but an idealist in ends. Above all, F.D.R. stood for humanity against ideology. The 20th
was the most ideological of centuries. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin syst ematically sacrificed millions to false and terrible
dogmas. Even within the democracies, ideologues believed that the Great Depression imposed an either/or choice: if you
abandon laissez-faire, you are condemned to total statism.
Against the worship of abstractions, F.D.R. wanted to find practical ways to help decent men and women struggling
day by day to make a happier world for themselves and their children. His technique was, as he said, "bold, persistent
experimentation ... Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." Except
for the part about admitting failure frankly, that was the practice of his Administration.
When he came to office in 1933, laissez-faire had undermined the temples of capitalism, thrown a quarter of the
labor force out of work, cut the gross national product almost in half and provoked mutterings of revolution. No one knew why
things had gone wrong or how to set them right. Then F.D.R. appeared, a magnificent, serene, exhi larating personality,
buoyantly embodying new ideas, new courage, new confidence in America's ability to regain control over its future. His New
Deal swiftly introduced measures for social protection, regulat ion and control. Laissez-faire ideologues and Roosevelt haters
cried that he was putting the country on the road to communis m, the only alternative permitted by the either/or creed. But
Roosevelt understood that Social Security, unemployment compensation, public works, farm price supports, reciprocal -trade
agreements, minimum wages and maximum hours, guarantees of collective bargaining and all the rest were saving capitalis m
from itself.
Before F.D.R., the U.S. had had a depression every 20 years or so. The built -in economic stabilizers of the New Deal,
vociferously denounced by business leaders at the time, have preserved the country against major depressions for more than a
half-century. F.D.R.'s signal domestic achievement was to rescue capitalism from the capitalists.
F.D.R.'s brilliant (and sometimes not so brilliant) improvisations restored America's faith in democrat ic institutions.
Elsewhere on the planet, democracy was under assault. Hitler was on the march in Europe. Japan had invaded China and
dreamed of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under Japanese domination.
F.D.R.'s education in foreign affairs had been at the hands of two Presidents he greatly admired. Theodore Roosevelt
taught him national-interest, balance-of-power geopolitics. Woodrow Wilson gave him the vision of a world beyond balances
of power, an international order founded on the collective maintenance of the peace. But Americans had turned their backs on
the world and reverted to isolationism. Rigid neutrality acts denied the President authority to discriminate between a ggressor
states and their victims and thereby prevented the U.S. from throwing its weight against aggression.
To awaken his country from its isolationist slumber, Roosevelt began a long, urgent, eloquent campaign of popular
education, warning that unchecked aggression abroad would ultimately endanger the U.S. itself.
He saw the war as bringing about historic changes the rise of Russia and China, for example, and the end of
Western colonialis m. He tried to persuade the British to give India its independence and tried to stop the French from
repossessing Indochina. In the Four Freedoms and, with Churchill, in the Atlantic Charter, he proclaimed war aims in words
that continue to express the world's aspirations today.
Remembering America's reversion to is olationism after World War I, he set out to involve the U.S. in postwar
structures while the war was still on and the country still in an internationalist frame of mind. In a series of conferences in 1944,
he committed the country to international mechanis ms in a variety of fields finance and trade, relief and reconstruction,
food and agriculture, civil aviation.
The world we live in today is Franklin Roosevelt's world. Of the figures who for good or evil dominated the planet
60 years ago, he would be least surprised by the shape of things at the millennium. And confident as he was of the power and
vitality of democracy, he would welcome the challenges posed by the century to come.
74) Teddy Roosevelt

In his protean variety, his febrile energy, his incessant self-celebrat ion and his absolute refusal to believe there was
anything finer than to be born an American, unless to die as one in some glorious battle for the flag, the great "Teddy" was
representative of 20th century dynamism.
In his youth, as indeed during his infamous "White House walks," which usually culminated in a nude swim across
the Potomac, Theodore Roosevelt's cross -country motto was "Over, Under or Through But Never Around." He had an
overmastering directness and focus upon his objective, be it geological or political or personal. But T.R., unlike so many other
active (as opposed to reactive) Presidents, also had a highly sophisticated, tactical mind. He was, after all, capable of rea ding
one to three books daily while pouring out an estimated 150,000 letters and conducting the business of the presidency with
such dispatch that he could usually spend the entire afternoon goofing off, if his kind of mad exercise can be euphemized as
goofing off. "Theodore!" Senator Henry Cabot Lodge was once heard shouting, "if you knew how ridiculous you look up that
tree, you'd come down at once!"
The obvious example of T.R.'s "Never Around" approach to statesmanship was the Panama Canal, which he ordered
built in 1903, after what he called "three centuries of conversation." If a convenient revolution had to be fomented in Colombia
(in order to facilitate the independence of Panama province and allow construction to proceed), well, that was Bogota's bad
luck for being obstructionist and good fortune for the rest of world commerce. Being a historian, T.R. never tired of pointing
out that his Panamanian revolution had been merely the 53rd anti-Colombian insurrection in as many years, but he was less
successful in arguing that it was accomplished within the bounds of international law.
Dubious or not as a triumph of foreign policy, the canal has functioned perfectly for most of the century, and still
does so to the honor of our technological reputation, although its control has reverted to the country T.R. allo wed to sprout
alongside, like a glorified right of way.
But T.R. deserves to be remembered for some acts more visionary than land grabbing south of the border. He
fathered the modern American Navy, while his peacemaking between Russia and Japan in 1905 elevated him to the front rank
of presidential diplomats. He pushed through the Pure Food and Meat Inspection laws of 1906, forcing Congress to
acknowledge its responsibility as consumer protector.
Many other Rooseveltian acts loom larger in historical retrospect than they did at the time, when they passed
unnoticed or unappreciated. For example, T.R. was the first President to perceive that this nation's future trade posture must be
toward Asia and away from the Old World entanglements of its past. Crossing the Sierra Nevada on May 7, 1903, he boggled
at the beauty and otherworldliness of California. New York his birthplace seemed impossibly far away. There was no
doubt at all in T.R.'s leaping mind which would be the world's next superpower.


75) Karl Rove

(Written in March 2004)
In the autumn elect ion season of 1970, a cherubic, bespectacled teenager turned up at the Chicago campaign
headquarters of Alan Dixon, a Democrat running for state treasurer in Illinois. No one paid the newcomer much attention when
he arrived, or when he left soon afterwards. Nor did anyone in the office make the connection between the mystery volunteer
and 1,000 invitations on campaign stationery that began circulating in Chicago's red-light district and soup kitchens, promising
"free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing" for all-comers at Dixon's headquarters.
As political dirty tricks go, it was minor league. Hundreds of the city's heavy drinkers and homeless turned up at a
smart Dixon reception looking for free booze. Dixon was embarrassed but the plot failed to stop his momentum: he was elected
state treasurer and went on to become a senator. But the teenager who stole his letterheads, Karl Rove, has gone even further.
Over the past week, Rove, now aged 53, has been in his White House office overseeing George Bush's $150 million
re-elect ion strategy. The nerdy political brawler with only a secondary school education is now the man the president likes to
call his "boy genius" - a testament to Rove's role in orchestrating Bush's rise from a feckless, hard-drinking politician's brat to
Texas governor to president in barely a decade.
Rove's office is tight-lipped about the extent of his duties, but the few un-vetted memoirs to have escaped from this
highly disciplined administration have all portrayed him as the single most powerful figure in it, with the (possible) exceptions
of the president and vice-president.
Rove prepared for the harder edges of US politics by surviving his youth. Born on Christmas Day 1950 in Denver,
Colorado, he grew up in or near the Rockies, where his father worked as a geologist. On his 19th birthday, his father walked
out on him. Soon afterwards, he found out that he was not his father after all, the news dropped into a dinner-table conversation
by his aunt and uncle. Twelve years later, alone in Reno, his mother committed suicide.
At high school in Utah, Rove was known as a nerd and a motor-mouth, unpopular but irrepressibly opinionated.
While his peers were fixated on girls he became obsessed with school politics, campaigning for student positions in a
precocious jacket and tie. Although his parents were apolitical, he was a vocal Nixon supporter from the age of nine.
He avoided the Vietnam draft with a college deferment, but gave up his education to work on Republican campaigns,
and never got a degree. He launched his political career by wresting control of the College Republicans, a radical group in t he
Nixon era. It was an unpleasant business.
The aggressive tactics won the 22-year-old Rove a walk-on role in the Watergate saga that was consuming the nation.
A report was published in the Washington Post on August 10, 1973, tit led "[Republican party] Probes Official as Teacher of
Tricks", gave an account, based on tape recordings, of how Rove and a colleague had been touring the country giving young
Republicans political combat training, in which they recalled their feats of derring-do, such as Rove's Chicago heist at the
Dixon headquarters.
At the time, Rove claimed the tape had been doctored to exclude a warning to the audience not to try to emulate any
of his past misdeeds. Others present simply remember a caution not to get caught. The publicity forced the intervention of th e
Republican National Committee and its chairman, a former Texas congressman clinging on to his political career: George
Herbert Walker Bush. After considering the case, Bush Sr took action. He drove Edgeworth out of the party on suspicion of
having leaked the tapes, and hired Rove, bringing him to Washington.
The incident marked the genesis of the Rove-Bush axis and it was in Washington that Rove met the younger Bush.
He fell, politically speaking, in love. Rove was in Texas at a turning point in its polit ical history. The Democrats' hegemon y,
inherited from the civil war era, was crumbling, as the party moved to the left and Republican northerners moved into the
state's city suburbs. Election by election, post by post, the Republicans began to take over the state, and Rove was there to help
them.
The 1986 governor's race was a prime example. The contest between Rove's Republican client, Bill Clements, and
the Democratic incumbent, Mark White, was neck and neck, when Rove announced he had found an electronic listening device
in his office, and cried foul. The furo re swung the election to Clements and to this day Texan Democrats are convinced Rove
concocted the whole episode.
Eight years later, another Democrat, Anne Richards, occupied the governor's mansion, but Rove was promoting
another Republican candidate, George W. Bush. Governor Richards' advisers laughed openly at the challenge, but they were in
for a shock. In its last days, the 1994 campaign also turned nasty. Texan voters began receiving calls from "pollsters" askin g
questions such as: "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards if you knew her staff is dominated by
lesbians?" In the business, it is called "push-polling" and Shipley has no doubt who was behind it." Rove has used this kind of
dirty tricks in every campaign he's ever run."
Only circumstantial evidence links Rove to the push-polling. In fact, his fingerprints have not been found on any
dirty tricks since his College Republican days. Last year, however, Rove's taste for personal polit ics entangled him in an
extraordinary spy scandal. He is reported to have made calls to Washington journalists last July identifying a CIA undercover
agent, Valerie Plame, who was married to Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who had called into question the
administration's claims about Iraq's alleged nuclear programme. Rove allegedly told the journalists that Plame was "fair game"
because her husband had gone public with his criticism. A grand jury is now investigating the leak of Plame's name, a federal
felony.



76) Andrei Sakharov

In the fall of 1962, when his life took its fateful turn, Andrei Sakharov was not yet known to the world. He was 41
years old, a decorated Soviet physicist developing atomic weapons of terrifying power deep in the heart of the Soviet Union.
The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were locked in a frenzied contest for nuclear superiority. That September the Kremlin was to
conduct two massive atmospheric tests of bombs that Sakharov had helped design. Sakharov feared the radioactive fallout
from the second test would kill hundreds of thousands of civilians. He had also come to believe that another nuclear
demonstration would only accelerate the arms race. He became desperate not to see his research used for reckless ends. On
Sept. 25, he phoned Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev. "The test is pointless," he said. "It will kill people for no
reason." Khrushchev assured Sakharov he would inquire about postponing the test. The next day the detonation went off as
planned.
Sakharov wept. "After that," he said, "I felt myself another man. I broke with my surroundings. I understood there
was no point arguing." Sakharov would no longer be an academician concerned mainly with the theory of thermonuclear
reactions; instead he began a journey that would make him the world's most famous polit ical dissident and ultimately the
inspiration for the democrat ic movement that doomed the Soviet empire. Sakharov realized that the ideals he had pursued as a
scientist compassion, freedom, t ruth could not coexist with the specter of the arms race or t hrive under the authoritarian
grip of state communism. "That was probably the most terrible lesson of my life," he wrote.
So Sakharov abandoned his cocooned life as his country's leading physicist to risk everything in battle against the
two great threats to civilizat ion in the second half of this century: nuclear war and communist dictatorship. In the dark, bitter
depths of the cold war, Sakharov's voice rang out. "A miracle occurred," Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, "when Andrei
Sakharov emerged in the Soviet state, among the swarms of corrupt, venal, unprincipled intelligentsia." By the time of his
death in 1989, this humble physicist had influenced the spread of democratic ideals throughout the communist world. His
moral challenge to tyranny, his faith in the individual and the power of reason, his courage in the face of denunciation and,
finally, house arrest made him a hero to ordinary cit izens everywhere. He embodied the role that intellectuals are called
upon to play in the creation of civil society and inspired scientists working under other dictatorships to become leaders in the
struggle for democracy.
In an age of constant technological change, Sakharov reminded the world that science is inseparable from conscience.
Sakharov believed that science was a force for rationality and, from there, democracy: that in politics as in science, objective
truths can be arrived at only through a testing of hypotheses, a democratic consensus "based on a profound study of facts,
theories and views, presupposing unprejudiced and open discussion." As a physicist, he believed that physical laws are
immutable, applying to all things in nature. As a result, he regarded certain human values such as liberty and the respect for
individual dignity as inviolable and universal.
He was an unlikely activist. Born in Moscow in 1921, Sakharov was groomed less for polit ical protest than for
scholarly solitude. He taught himself to read at four, and his father often demonstrated physics experiments to him as a chil d.
At Moscow University in the 1940s, Sakharov was tabbed as one of the U.S.S.R.'s brightest young minds. After earning his
doctorate, he was sent to a top-secret installation to spearhead the development of the hydrogen bomb. By 1953 the Soviets had
detonated one. It was "the most terrible weapon in human history," Sakharov later wrote. Yet he felt that by building the H-
bomb, "I was working for peace, that my work would help foster a balance of power."
His growing awareness of the deadly effects of nuclear fallout s oon turned him against proliferation. His efforts to
persuade Khrushchev to halt tests in the late '50s and early '60s resulted in the 1963 U.S. -Soviet t reaty banning nuclear
explosions in space, in the at mosphere and underwater. Khrushchev later called Sa kharov "a crystal of morality" but still
one that could not be tolerated within the regime. The Kremlin took away his security privileges and ended his career as a
nuclear physicist. He campaigned for disarmament and turned his attention to the Soviet system, denouncing its stagnancy and
intolerance of dissent. So uncompromising was his critique of the regime that it estranged him from his children.
Outside the Soviet Union, where his writ ings were predictably banned by the government, Sakharov's name an d
struggle were familiar to intellectuals and dissidents forging their own fights against authority. He received the Nobel Peac e
Prize in 1975, and in 1980 his arrest and exile to the remote city of Gorky (now called Nizhni Novgorod) made him a martyr.
His refusal to be silenced even in banishment added to his legend. And then came the rousing finale: his release and hero's
return to Moscow in 1986; his relentless prodding of Mikhail Gorbachev to pursue democrat ization; and his election to the
Congress of People's Deputies, the Soviet Union's first democratically chosen body. At the time of his death, a tidal wave of
democracy that he had helped create was about to engulf the communist world.
What is Sakharov's legacy today? For scientists his career remains a model of the moral responsibility that must
accompany innovation. And Sakharov might remind the West too that freedom is fragile, that if democratic societies are not
protective of their libert ies, even they may lose it. On the night of his death, after returning from a tempestuous meet ing of the
Congress of People's Deputies, Sakharov told his wife Yelena Bonner, "Tomorrow there will be a battle!" That battle at its
core, the battle of individuals striving to shape their own destinies must continue to be fought in the century to come.






77) Jonas Salk

How many cases make an epidemic? Survivors of the great polio plagues of the 1940s and '50s will never believe
that in the U.S. the average toll in those years was "only" 1 victim out of every 5,000 people. Was that really all it took to scare
the nation out of its wits, sending families scurrying in all directions to the mountains, to the desert, to Europe in vain
hope of sanctuary. Perhaps polio's other name, infantile paralysis, had something t o do with it. Images of babies in wheelchairs
and tots on crutches tend to skew one's perception.
It was inevitable that whoever was first to allay such fears would become a national hero. "The Man Who Saved the
Children" should be good for a statue in every town in the world. And since the odds of a microbiologist's becoming even a
litt le bit famous are a lot worse than 5,000 to 1, it was perhaps inevitable that this hero's achievements would immediately be
disputed. In a scientific field so heavily manned, findings routinely crisscross and even minor discoveries can leave a trail of
claims and counterclaims, not to mention envy and acrimony, that are truly incurable.
Thus a monument to the conquest of polio faithful to the facts would consist of not one man in a white lab coat but
two of them glaring at each other. Both Drs. Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin could and did make convincing cases for themselves
and pretty good ones against each other too. But since the public usually prefers one hero to two, and since Salk did get there
first, he got the monument.
Between occasional shouts of "Eureka!" even the heroes of science tend to have quiet careers. But Salk's career
stands out in at least two respects: the sheer speed with which he outraced all the other tortoises in the field and the honors he
did not receive for doing so. How could the Man Who Saved the Children be denied a Nobel Prize? Or summarily be turned
down for membership in the National Academy of Sciences? What was it about Salk that so annoyed his fellow scientists?
That he was fast, there was no doubt. And hungry too. After taking brilliant advantage of the amazing public
education available to New Yorkers in the first half of this century, this son of Orthodox Polish -Jewish immigrants whizzed
through his medical training to fetch up at the University of Michigan an enviable fellowship to study virology.
Salk's major patron at Michigan was not one man but the whole U.S. Army, which needed a flu vaccine at once to
help win World War II and was happy to complete Salk's education in speed under pressure. After that, it was a snap for him to
set up his own peacetime lab at the University of Pittsburgh and equip it to the gills for the Great Crusade the one that every
immunologist in the world then had his eye on poliomyelitis.
Fortunately, Salk had somehow found time to do basic research on the virus and write a few theoretical papers, and it
was these that caught the eye of Basil O'Connor, the zealous head of the Infantile Paralysis Foundation , who decided to play a
hunch and shove some dimes in Salk's direction with instructions to get going.
With that, the seeds of resentment, deep and abiding, were sown. By then, dozens of worthy researchers had been
toiling far longer than Salk in the fields of polio and would have given their microscopes for such funding and freedom. Who
was this hired gun who appeared from nowhere with a bankroll the size of a special prosecutor's, plus free use of all the
backbreaking work that had gone before? In fact, the key piece of research, available to all, was completed a few years earlier
by the one undisputed hero of this story, Harvard's John Enders. It was his team that figured out how to grow polio in test t ubes
suddenly giving vaccine hunters everywhere enough virus to work with.
Now the goal was truly in sight, and who got there first was largely a matter of speed Salk's forte and luck.
Salk and Sabin came from the two competing schools of vaccine research. Sabin, like Louis Pasteur, believed the way to
produce immunity was to create a mild infection with a "live" but crippled virus, and he concocted his competing vaccine
accordingly. Salk, from his flu-fighting days, knew the immune system could be triggered without infection, using deactivated,
or "killed," viruses. And, as it turned out, his quick-and-dirty killed viruses were better suited to a crash program than Sabin's
carefully attenuated live ones. By 1954, Salk and Francis were ready to launch the largest medical experiment yet carried out in
the U.S., vaccinating more than 1 million kids ages six to nine, some with the vaccine, some with a placebo. The children
weren't told which they were getting.
The vaccine worked. But the world of science has a protocol for releasing such findings: first publish them in a
medical journal, and then spread the credit as widely as possible. Salk took part in a press conference and went on radio but
gave credit to nobody, including himself of course, he was going to get the credit anyway. And that was the mis take that
would haunt him.
Radio was right; vanity was wrong. This was not some breakthrough in carbuncle research but hot news that couldn't
wait one more minute. Within the brotherhood of researchers, however, Salk had sinned unforgivably by not salutin g either
Enders or, more seriously, his colleagues at the Pittsburgh lab. Everything he did after that was taken as showboating when
he opened the Salk Institute, a superlab in La Jolla, Calif., for the world's scientists to retreat to and bask in, and e ven when not
long before his death in 1995, he started a search for an AIDS vaccine, to a flourish of trumpets and welcome new funding.
Just as some politicians are at their best when running for office, so Salk came into his own as a spokesman for
vaccination. And one last thing. Like the millions of American veterans who have never ceased thanking Harry Truman for
dropping the Bomb and ending World War II, the folks who got their polio shot between the first Salk vaccine and the Sabin
model have never had any quarrel with Salk's high place in history. (The two vaccines are now given in alternating booster
shots.) There are times when even genius has to give way to the old Yankee virtues of know-how and can do. And if in this
instance these happened to be embodied in the son of a couple of Polish-Jewish immigrants... well, a lot of that kind of thing
happens in America.


78) Margaret Sanger

The movement she started will grow to be, a hundred years from now, the most influential of all time," predicted
futurist and historian H.G. Wells in 1931. "When the history of our civilizat ion is written, it will be a biological history, and
Margaret Sanger will be its heroine."
Though this prophecy of nearly 70 years ago credited one woman with the power that actually came from a wide and
deep movement of women, no one person deserves it more. Now that reproductive freedom is becoming accepted and
conservative groups are fighting to maintain control over women's bodies as the means of reproduction, Sanger's revolution
may be even more controversial than during her 50-year career of national and international battles. Her experience can teach
us many lessons.
She taught us, first, to look at the world as if women mattered. Born into an Irish working-class family, Margaret
witnessed her mother's slow death, worn out after 18 pregnancies and 11 live births. While working as a practical nurse and
midwife in the poorest neighborhoods of New York City in the years before World War I, she saw women deprived of their
health, sexuality and ability to care for children already born. Contraceptive informat ion was so suppressed by clergy -
influenced, physician-accepted laws that it was a criminal offense to send it through the mail. Yet the educated had access to
such information and could use subterfuge to buy "French" products, which were really condoms and other barrier methods,
and "feminine hygiene" products, which were really spermicides.
It was this injustice that inspired Sanger to defy church and state. In a series of articles called "What Every Girl
Should Know," then in her own newspaper The Woman Rebel and finally through neighborhood clinics that dispensed woman -
controlled forms of birth control (a phrase she coined), Sanger put information and power into the hands of wome n.
While in Europe for a year to avoid severe criminal penalties, partly due to her political radicalis m, partly for
violating postal obscenity laws, she learned more about contraception, the politics of sexuality and the commonality of
women's experience. Her case was dis missed after her return to the States. Sanger continued to push legal and social
boundaries by initiating sex counseling, founding the American Birth Control League (which became, in 1942, the Planned
Parenthood Federation of America) and organizing the first international population conference. Eventually her work would
extend as far as Japan and India, where organizations she helped start still flourish.
Sanger was past 80 when she saw the first market ing of a contraceptive pill, which she had helped develop. But legal
change was slow. It took until 1965, a year before her death, for the Supreme Court to strike down a Connecticut law that
prohibited the use of contraception, even by married couples. Extended to unmarried couples only in 1972, this constitutionally
guaranteed right to privacy would become as important to women's equality as the vote. In 1973 the right to privacy was
extended to the abortion decision of a woman and her physician, thus making abortion a safe and legal altern ative unlike the
$5 illegal butcheries of Sanger's day.
One can imagine Sanger's response to the current anti-choice lobby and congressional leadership that opposes
abortion, sex education in schools, and federally funded contraceptive programs that would make abortion less necessary; that
supports ownership of young women's bodies through parental-consent laws; that limits poor women's choices by denying
Medicaid funding; and that holds hostage the entire U.S. billion-dollar debt to the United Nations in the hope of attaching an
antiabortion rider. As in her day, the question seems to be less about what gets decided than who has the power to make the
decision.
One can also imagine her response to pro-life rhetoric being used to justify an average of one clinic bombing or
arson per month sometimes the same clinics Sanger helped found and the murder of six clinic staff members, the
attempted murder of 15 others, and assault and battery against 104 more. In each case, the justificat ion is that potential fetal
life is more important than a living woman's health or freedom.
What are mistakes in our era that parallel those of Sanger's? There is still an effort to distort her goal of giving
women control over their bodies by attributing such quotes to Sanger as "More children from the fit, less from the unfit that
is the chief issue of birth control." Sanger didn't say those words; in fact, she condemned them as a eugenicist argument for
"cradle competition." To her, poor mental development was largely the result of poverty, overpopulation and the lack of
attention to children. She correctly foresaw racis m as the nation's major challenge, conducted surveys that countered
stereotypes regarding the black community and birth control, and established clinics in the rural South with the help of such
African-American leaders as W.E.B. Du Bois and Mary McLeod Bethune.
Nonetheless, expediency caused Sanger to distance herself from her radical past; for instance, she used soft phrases
such as "family planning" instead of her original, more pointed argument that the poor were being manipulated into producing
an endless supply of cheap labor. She also adopted the mainstream eugenics language of the day, partly as a tactic, since man y
eugenicists opposed birth control on the grounds that the educated would use it more. Though her own work was directed
toward voluntary birth control and public health programs, her use of eugenics language probably helped justify sterilization
abuse. Her misjudgments should cause us to wonder what parallel errors we are making now and to question any tactics that
fail to embody the ends we hope to achieve.
Sanger led by example. Her brave and joyous life included fulfilling work, three children, two husbands, many lovers
and an international network of friends and colleagues. She was charis matic and sometimes quixotic, but she never abandoned
her focus on women's freedom and its larger implications for social justice (an inspiration that continues through Ellen
Chesler's excellent biography, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America). Indeed, she
lived as if she and everyone else had the right to control her or his own life. By word and deed, she pioneered the most radi cal,
humane and transforming political movement of the century.

79) Howard Schultz (Starbucks)

Howard Schult z wasn't the first person to be carried away by the aroma of a well-roasted coffee bean. But the
Starbucks Coffee Co. leader was undoubtedly the first to turn that reverie into a billion dollar retail operation. Schultz's
adventure started in 1981 when he traveled from New York to Seattle to check out a popular coffee bean store called Starbucks
that had been buying many of the Hammarplast Swedish drip coffeemakers he was selling.
There was that great smell, sure, but what caused him to fall in love with the business was the care the Starbucks
owners put into choosing and roasting the beans. He also was impressed with the owners' dedication to educating the public
about the wonders of coffee connoisseurship. "I walked away ... saying, 'God, what a great company, what a great city. I'd love
to be a part of that.' ".
Schultz was born in 1952 and raised in a Brooklyn, N.Y., housing project. A football scholarship to Northern
Michigan University was his ticket out, and after graduating he worked a variety of jobs until becoming manager of U.S.
operations for Hammarplast. It took Schult z a year to convince the Starbucks owners to hire him. When they finally made him
director of market ing and operations in 1982, he had another epiphany. This one occurred in Italy, when Schult z took note of
the coffee bars that existed on practically every block. He learned that they not only served excellent espresso, they also s erved
as meeting places or public squares; they were a big part of Italy's societal glue, and there were 200,000 of them in the country.
But back in Seattle, the Starbucks owners resisted Schultz's plans to serve coffee in the stores, saying they didn't
want to get into the restaurant business. Frustrated, Schultz quit and started his own coffee-bar business, called Il Giornale. It
was successful, and a year later Schult z bought Starbucks for $3.8 million. As the company began to expand rapidly in the '90s,
Schultz always said that the main goal was "to serve a great cup of coffee." But attached to this goal was a principle: Schult z
said he wanted "to build a company with soul." This led to a series of practices that were unprecedented in retail. Schult z
insisted that all employees working at least 20 hours a week get comprehensive health coverage -- including coverage for
unmarried spouses. Then he introduced an employee stock-option plan. These moves boosted loyalty and led to extremely low
worker turnover, even though employee salaries were fairly low.
Why was Schultz so generous? He remembers his father, who struggled mightily at low-paying jobs with little to
show for it when he died. "He was beaten down, he wasn't respected," Schultz said. "He had no health insurance, and he had no
workers' compensation when he got hurt on the job." So with Starbucks, Schultz "wanted to build the kind of company that my
father never got a chance to work for, in which people were respected."
Schultz has said that his model for expanding Starbucks is McDonald's, with a few key differences. One is that
Starbucks owns most of its stores, while McDonald's franchises. Schult z doesn't believe it's possible to build a strong brand
around franchises -- although McDonald's is an obvious exception. Another difference is that Starbucks has managed to
blossom without national advertising. Finally, Starbucks sells premium products to a fairly upscale, urban clientele.
Starbucks experienced astronomical expansion during the go-go '90s, going public in 1992 and growing at a rate of
25 percent to 30 percent a year. The company has almost 4,000 stores in 25 countries, serving 15 million people a week, and
new outlets are opening so fast it has Wall Street's head spinning. The company seems to be immune to market vagaries as well,
gaining 25 percent in stock value last year while the Dow Jones Industrial Index lost 10 percent and the Nasdaq 60 percent.
Earlier this year Schultz indulged his love of basketball by buying the Seattle Supersonics for $250 million. He also
handed over CEO chores to Orin Smith so that Schultz can focus on global strategy. He believes that Starbucks is just getting
started.
"Despite the success that Starbucks has enjoyed in the U.S., we have a less than 6 percent market share of coffee
consumption," Schult z said. "We are in the infant stages of the growth of the business even in America. And now seeing what
we've done internationally ... we are going to shock people in terms of what Starbucks is going to be."
Asked the secret of his success, Schultz recounts four principles: "Don't be threatened by people smarter than you.
Compromise anything but your core values. Seek to renew yourself even when you are hitting home runs. And everything
matters."


















80) Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg's first films were made at a time when directors were the most important people in Hollywood, and
his more recent ones at a time when market ing controls the industry. That he has remained the most powerful filmmaker in the
world during both periods says something for his talent and his flexibility. No one else has put together a more popular body of
work, yet within the entertainer there is also an artist capable of The Color Purple and Schindler's List. When entertainer a nd
artist came fully together, the result was E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial, a remarkable fusion of mass appeal and stylistic mastery.
Spielberg's most important contribution to modern movies is his insight that there was an enormous audience to be
created if old-style B-movie stories were made with A-level craftsmanship and enhanced with the latest developments in
special effects. Consider such titles as Raiders of the Lost Ark and the other Indiana Jones movies, Close Encounters of the
Third Kind, E.T. and Jurassic Park. Look also at the films he produced but didn't direct, like the Back to the Future series,
Gremlins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Twister. The story lines were the stuff of Saturday serials, but the filmmaking was
cutting edge and delivered what films have always promised: they showed us something amazing that we hadn't seen before.
Directors talk about their master images, the images that occur in more than one film because they express something
fundamental about the way the filmmakers see things. Spielberg once told me that his master image was the light flooding in
through the doorway in Close Encounters, suggesting, simultaneously, a brightness and mystery outside. This strong
backlighting turns up in many of his other films: the aliens walk out of light in Close Encounters, E.T.'s spaceship door is filled
with light, and Indy Jones often uses strong beams from powerful flashlights.
In Spielberg, the light source conceals mystery, whereas for many other directors it is darkness that conceals mystery.
The difference is that for Spielberg, mystery offers promise instead of threat. That orientation apparently developed when he
was growing up in Phoenix, Ariz. "My dad took me out to see a meteor shower when I was a little kid," he said, "and it was
scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night. My heart was beating; I didn't know what he wanted to do. He
wouldn't tell me, and he put me in the car and we went off, and I saw all these people lying on blankets, looking up at the s ky.
And my dad spread out a blanket. We lay down and looked at the sky, and I saw for the first time all these meteors. What
scared me was being awakened in the middle of the night and taken somewhere without being told where. But what didn't
scare me, but was very soothing, was watching this cosmic meteor shower. And I think from that moment on, I never looked at
the sky and thought it was a bad place."
There are two important elements there: the sense of wonder and hope, and the identification with a child's point of
view. Spielberg's best characters are like elaborations of the heroes from old Boy's Life serials, plucky kids who aren't afraid to
get in over their head. Even Oskar Schindler has something of that in his makeup the boy's delight in pulling off a daring
scheme and getting away with it.
Spielberg heroes don't often find themselves in complex emot ional entanglements (Celie in The Color Purple is an
exception). One of his rare failures was Always, with its story of a ghost watching his girl fall in love with another man. The
typical Spielberg hero is drawn to discovery, and the key shot in many of his films is the revelation of the wonder he has
discovered. Remember the spellbinding first glimpse of the living dinosaurs in Jurassic Park?
Spielberg's first important theatrical film was The Sugarland Express, made in 1974, a time when gifted auteurs like
Scorsese, Altman, Coppola, De Palma and Malick ruled Hollywood. Their god was Orson Welles, who made the masterpiece
Citizen Kane entirely without studio interference, and they t oo wanted to make the Great American Movie. But a year later,
with Jaws, Spielberg changed the course of modern Hollywood history. Jaws was a hit of vast proportions, inspiring executives
to go for the home run instead of the base hit. And it came out in t he summer, a season the major studios had generally ceded to
cheaper exploitation films. Within a few years, the Jaws model would inspire an industry in which budgets ran wild because
the rewards seemed limit less, in which summer act ion pictures dominated the industry and in which the hottest young directors
wanted to make the Great American Blockbuster.
Spielberg can't be blamed for that seismic shift in the industry. Jaws only happened to inaugurate it. If the shark had
sunk for good (as it threatened to during the troubled filming), another picture would have ushered in the age of the movie best
sellers maybe Star Wars, in 1977. And no one is more aware than Spielberg of his own weaknesses. When I asked him once
to make the case against his films, he grinned and started the list: "They say, 'Oh, he cuts too fast; his edits are too quick; he
uses wide-angle lenses; he doesn't photograph women very well; he's tricky; he likes to dig a hole in the ground and put the
camera in the hole and shoot up at people; he's too gimmicky; he's more in love with the camera than he is with the story.'"
All t rue. But you could make a longer list of his strengths, including his direct line to our subconscious. Spielberg
has always maintained obsessive quality control, and when his films work, they work on every level that a film can reach. I
remember seeing E.T. at the Cannes Film Festival, where it played before the most sophisticated filmgoers in the world and
reduced them to tears and cheers.
In the history of the last third of 20th century cinema, Spielberg is the most influential figure, for better and worse. In
his lesser films he relied too much on shallow stories and special effects for their own sake. (Will anyone treasure The Lost
World: Jurassic Park a century from now?) In his best films he tapped into dreams fashioned by our better natures.





81) Joseph Stalin

As ruler of the U.S.S.R. from 1929 to 1953, Joseph Stalin was in charge of Soviet policies during the early phase of
the Cold War. Born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili on December 21, 1879, he adopted the name Stalin, which means "Man
of Steel," while still a young revolutionary. Stalin first rose to power in 1922 as secretary general of the Communist Party.
Using administrative skills and ruthless maneuvering, Stalin rid himself of all potential rivals in the party, first by having many
of them condemned as "deviationists," and later by ordering them executed.
To ensure his position and to push forward "socialism in one country," he put the Soviet Union on a course of crash
collectivization and industrialization. An estimated 25 million farmers were forced onto state farms. Collect ivization alone
killed as many as 14.5 million people, and Soviet agricultural output was reduced by 25 percent, according t o some estimates.
In the 1930s, Stalin launched his Great Purge, ridding the Communist Party of all the people who had brought him to
power. Soviet nuclear physicist and academician Andrei Sakharov estimated that more than 1.2 million party members -- more
than half the party -- were arrested between 1936 and 1939, of which 600,000 died by torture, execution or perished in the
Gulag.
Stalin also purged the military leadership, executing a large percentage of the officer corps and leaving the U.S.S.R.
unprepared when World War II broke out. In an effort to avoid war with Germany, Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with
German leader Adolf Hit ler in August 1939. When Hitler invaded the U.S.S.R. on June 22, 1941, Stalin was not seen or heard
from for two weeks. After addressing the nation two weeks later, Stalin took command of his troops.
With the Soviet Union initially carrying the burden of the fighting, Stalin met with Brit ish Prime Minister Winston
Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at Tehran (1943) and Yalta (1945), and with Churchill and Roosevelt's
successor, President Harry S. Truman, in Potsdam (1945), dividing the postwar world into "spheres of influence."
Though the U.S.S.R. only joined the war against Japan in August 1945, Stalin insisted on expanding Soviet influence
into Asia, namely the Kurile Islands, the southern half of Sakhalin Island and the northern section of Korea. More important,
Stalin wanted to secure a territorial buffer zone that had ideologically friendly regimes along the U.S.S.R.'s western borders.
In the wake of the German defeat, the U.S.S.R. occupied most of the countries in Eastern Europe and eventually
ensured the installation of Stalinist regimes. Stalin said later to Milovan Djilas, a leading Yugos lav communist, "Whoever
occupies a territory also imposes his own social system." He believed that the Americans and the British "imperialis m" would
clash and eventually "socialism" would triumph.
After initially approving the participation by Eastern European countries in the U.S.-sponsored Marshall Plan (1947),
Stalin forbade it. Stalin also sought to gain influence in Germany, though his exact goals remain controversial. Denied acces s
to the western German occupation zones, he agreed to the establishment of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in
October 1949.
Encouraged by Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People's Republic of China
in October 1949, Stalin gave the green light to North Korean leader Kim Il Sung to attack South Korea in June 1950. His
confrontational foreign policy and his domestic terror regime (the "Stalinist system") had an impact on Soviet society and
politics well beyond the dictator's death of natural causes at age 73 on March 5, 1953.






82) Martha Stewart

Martha Stewart's image as the personification of gracious living may lead some to imagine that she grew up in the
sort of rural luxury pictured in her books and magazine. In fact, she was born in the industrial city of Jersey City, New Jersey, a
location known more for heavy industry than for rustic charm. Her parents, Martha and Edward Kostyra, were a schoolteacher
and a pharmaceuticals salesman, respectively. When Martha was three, the family moved to Nutley, New Jersey, where she
grew up with four brothers and sisters in a close-knit Polish-American family defined by the father's intense ambition for his
children. Edward Kostyra taught his daughter gardening when she was only three; her mother taught her cooking and baking
and sewing; she learned still more about baking pies and cakes from an elderly couple -- retired bakers -- who lived next door.
Martha Kostyra was a hard-working, serious child. A straight A student, she won a partial scholarship to Barnard
College in New York City and worked as a model to help pay expenses. She began her college career intending to study
chemistry, but later switched to art, European history and architectural history. Just after her sophomore year, she married
Andrew Stewart, a law student. After graduation, she continued a successful modeling career, doing television commercials for
Breck, Clairol, Lifebuoy soap and Tareyton cigarettes. In 1965, her daughter was born, and Martha Stewart quit modeling,
In 1967 she began a successful second career as a stockbroker, her father-in law's profession. Andrew Stewart
founded a publishing house and served as chief executive of several others. When recession hit Wall Street in 1973, Martha
Stewart left the brokerage. She and her husband moved to Westport, Connecticut, where they undertook the ambitious
restoration of the 1805 farmhouse seen in her television programs. She still lives there.
In 1976, Martha Stewart started a catering business, first in partnership with a friend from college days, and then on
her own. In ten years this business, which she ran out of the basement of her farmhouse, had become a $1 million enterprise.
She also opened a retail store in Westport to sell specialty foods and supplies for entertaining.
She wrote articles for the New York Times and was an editor and columnist for the magazine House Beautiful. In
1982 Martha Stewart published the first of many lavishly illustrated books. Entertaining, co-written with Elizabeth Hawes, was
an instantaneous success, and made Martha Stewart into a one-woman industry. Soon she was producing video tapes, dinner-
music CDs, television specials and dozens of books on hors d'oeuvres, pies, weddings, Christmas, gardening and restoring old
houses.
Regular appearances on the Today show made her a household name. She signed an advertising and consulting
contract with Kmart for a reported $5 million. She typically earns $10,000 for a lecture and customers pay $900 a head to
attend seminars at her Connecticut farm. For much of the 1980s, she was a contributing editor to Family Circle magazine
before starting her own magazine, Martha Stewart Living, which attained a circulation of 1.3 million.
After appearing on mult iple television specials on cable, public and network television, in 1993 Martha Stewart
started a syndicated half-hour TV show called, like her magazine, Martha Stewart Living. Her enterprises have grown into a
conglomerate, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. (MSO), with branches in publishing, television, merchandising and
Internet/direct commerce, providing products in eight core areas: home, cooking and entertaining, gardening, crafts, holidays,
housekeeping, weddings, and child care.
Over the years, Martha Stewart has shown patience and good humor in the face of the criticism and satire that are the
inevitable lot of public figures in the mass media, but in 2003 she was confronted with a far greater challenge, an investiga tion
of her personal stock trading by the Justice Depart ment and the Securities Exchange Commission. Although she maintained her
innocence of all charges, she was brought to trial in the first months of 2004. The court dismissed the original accusation o f
insider trading from which the other charges stemmed, but in 2004 a jury found Martha Stewart guilty of misleading federal
investigators and obstructing an investigation. Although she appealed her conviction, she served a five -month prison sentence.
The company she founded continues to thrive, and after her release she resumed her business career. Whatever she may yet
accomplish, Martha Stewart has had more influence on how Americans, eat, entertain, and decorate their homes and gardens
than any one person in our history.



















83) Harriet Beecher Stowe

American writer and philanthropist, best-known for the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851-52). Stowe
wrote the work in reaction to the Fugit ive Slave Act of 1850, which made it illegal to assist an escaped slave. In the story
'Uncle Tom' of the t itle is bought and sold three times and finally beaten to death by his last owner. The book was quickly
translated into 37 languages and it sold in five years over half a million copies in the United States. Uncle Tom's Cabin was
also among the most popular plays of the 19th century.
Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, into a large family. She had two sisters, one half-sister,
five brothers, and two half-brothers. Harriet herself was the seventh child of her parents, Lyman and Roxana Beecher. Lyman
was a controversial Calvinist preacher, who saw hims elf as a soldier of Christ. Roxana, a granddaughter of General Andrew
Ward, died of tuberculosis at 41 - Harriet was four at that time. Two years later a stepmother took over the household.
Stowe was named after her aunt, Harriet Foote, who influenced deeply her thinking, especially with her strong belief
in culture. Samuel Foote, her uncle, encouraged her to read works of Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott. When Stowe was eleven,
she entered the seminary at Hartford, Connecticut, kept by her elder sister Cat herine. The school had advanced curriculum and
she learned languages, natural and mechanical science, composition, ethics, logic, mathemat ics - subjects that were generally
taught to male students. Four years later she was employed as an assistant teacher. Her father married again - he became the
president of lane Theological Seminary.
Catherine and Harriet founded a new seminary, the Western Female Institute. With her sister Stowe wrote a children's
geography book. In 1834 Stowe began her literary career when she won a prize contest of the Western Monthly Magazine, and
soon Stowe was a regular contributor of stories and essays. Her first book, The Mayflower, appeared in 1843.
In 1836 Stowe married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a professor at her father's theological seminary. He was a widower; his
late wife had been Stowe's friend. The early years of their marriage were marked by poverty. Over the next 14 years Stowe had
7 children. In 1850 Calvin Stowe was offered a professorship at Bowdoin, and they moved to Bruns wick, Maine. In Cincinnati
Stowe had come in contact with fugitive slaves. She learned about life in the South from her own visits there and saw how
cruel slavery was. In addition the Fugitive Slave Law, passed by Congress in 1850, arose much protest - giving shelter or
assistance to an escaped slave became a crime. And finally a personal tragedy, the death of her infant Samuel from cholera, led
Stowe to compose her famous novel. It was first published in the anti -slavery newspaper The Nat ional Era, from June 1851 to
April 1852, and later in book form. The story was to some extent based on true events and the life of Josiah Henson.
Stowe's fame opened her doors to the national literary magazines. She started to publish her writ ings in The Atlantic
Monthly and later in Independent and in Christian Union. For some time she was the most celebrated woman writer in The
Atlantic Monthly and in the New England literary clubs.
In Uncle Tom's Cabin the pious old Uncle Tom is sold by his well-intentioned Kentucy owner, Mr. Shelby, who has
fallen into debts. The trader also singles out little Harry, Eliza's child, but Eliza takes Harry and heads for the river. Un cle Tom
submits to his fate. He is bought first by the idealistic Augustine St Clare after saving her daughter, Litt le Eve, who falls from
the deck of a riverboat. In his New Orleans house, Uncle Tom makes friends with Eva's black friend, the impish Topsy. "Never
was born!' persisted Topsy... 'never had no father, nor mother, nor nothin'. I was raised by a speculator, with lots of others." Eva
dies from a weakened constitution, and St. Clare is killed in an accident - he is stabbed while trying to separate two brawling
men. Tom is sold to the villainous Simon Legree, a Yankee and a brutal cotton plantation owner. "I don't go for savin' niggers.
Use up, and buy more, 's my way," he says. Two of Uncle Tom's female slaves, Cassy and Emmeline, pretend to escape and go
into hiding. Tom will not reveal their whereabouts and Legree has his lackeys Quimbo and Sambo beat the unprotesting Tom to
the point of death. Tom forgives them and dies, just as Mr. Shelby's son arrives to buy him back. Shelby decides to fight for the
Abolitionist cause. A parallel plot centers on Eliza, her little child, and her husband George who escape to freedom in Canada
using the 'underground railroad.' Other important characters are Miss Ophelia St. Clare, a New England spinster, and Marks,
the slave catcher. Cassy meets on the boat north Madame de Throux, sister of George Harris, Eliza's husban d. The Harris
family leaves for Africa and George Shelby frees his slaves.
After the Civil War the sales of the novel declined. The sentimentality and religiosity of the story was considered a
drawback. The first film adaptation was made in 1903. 'Uncle Tom' was used pejoratively, meaning white paternalism and
black passivity, undue subservience to white people on the part of black people. In the 1970s Uncle Tom's Cabin, with its
strong female characters, started to attract the attention of feminist critics, but Stowe's vision found now defenders. However,
Tom's passivity was compared to Gandhi's strategy of peaceful resistance.
Stowe's later works did not gain the same popularity as Uncle Tom's Cabin. She published novels, studies of social
life, essays, and a small volume of religious poems. Her mental facult ies failed in 1888, t wo years after the death of her
husband. She died on July 1, 1896 in Hartford, Connecticut.









84) Igor Stravinsky

Paris' Thtre des Champs-Elyses, on May 29, 1913, was the setting of the most notorious event in the musical
history of this century the world premiere of The Rite of Spring. Trouble began with the playing of the first notes, in the
ultrahigh register of the bassoon, as the renowned composer Camille Saint -Saens conspicuously walked out, complaining
loudly of the misuse of the instrument. Soon other protests became so loud that the dancers could barely hear their cues. Fig hts
broke out in the audience. Thus Modernism arrived in music, its calling card delivered by the 30-year-old Russian composer
Igor Stravinsky.
Born in 1882 in Oranienbaum, Russia, a city southwest of St. Petersburg, Stravinsky was rooted in the nationalistic
school that drew inspiration from Russia's beautifully expressive folk music. His father was an opera singer who performed in
Kiev and St. Petersburg, but his greatest musical influence was his teacher, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. The colorful, fantastic
orchestration that Stravinsky brought to his folk song-inspired melodies was clearly derived from Rimsky-Korsakov. But the
primitive, offbeat rhythmic drive he added was entirely his own. The result was a music never before heard in a theater or
concert hall.
In 1910 Serge Diaghilev, then director of the world -famous Ballets Russes, invited Stravinsky to compose works for
his company's upcoming season at the Paris Opera. The Firebird, the first to appear, was a sensation. Petrushka and The Rite of
Spring quickly followed. Soon Stravinsky's audaciously innovative works confirmed his status as the leading composer of the
day, a position he hardly relinquished until his death nearly 60 years later.
After leaving Russia, Stravinsky lived for a while in Swit zerland and then moved to Paris. In 1939 he fled the war in
Europe for the U.S., settling in Hollywood. In 1969 he moved to New York City. Over the years, Stravinsky experimented with
virtually every technique of 20th century music: tonal, polytonal and 12-tone serialis m. He reinvented and personalized each
form while adapting the melodic styles of earlier eras to the new times. In the end, his own musical voice always prevailed.
In 1947 St ravinsky befriended Robert Craft, a 23-year-old conductor who was to become his chronicler, interpreter
and, oddly, his mentor in some ways. It was Craft who persuaded Stravinsky to take a more sympathetic view of Arnold
Schoenberg's 12-tone school, which led to Stravinsky's last great stylistic development.
In his long career, there was scarcely a musical form that Stravinsky did not turn his hand to. He regular ly produced
symphonies, concertos, oratorios and an almost bewildering variety of choral works. There were operas that have found a
secure place in the repertory. The ballets also continued. He conducted with an energy and vividness that completely conveyed
his every musical intention. Stravinsky, a musical revolutionary whose own evolution never stopped. There is not a composer
who lived during his time or is alive today who was not touched, and sometimes transformed, by his work.
85) Margaret Thatcher

She was the catalyst who set in motion a series of interconnected events that gave a revolutionary t wist to the
century's last two decades and helped mankind end the millennium on a note of hope and confidence. The triumph of
capitalis m, the almost universal acceptance of the market as indispensable to prosperity, the collapse of Soviet imperialis m, the
downsizing of the state on nearly every continent and in almost every country in the world Margaret Thatcher played a part
in all those transformations, and it is not easy to see how any would have occurred without her.
Born in 1925, Margaret Hilda Roberts was an enormously industrious girl. The daughter of a Grantham shopkeeper,
she studied on scholarship, worked her way to Oxford and took two degrees, in chemistry and law. Her fascination with
politics led her into Parliament at age 34, when she argued her way into one of the best Tory seats in the country. Her quick
mind led her up through the Tory ranks, and by age 44 she got settled into the "statutory woma n's" place in the Cabinet as
Education Minister, and that looked like the summit of her career. But Thatcher was, and is, notoriously lucky. Her case is
awesome testimony to the importance of sheer chance in history. In 1975 she challenged Edward Heath for the Tory leadership
simply because the candidate of the party's right wing abandoned the contest at the last minute. Thatcher stepped into the
breach. When she went into Heath's office to tell him her decision, he did not even bother to look up. " You'll l ose," he said.
"Good day to you."
Nothing is so powerful as "an idea whose time has come." And by the mid-'70s enough Tories were fed up with
Heath. She chose her issues carefully and, it emerged, luckily. The legal duels she took on early in her tenure as Prime
Minister sounded the themes that made her an enduring leader: open markets, vigorous debate and loyal alliances. Among her
first fights: a struggle against Britain's out-of-control trade unions, which had destroyed three governments in succession.
Thatcher turned the nation's anti-union feeling into a handsome parliamentary majority and a mandate to restrict union
privileges by a series of laws that effectively ended Britain's trade-union problem once and for all. "Who governs Britain?" she
famously asked as unions struggled for power. By 1980, everyone knew the answer: Thatcher governs.
Once the union citadel had been stormed, Thatcher quickly discovered that every area of the economy was open to
judicious reform. Even as the rest of Europe toyed with socialis m and state ownership, she set about privatizing the
nationalized industries, which had been hitherto sacrosanct, no matter how inefficient. It worked. Brit ish Airways, an
embarrassingly slovenly national carrier that very seldom showed a profit , was privatized and transformed into one of the
world's best and most profitable airlines. British Steel, which lost more than a billion pounds in its final years as a state concern,
became the largest steel company in Europe.
By the mi d-1980s, privatization was a new term in world government, and by the end of the decade more than 50
countries, on almost every continent, had set in motion privatizat ion programs, floating loss -making public companies on the
stock markets and in most cases transforming them into successful private-enterprise firms. Even left-oriented countries, which
scorned the notion of privatization, began to reduce their public sector on the sly. Governments sent administrative and lega l
teams to Britain to study how it was done. It was perhaps Britain's biggest contribution to practical economics in the world
since J.M. Keynes invented "Keynesianism," or even Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations.
But Thatcher became a world figure for more than just her politics. She combined a flamboyant willpower with
evident femininity. It attracted universal attention, especially after she led Britain to a spectacular military victory over
Argentina in 1982. She understood that politicians had to give military people clear orders about end s, then leave them to get
on with the means. Still, she could not bear to lose men, ships or planes. "That's why we have ext ra ships and planes," the
admirals had to tell her, "to make good the losses." Fidelity, like courage, loyalty and perseverance, were cardinal virtues to her,
which she possessed in the highest degree. People from all over the world began to look at her methods and achievements
closely, and to seek to imitate them.
One of her earliest admirers was Ronald Reagan, who achieved power 18 months after she did. He too began to
reverse the Ratchet Effect in the U.S. by effect ive deregulation, tax cutting and opening up wider market opportunities for f ree
enterprise. Reagan liked to listen to Thatcher's various lectures on the virtues of the market or the minimal state. "I'll remember
that, Margaret," he said. She listened carefully to his jokes, tried to get the point and laughed in the right places.
They turned their mutual affection into a potent foreign policy partnership. With Reagan and Thatcher in power, the
application of judicious pressure on the Soviet state to encourage it to reform or abolish itself, or to implode, became an
admissible policy. Thatcher warmly encouraged Reagan to rearm and thereby bring Russia to the negotiating tab le. She shared
his view that Moscow ruled an "evil empire," and the sooner it was dismantled the better. Together with Reagan she pushed
Mikhail Gorbachev to pursue his perestroika policy to its limits and so fatally to undermine the self-confidence of the Soviet
elite.
Historians will argue hotly about the precise role played by the various actors who brought about the end of Soviet
communism. But it is already clear that Thatcher has an important place in this huge event.
It was the beginning of a new historical epoch. All the forces that had made the 20th century such a violent
disappointment to idealists--totalitarianis m, the gigantic state, the crushing of individual choice and init iative--were publicly
and spectacularly defeated. Ascendant instead were the values that Thatcher had supported in the face of somet imes spectacular
opposition: free markets and free minds. The world enters the 21st century and the 3rd millennium a wiser place, owing in no
small part to the daughter of a s mall shopkeeper, who proved that nothing is more effective than willpower allied to a few clear,
simple and workable ideas.

86) Alan Turing

If all Alan Turing had done was answer, in the negative, a vexing question in the arcane realm of mathematical logic,
few nonspecialists today would have any reason to remember him. But the method Turing used to show that certain
propositions in a closed logical system cannot be proved within that system had enormous consequences in the world at large.
For what this eccentric young Cambridge don did was to dream up an imaginary machine a fairly simple typewriter-like
contraption capable somehow of scanning, or reading, instructions encoded on a tape of theoretically infinite length. As the
scanner moved from one square of the tape to the next responding to the sequential commands and modifying its
mechanical response if so ordered the output of such a process, Turing demonstrated, could replicate logical human thought.
The device in this inspired mind-experiment quickly acquired a name: the Turing machine. And so did another of
Turing's insights. Since the instructions on the tape governed the behavior of the machine, by changing those instructions, o ne
could induce the machine to perform the functions of all such machines. In other words, depending on the tape it scanned, the
same machine could calculate numbers or play chess or do anything else of a comparable nature. Hence his device acquired a
new and even grander name: the Universal Turing Machine.
Turing's thoughts were recognized by the few readers capable of understanding them as theoretically interesting,
even provocative. But no one recognized that Turing's machine provided a blueprint for what would eventually become the
electronic digital computer. So many ideas and technological advances converged to create the modern computer that it is
foolhardy to give one person the credit for inventing it. But the fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a
spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine.
Alan Mathison Turing was born in London in 1912, the second of his parents' two sons. His father was a member of
the Brit ish civil service in India, an environment that his mother considered unsuitable for her boys. So John an d Alan Turing
spent their childhood in foster households in England, separated from their parents except for occasional visits back home.
Alan's loneliness during this period may have inspired his lifelong interest in the operations of the human mind, how it can
create a world when the world it is given proves barren or unsatisfactory.
At 13 he enrolled at the Sherbourne School in Dorset and there showed a flair for mathemat ics. Turing recognized
his homosexuality while at Sherbourne and fell in love, albeit undeclared, with another boy at the school, who suddenly died of
bovine tuberculosis. This loss shattered Turing's religious faith and led him into atheis m and the conviction that all phenomena
must have materialistic explanations. There was no soul in the machine nor any mind behind a brain. But how, then, did
thought and consciousness arise?
After twice failing to win a fellowship at the University of Cambridge's Trinity College, a lodestar at the time for
mathematicians from around the world, Turing received a fellowship from King's College, Cambridge. King's provided a
remarkably free and tolerant environment for Turing, who thrived there. When he completed his degree requirements, Turing
was invited to remain at King's as a tutor. And there he might happily have stayed, pottering about with problems in
mathematical logic, had not his invention of the Turing machine and World War II intervened.
Turing, on the basis of his published work, was recruited to serve in the Government Code and Cypher School . The
task of all those so assembled mathemat icians, chess champions, Egyptologists, whoever might have something to
contribute about the possible permutations of formal systems was to break the Enigma codes used by the Nazis in
communicat ions between headquarters and troops. Because of secrecy restrictions, Turing's role in this enterprise was not
acknowledged until long after his death. It is now known that Turing played a crucial role in designing a primitive, computer-
like machine that could decipher at high speed Nazi codes to U-boats in the North Atlantic.
After the war, Turing returned to Cambridge, hoping to pick up the quiet academic life he had intended. But the
newly created mathemat ics division of the Brit ish National Physical Laboratory offered him the opportunity to create an actual
Turing machine, the ACE or Automatic Computing Engine, and Turing accepted. What he discovered, unfortunately, was that
the emergency spirit that had short-circuited so many problems during the war had dissipated. Bureaucracy, red tape and
interminable delays once again were the order of the day. Finding most of his suggestions dismissed, ignored or overruled,
Turing eventually left the NPL for another stay at Cambridge and then accepted an offer from the Univers ity of Manchester
where another computer was being constructed along the lines he had suggested back in 1937.
Since his original paper, Turing had considerably broadened his thoughts on thinking machines. He now proposed
the idea that a machine could learn from and thus modify its own instructions. Turing proposed what he called an "imitation
test," later called the "Turing test." Imagine an interrogator in a closed room hooked up in some manner with two subjects, o ne
human and the other a computer. If the questioner cannot determine by the responses to queries posed to them which is the
human and which the computer, then the computer can be said to be "thinking" as well as the human.
Turing remains a hero to proponents of artificial intelligence in part because of his blithe assumption of a rosy future:
"One day ladies will take their computers for walks in the park and tell each other, 'My little computer said such a funny th ing
this morning!'"







87) Lech Walesa

Lech Walesa, the fly, feisty, mustachioed electrician from Gdansk, shaped the 20th century as the leader of the
Solidarity movement that led the Poles out of communis m. It is one of history's great ironies that the nearest thing we have
ever seen to a genuine workers' revolution was directed against a so-called workers' state. Poland was again the icebreaker for
the rest of Central Europe in the "velvet revolutions" of 1989. Walesa's contribution to the end of communism in Europe, and
hence the end of the cold war, stands beside those of his fel low Pole, Pope John Paul II, and the Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev.
Walesa's life, like those of Gorbachev and the Pope, was shaped by communis m. Born to a family of peasant farmers
in 1943, he came as a young man to work in the vast shipyards that the communist state was developing on the Balt ic coast, as
did so many other peasant sons. A devout Roman Catholic, he was shocked by the repression of workers' protests in the 1970s
and made contact with small opposition groups. Sacked from his job, he nonetheless climbed over the perimeter wall of the
Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk in August 1980, at age 37, to join the occupation strike. With his electrifying personality, quick wit
and gift of the gab, he was soon leading it. He moved his fellow workers away from mere wage claims and toward a central,
daringly political demand: free trade unions.
When the Polish communists made this concession, which was without precedent in the history of the communist
world since 1917, the new union was christened Solidarnosc (Solidarity). Soon it had 10 million members, and Walesa was its
undisputed leader. For 16 months they struggled to find a way to coexist with the communist state, under the constant threat of
Soviet invasion. Walesa--known to almost everyone simply as Lech was foxy, unpredictable, often infuriating, but he had a
natural genius for polit ics, a matchless ability for sensing popular moods, and great powers of swaying a crowd. Again and
again, he used these powers for moderation. He jokingly described himself as a "fireman," dousing the flames of popular
discontent. In the end, martial law was declared. Walesa was interned for 11 months and then released.
Yet Solidarity would not die, and Walesa remained its symbol. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 . With
support from the Pope and the U.S., he and his colleagues in the underground leadership of Solidarity kept the flame alight,
until the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Kremlin brought new hope. In 1988 there was another occupation strike in the
Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, which Walesa again joined though this time as the grand old man among younger workers. A
few months later, the Polish communists entered into negotiations with Solidarity, at the first Round Table of 1989. Walesa a nd
his colleagues secured semifree elections in which Solidarity proceeded to triumph. In August, just nine years after he had
climbed over the shipyard wall, Poland got its first non-communist Prime Minister in more than 40 years. Where Poland led,
the rest of Central Europe soon followed and the Soviet Union was not far behind.
The next phase in Walesa's political career was more controversial. Angered by the fact that his former intellectual
advisers were now running the country in cooperation with the former communists, he declared a "war at the top" of Solidarity.
"I don't want to, but I must," he insisted. Fighting a populist campaign against his own former adviser, he was elected Polan d's
first noncommunist President, a post he held until 1995. Some people liked his stalwart, outspoken style. Others found him too
undignified to be the new democracy's head of state. Brilliant as a people's tribune, he stumbled over long formal speeches.
You never felt he was quite comfortable in the role. When he stayed with the British Queen at Windsor Castle, he
characteristically quipped that the bed was so big, he couldn't find his wife.
Politically, he was also erratic. As Poland was struggling to be accepted into NATO, he suddenly proposed a "NATO
bis," a shadowy "second NATO" for those in wait ing. Not for the first time, his colleagues put their heads in their hands. His
closest adviser was his former chauffeur, with whom he played long games of table tennis. He developed close links with the
military and security services. His crit ics accused him of being authoritarian, a "President with an ax." In another historical
irony, he was defeated by a former communist, Aleksander Kwasniewski. Walesa went back to Gdansk, to his villa, his wife
Danuta and their eight children. But at 54 he is still young, and he recently announced the formation of his own polit ical party.
Like Gorbachev, he finds it very difficult to accept that he has become a historical figure rather than a politician with ser ious
chances.
Walesa is a phenomenon. Still mustachioed but thickset now, he stands for many values that in the West might be
thought conservative. Fierce patriotism ("nationalis m," say his critics), strong Catholic views, the family. He's a fighter, of
course. But he's also mercurial, unpredictable--and a consummate politician. He is an example of someone who was
magnificent in the struggle for freedom but less so in more normal times, when freedom was won and the task was to
consolidate a stable, law-abiding democracy. For all his presidential airs, he still retains something of the old Lech, the
working-class wag and chancer that his friends remember from the early days. But no one can deny him his place in history.
Without Walesa, the occupation strike in the Lenin Shipyard might never have taken off. Without him, Solidarity
might never have been born. Without him, it might not have survived mart ial law and come back triumphantly to negotiate the
transition from communism to democracy. And without the Polish icebreaking, Eastern Europe might st ill be frozen in a Soviet
sphere of influence, and the world would be a very different place. With all Walesa's personal faults, his legacy is a huge g ain
in freedom, not just for the Poles. His services were, as an old Polish slogan has it, "for our freedom and yours."






88) Sam Walton

Though it's hard to believe today, discount retailing was a controversial concept when it began to gain ground in the
'50s at stores such as Ann & Hope, which opened in a reclaimed mill in Cumberland, R.I.
Traditional retailers hated it, and so did manufacturers; it threatened their control of the marketplace. Most states had
restrictions on the practice. When the business began to emerge in the early '60s, Walton was a fairly rich merchant in his 4 0s,
operating some 15 variety stores spread mostly around Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. They were t raditional small-town
stores with relatively high price markups.
Walton was an active student of retailing all family vacations included store visits so by the time a barber
named Herb Gibson from Berryville, Ark., began opening discount stores outside towns where Sam ran variety stores, Walton
saw what was coming. On July 2, 1962, at the age of 44, he opened his first Wal-Mart store, in Rogers, Ark. That same year,
S.S. Kresge launched K Mart, F.W. Woolworth started Woolco and Dayton Hudson began its Target chain. Discounting had hit
America in a big way. At that time, Walton was too far off the beaten path to attract the attention of competitors or supplie rs,
much less Wall Street.
Once committed to discounting, Walton began a crusade that lasted the rest of his life: to drive costs out of the
merchandising system wherever they lay in the stores, in the manufacturers' profit margins and with the middleman all in
the service of driving prices down, down, down.
Using that formula, which cut his margins to the bone, it was imperative that Wal-Mart grow sales at a relentless
pace. It did, of course, and Walton hit the road to open stores wherever he saw opportunity. He wou ld buzz towns in his low-
flying airplane studying the lay of the land. When he had triangulated the proper intersection between a few s mall towns, he
would touch down, buy a piece of farmland at that intersection and order up another Wal-Mart store, which his troops could
roll out like a rug.
As the chain began to take off, Walton made major adjustments to manage the growth again always seeming to
see ahead. As early as 1966, when he had 20 stores, he attended an IBM school in upstate New York. His goal: to hire the
smartest guy in the class to come down to Bentonville, Ark., and computerize his operations. He realized that he could not
grow at the pace he desired without computerizing merchandise controls. He was right, of course, and Wal-Mart went on to
become the icon of just-in-time inventory control and sophisticated logistics the ultimate user of information as a
competitive advantage. Today Wal-Mart's computer database is second only to the Pentagon's in capacity, and though he is
rarely remembered that way, Walton may have been the first true information-age CEO.
To his great delight, Walton spent much of his career largely unnoticed by the public or the press. In fact, hardly
anyone had ever heard of him when, in 1985, Forbes magazine determined that his 39% ownership of Wal-Mart's stock made
him the richest man in America. After that, the first wave of attention focused on Walton as populist retailer: his preferenc e for
pickup trucks over limos and for the company of bird dogs over that of inves tment bankers. His extraordinary charis ma had
motivated hundreds of thousands of employees to believe in what Wal -Mart could accomplish, and many of them had ridden
the company's stock to wealth. It was the American Dream. As Wal-Mart's influence grew, however, and passed that of
competitors K Mart and Sears, Walton began to be villainized by some, especially beleaguered s mall-town merchants. They
rallied a nostalgic national press, which--from its perch in Manhattan waxed eloquent on the lost graces of s mall-town
America, blaming that loss squarely on Sam Walton.
Walton viewed all these arguments as utter foolishness. He had been a s mall -town merchant. And he had seen the
future. He had chosen to eat rather than be eaten. And anyway, he believed that sma ll-town merchants could compete if they
would make major changes to adapt. As it turned out, of course, the consumer voted heavily with Walton. He gave America
what it really wanted low prices every day.
There is no argument offered here that Sam Walt on didn't clutter the landscape of the American countryside or that
he didn't force a lot of people to change the way they made a living. But he merely hastened such changes. The forces of
progress he represented were inevitable. His empowering management techniques were copied by businesses far beyond his
own industry; his harnessing of informat ion technology to cut costs quickly traveled upstream to all kinds of companies; and
his pioneering retailing concepts paved the way for a new breed of "category ki ller" retailer the Home Depots, Barnes &
Nobles and Blockbusters of the world. This wave of low-overhead, low-inventory selling continues to accelerate. The Internet,
in fact, is its latest iterat ion. One can only wonder what a young cyber Sam would set out to accomplish if he were just getting
started.













89) Jack Welch
(excerpt from Winning)

One day, you become a leader. On Monday, you're talking and laughing with colleagues about life and work, and
gossiping about how stupid management can be. Then on Tuesday, you are management. You're a boss. Suddenly, everything
feels differentbecause it is different. Leadership requires distinct behaviors and attitudes. Before you become a leader,
success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
During my talks with students, managers and entrepreneurs, leadership questions invariably were asked. "What does
a leader really do?" and "How can I be a good leader?" These kinds of questions have pushed me to make sense of my own
leadership over 40 years. I ran teams with three experienced people and divisions with 30,000. I managed businesses that were
dying and ones that were bursting with growth. There were acquisitions, divestitures, organizational crises, moments of
unexpected luck, good economies and bad. And yet, some ways of leading always seemed to work. These became my eight
"rules."

#1 LEADERS RELENTLESSLY UPGRADE THEIR TEAM, USING EVERY ENCOUNTER AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO
EVALUATE, COACH AND BUILD SELF-CONFIDENCE.
The team with the best players usually does win. And that is why, very simply, you need to invest the vast majority of
your time and energy as a leader in three activities. You have to evaluatemaking sure the right people are in the right jobs,
supporting and advancing those who are, and moving out those who are not. You have to coachguiding, crit iquing and
helping people to improve their performance in every way. And finally, you have to build self-confidencepouring out
encouragement, caring and recognition. Self-confidence energizes, and it gives your people the courage to stretch, take risks
and achieve beyond their dreams. It is the fuel of winning teams.
Too often, managers think that people development occurs once a year in performance reviews. That's not even close.
It should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings -on. Customer visits are a chance to evaluate your
sales force. Plant tours are an opportunity to meet promising new line managers. A coffee break at a meet ing is an opening to
coach a team member about to give his first major presentation. Think of yourself as a gardener, with a watering can in one
hand and a can of fertilizer in the other. Occasionally you have to pull some weeds, but most of the t ime, you just nurture and
tend. Then watch everything bloom.

#2 LEADERS MAKE SURE PEOPLE NOT ONLY SEE THE VISION, THEY LIVE AND BREATHE IT.
Leaders have to set the team's vision and make it come alive. How do you achieve that? First of all, no jargon.
Targets cannot be so blurry they can't be hit. You have to talk about vision constantly to everyone. A common problem is that
leaders communicate the vision to close colleagues and it never filters down to people in frontline positions. If you want people
to live and breathe the vision, "show them the money" when they do, be it with salary, bonus, or significant recognition.

#3 LEADERS GET INTO EVERYONE'S SKIN, EXUDING POSITIVE ENERGY AND OPTIMISM.
An upbeat manager with a positive outlook somehow ends up running a team or organization filled with ... well,
upbeat people with positive outlooks. A sourpuss somehow ends up with an unhappy tribe all his own. Unhappy tribes have a
tough time winning. Work can be hard. But your job as leader is to fight the gravitational pull of negativis m. That doesn't mean
you sugarcoat the challenges. It does mean you display an energizing, can-do attitude about overcoming them.

#4 LEADERS ESTABLISH TRUST WITH CANDOR, TRANSPARENCY AND CREDIT.
Your people should always know where they stand. They have to know how the business is doing. And sometimes
the news is not goodsuch as imminent layoffsand any normal person would rather avoid delivering it. But you have to
fight the impulse to pad hard messages or you'll pay with your team's confidence and energy.
Leaders also establish trust by giving credit where credit is due. They never score off their own people by stealing an
idea and claiming it as their own. They don't kiss up and kick down because they are self-confident and mature enough to
know that their team's success will get them recognition, and sooner rather than later. In bad times, leaders take responsibi lity
for what's gone wrong. In good times, they generously pass around the praise.

#5 LEADERS HAVE THE COURAGE TO MAKE UNPOPULAR DECISIONS AND GUT CALLS.
There are t imes you have to make hard decisions let people go, cut funding to a project, or close a plant. Obviously,
tough calls spawn complaints and resistance. Your job is to listen and explain yourself clearly but move forward. You are not a
leader to win a popularity contestyou are a leader to lead. Don't run for office. You're already elected.
Somet imes making a decision is hard not because it's unpopular, but because it comes from your gut and defies a
"technical" rationale. Much has been written about the mystery of gut, but it's really just pattern recognition, isn't it? You've
seen something so many times you just know what's going on this time. The facts may be incomplete, but the situation feels
very, very familiar to you. Somet imes the hardest gut calls involve picking people. You meet a candidate who has all the right
stuff. But something nags at you, and you're left with that uh-oh feeling. Don't hire the guy.

#6 LEADERS PROBE AND PUSH WITH A CURIOSITY THAT BORDERS ON SKEPTICISM, MAKING SURE THEIR
QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERED WITH ACTION.
When you are an individual contributor, you try to have all the answers. When you are a leader, your job is to have
all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room. Every conversation you
have about a decision, a proposal, or a piece of market information has to be filled with you saying, "What if?" and "Why not ?"
and "How come?" Questioning, however, is never enough. You have to make sure your questions unleash debate and raise
issues that get action.

#7 LEADERS INSPIRE RISK TAKING AND LEARNING BY SETTING THE EXAMPLE.
These two concepts often get lip serviceand little else. Too many managers urge their people to try new things and
then whack them in the head when they fail. And too many live in not -invented-here worlds of their own making. If you want
your people to experiment, set the example yourself. Consider risk taking. You don't need to be preachy or somber about your
errors. In fact, the more humorous and lighthearted you can be, the more people will get the message that mistakes aren't fatal.
As for learningagain, live it yourself. Just because you're the boss doesn't mean you're the source of all knowledge.
Whenever I learned about a best practice that I liked at another company, I would come back to GE and make a scene. Maybe I
overstated the case, but I wanted people to know how enthusiastic I was about the new idea.

#8 LEADERS CELEBRATE.
Why does celebrating make managers so nervous? Maybe throwing a party doesn't seem professional, or it makes
managers worry that they won't look serious to the powers that be, or that, if things get too happy at the office, people wil l stop
working their tails off.
There is just not enough celebrating going on at workanywhere. I harped on the importance of celebrating for 20
years. But during my last trip as CEO to our training center in Crotonville, N.Y., I asked the 100 or so managers in the clas s,
"Do you celebrate enough in your units?" Even knowing what I wanted them to say, less than half answered yes.
What a lost opportunity. Celebrating creates an atmosphere of recognition and positive energy. Imagine a team
winning the World Series without champagne spraying everywhere. And yet companies win all the time and let it go without so
much as a high five. Work is too much a part of life not to recognize moments of achievement. Make a big deal out of them. If
you don't, no one will.
I am often asked if leaders are born or made. The answer, of course, is both. Some characteristics, like IQ and energy,
seem to come with the package. On the other hand, you learn some leadership skills, like self -confidence, at your mother's
knee, and at school, in academics and sports. And you learn others at worktrying something, getting it wrong and learning
from it, or getting it right and gaining the self-confidence to do it again, only better.
90) Bill Wilson

Second Lieut. Bill Wilson didn't think t wice when the first butler he had ever seen offered him a drink. The 22-year-
old soldier didn't think about how alcohol had destroyed his family. He didn't think about the Yankee temperance movement of
his childhood or his loving fiance Lois Burnham or his emerging talent for leadership. He didn't think about anything at all. "I
had found the elixir of life," he wrote. Wilson's last drink, 17 years later, when alcohol had destroyed his health and his c areer,
precipitated an epiphany that would change his life and the lives of millions of other a lcoholics. Incarcerated for the fourth
time at Manhattan's Towns Hospital in 1934, Wilson had a spiritual awakening a flash of white light, a liberating awareness
of God that led to the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous and Wilson's revolutionary 12-step program, the successful
remedy for alcoholis m. The 12 steps have also generated successful programs for eat ing disorders, gambling, narcotics, debtin g,
sex addiction and people affected by others' addictions. Aldous Huxley called him "the greatest social architect of our century."
William Griffith Wilson grew up in a quarry town in Vermont. When he was 10, his hard-drinking father headed for
Canada, and his mother moved to Boston, leaving the sickly child with her parents. As a soldier, and then as a bus inessman,
Wilson drank to alleviate his depressions and to celebrate his Wall Street success. Married in 1918, he and Lois toured the
country on a motorcycle and appeared to be a prosperous, promising young couple. By 1933, however, they were living on
charity in her parents' house on Clinton Street in Brooklyn, N.Y. Wilson had become an unemployable drunk who disdained
religion and even panhandled for cash.
Inspired by a friend who had stopped drinking, Wilson went to meet ings of the Oxford Group, an evangelical society
founded in Britain by Pennsylvania Frank Buchman. And as Wilson underwent a barbiturate-and-belladonna cure called "purge
and puke," which was state-of-the-art alcoholism treat ment at the time, his brain spun with phrases from Oxford Group
meet ings, Carl Jung and William James' "Variet ies of Religious Experience," which he read in the hospital. Five sober months
later, Wilson went to Akron, Ohio, on business. The deal fell through, and he wanted a drink. He stood in the lobby of the
Mayflower Hotel, entranced by the sounds of the bar across the hall. Suddenly he became convinced that by helping another
alcoholic, he could save himself.
Through a series of desperate telephone calls, he found Dr. Robert Smith, a skeptical drunk whose family pe rsuaded
him to give Wilson 15 minutes. Their meet ing lasted for hours. A month later, Dr. Bob had his last drink, and that date, June 10,
1935, is the official birth date of A.A., which is based on the idea that only an alcoholic can help another alcoholic . "Because
of our kinship in suffering," Bill wrote, "our channels of contact have always been charged with the language of the heart."
The Burnham house on Clinton Street became a haven for drunks. "My name is Bill W., and I'm an alcoholic," he
told assorted houseguests and visitors at meetings. To spread the word, he began writing down his principles for sobriety. Each
chapter was read by the Clinton Street group and sent to Smith in Akron for more edit ing. The book had a dozen provisional
titles, among them "The Way Out" and "The Empty Glass." Edited to 400 pages, it was finally called "Alcoholics
Anonymous," and this became the group's name.
But the book, although well reviewed, wasn't selling. Wilson tried unsuccessfully to make a living as a wire -rope
salesman. A.A. had about a hundred members, but many were still drinking. Meanwhile, in 1939, the bank foreclosed on the
Clinton Street house, and the couple began years of homelessness, living as guests in borrowed rooms and at one point staying
in temporary quarters above the A.A. clubhouse on 24th Street in Manhattan. In 1940 John D. Rockefeller Jr. held an A.A.
dinner and was impressed enough to create a trust to provide Wilson with $30 a week but no more. The tycoon felt that
money would corrupt the group's spirit.
Then, in March 1941, The Saturday Evening Post published an article on A.A., and suddenly thousands of letters and
requests poured in. Attendance at meetings doubled and tripled. Wilson had reached his audience. In Twelve Tradit ions, Wilson
set down the suggested bylaws of Alcoholics Anonymous. In them, he created an enduring blueprint for an organizat ion with a
maximum of individual freedom and no accumulation of power or money. Public anonymity ensured humility. No
contributions were required; no member could contribute more than $1,000.
Today more than 2 million A.A. members in 150 countries hold meetings in church basements, hospital conference
rooms and school gyms, following Wilson's informal structure. Members identify themselves as alcoholics and share their
stories; there are no rules or entry requirements, and many members use only first names.
Wilson believed the key to sobriety was a change of heart. The suggested 12 steps include an admission of
powerlessness, a moral inventory, a restitution for harm done, a call to service and a surrender to some personal God. In A.A.,
God can be anything from a radiator to a patriarch. Influenced by A.A., the American Medical Association has redefined
alcoholism as a chronic disease, not a failure of willpower.
As Alcoholics Anonymous grew, Wilson became its principal symbol. He helped create a governing structure for the
program, the General Service Board, and turned over his power. "I have become a pupil of the A.A. movement rather than t he
teacher," he wrote. A s moker into his 70s, he died of pneumonia and emphysema in Miami, where he went for t reatment in
1971. To the end, he clung to the principles and the power of anonymity. He was always Bill W., refusing to take money for
counseling and leadership. He turned down many honors, including a degree from Yale. And he declined this magazine's offer
to put him on the cover even with his back turned.



91) Oprah Winfrey

Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, Oprah Winfrey was reared by her grandmother on a farm where she "began her
broadcasting career" by learning to read aloud and perform recitations at the age of three. From age six to 13, she lived in
Milwaukee with her mother. After suffering abuse and molestation, she ran away and was sent to a juvenile detention home at
the age of 13, only to be denied admission because all the beds were filled. As a last resort, she was sent to Nashville to l ive
under her father's strict discipline. Vernon Winfrey saw to it that his daughter met a midnight curfew, and he required her to
read a book and write a book report each week. "As strict as he was," says Oprah, "he had some concerns about me making the
best of my life, and would not accept anything less than what he thought was my best."
Oprah Winfrey's broadcasting career began at age 17, when she was hired by WVOL radio in Nashville, and t wo
years later signed on with WTVF-TV in Nashville as a reporter/anchor. She attended Tennessee State University, where she
majored in Speech Communications and Performing Arts.
In 1976, she moved to Balt imore to join WJZ-TV news as a co-anchor, and in 1978 discovered her talent for hosting
talk shows when she became co -host of WJZ-TV's "People Are Talking," while continuing to serve as anchor and news
reporter.
In January 1984, she came to Chicago to host WLS-TV's "AM Chicago," a faltering local talk show. In less than a
year, she turned "AM Chicago" into the hottest show in town. The format was soon expanded to one hour, and in September
1985 it was renamed "The Oprah Winfrey Show."
Seen nationally since September 8, 1986, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" became the number one talk show in national
syndication in less than a year. In June 1987, in its first year of eligibility, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" received three Dayt ime
Emmy Awards in the categories of Outstanding Host, Outstanding Talk/ Service Program and Outstanding Direction. In June
1988, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" received its second consecutive Daytime Emmy Award as Outstanding Talk/Service
Program, and she herself received the International Radio and Television Society's "Broadcaster of the Year" Award. She was
the youngest person and only the fifth woman ever to receive the honor in IRTS's 25-year history.
Before America fell in love with Oprah Winfrey the talk show host, she captured the nation's attention with her
poignant portrayal of Sofia in Steven Spielberg's 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker's novel, The Color Purple. Winfrey's
performance earned her nominations for an Oscar and Golden Globe Award in the category of Best Supporting Actress. Crit ics
again lauded her performance in Native Son, a movie adaptation of Richard Wright's classic 1940 novel.
Her love of acting and her desire to bring quality entertainment projects into production prompted her to form h er
own production company, HARPO Productions, Inc., in 1986. Today, HARPO is a formidable force in film and television
production. Based in Chicago, HARPO Entertainment Group includes HARPO Productions, Inc., HARPO Films and HARPO
Video, Inc. In October, 1988, HARPO Productions, Inc. acquired ownership and all production responsibilit ies for "The Oprah
Winfrey Show" from Capitol Cities/ABC, making Oprah Winfrey the first woman in history to own and produce her own talk
show. The following year, HARPO produced it first television miniseries, the The Women of Brewster Place, with Oprah
Winfrey as star and Executive Producer. It has been followed by the TV movies There Are No Children Here (1993), and
Before Women Had Wings (1997), which she both produced and appeared in. In 1998, she starred in the feature film Beloved,
from the book by the Nobel Prize-winning American author Toni Morrison.
In 1991, motivated in part by her own memories of childhood abuse, she init iated a campaign to establish a national
database of convicted child abusers, and testified before a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of a National Child
Protection Act. President Clinton signed the "Oprah Bill" into law in 1993, establishing the national database she had sought ,
which is now available to law enforcement agencies and concerned parties across the country.
Oprah Winfrey was named one of the 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century by Time magazine, and in
1998 received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Nat ional Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Her influence
extended to the publishing industry when she began an on-air book club. Oprah Book Club selections became instant
bestsellers, and in 1999 she was presented with the Nat ional Book Foundation's 50th annivers ary gold medal for her service to
books and authors.
She is one of the partners in Oxygen Media, Inc., a cable channel and interactive network presenting programming
designed primarily for women. In 2000, Oprah's Angel Network began presenting a $100,000 "Use Your Life Award" to people
who are using their lives to improve the lives of others. When Forbes magazine published its list of America's billionaires f or
the year 2003, it disclosed that Oprah Winfrey was the first African-American woman to become a billionaire.














92) Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods was born Eldrick Woods on December 30, 1975, in Cypress, California. He was the only child of Earl
and Kultida Woods. His parents identified their son's talent at an unusually early age. They said that he was playing with a
putter before he could walk. The boy was gifted not only with exceptional playing abilities, but he also possessed a passion for
the sport itself. Woods first came to notoriety on a syndicated talk show when he beat the famed comedian and avid golfer Bob
Hope in a putting contest. The young boy was only three at the time, and he was quickly hailed as a prodigy.
Woods' father has never denied that he devoted his energies to developing his son's talent and to furthering the boy's
career as a golfer. During practice sessions, Tiger learned to maintain his composure and to hold his concentration while his
father persistently made extremely loud noises and created other distractions. "I was using golf to teach him about life.
About how to handle responsibility and pressure," his father explained.
All the while, Tiger's mother made sure that her son's rare talent and his budding golf career would not interfere with
his childhood or his future happiness. His mother was a native of Thailand and very familiar with the mystical precepts of
Buddhism, and she passed this philosophy on to her son.
As Woods' special talents became increasingly evident, his parents stressed personality, kindness, and self-esteem.
They impressed upon their son that he was not to throw tantrums or be rude or think of himself as any better than the next
person. In many ways Woods grew up as a typical middle-class American boy. He developed a taste for junk food and an
affection for playing video games. He also spent a fair share of his time clowning around in front of his father's ever-present
video camera. As for playing golf, there is no question that the sport was the focus of his childhood. He spent many hours
practicing his swing and playing in youth tournaments. Woods was eight years old when he won his first formal competition.
From that point he became virtually unstoppable, amassing trophies and breaking amateur records everywhere. Media accounts
of the boy prodigy had reached nearly legendary proportions by 1994, when he entered Stanford University as a freshman on a
full golfing scholarship.
During his first year of college, Woods won the U.S. Amateur t itle and qualified to play in the Masters tournament in
Augusta, Georgia, in the spring of 1995. Although he played as an amateur-not for prize money-Woods' reputation preceded
him. By 1996, Woods had won three consecutive U.S. Amateur titles, an unprecedented accomplishment in itself. Woods was
only twenty years old, yet there was not much else for him to accompl ish as an amateur. He carefully weighed the advantages
of finishing college against the prospect of leaving school and entering the sport of professional golf. The temptation to tu rn
professional was enhanced by lucrative offers of endorsement contracts. In August of 1996, Woods decided to quit college in
order to play professional golf.
Four months later in December, Woods celebrated his twenty-first birthday. It soon became evident that he was
destined for success. By January of 1997, he had already won three professional tournaments. He was a media sensation. In
April of 1997, and only eight months into his professional career, Woods played in the prestigious Masters tournament held at
Georgia's Augusta National Golf Club. That year Woods competed agains t golfing greats, but managed to best the most
seasoned competition.
When the tournament was over, Woods had made history as the youngest person ever to win the Masters title. His
score was an unprecedented 270 strokes. His victory margin set another record-twelve strokes ahead of the runner-up. This feat
was enhanced by the fact that Woods was the first man of color ever to win the tit le. He accepted all of these honors with gr ace
and humility, and gave tribute to the black golfers who came before him and helped pave the way. He also honored his mother
(who is Asian) by reminding the world of his diverse ethnic background; he is African-American, Thai, Chinese, Native
American, and Caucasian. He discouraged the press from labeling him exclusively as African American, because it showed
complete disregard for his mother's Asian heritage.
Less than three months passed until July 6, 1997, when Woods won the Western Open. Crit ics attributed his
astounding success to uncanny persistence and an extraordinary desire to win. Woods seemed unstoppable. Some of the
greatest golfers in the world offered sportsmanly tribute to the young hero. In less than one year as a professional golfer
Woods' career winnings totaled over $1,000,000. In addit ion to prize money earned, he signed multi-million dollar contracts to
endorse a variety of products, from sports equipment to investment funds.
To many observers, Tiger Woods' rise to fame is t ied to issues of race and ethnicity as well as to outstanding athletic
performance on the golfing course. Although accusations of racial discrimination had been leveled against the Professional
Golf Association (PGA) for many years, little was done. Policies were slowly changed to ensure that black golfers would be
allowed to compete on a par with whites, but the Augusta National Golf Club didn't accept its first African American member
until 1990.
Woods, with his easy style, his unpretentious disposition, and his powerful 300-yard drives, successfully commanded
the respect and attention of golf's predominantly white culture. " Golf has shied away from [racis m] for too long," Woods
commented to Time. "Some clubs have brought in tokens, but nothing really has changed. I hope what I'm doing can change
that." By all reports, he rises graciously to every occasion, handling the media as well as his peers, with tact and aplomb.









93) Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was born in London, as the daughter of Julia Jackson Duckworth, a member of the Duckworth
publishing family, and Sir Leslie Stephen, a literary critic and the founder of the Dictionary of National Biography. Woolf, who
was educated at home by her father, grew up at the family home at Hyde Park Gate. In middle age she described this period in
a letter: "Think how I was brought up! No school; mooning about alone among my father's books; never any chance to pick up
all that goes on in schoolsthrowing balls; ragging; slang; vulgarities; scenes; jealousies!" Woolf's youth was shadowed by
series of emotional shocks. Her half-brother, sexually abused her. Her mother died when Virginia was in her early teens. Her
half sister took her mother's place, but died a scant two years later. Her father suffered a slow death from cancer. When her
brother died in 1906, she had a prolonged mental breakdown.
From 1905 Woolf began to write for the Times Literary Supplement. THE VOYAGE OUT (1915) was Virginia
Woolf's first book. In 1919 appeared NIGHT AND DAY, a realistic novel about the lifes of two friends, Katherine and Mary.
JACOB'S ROOM (1922) was based upon the life and death of her brother Toby.
With TO THE LIGHTHOUSE (1927) and THE WAVES (1931) Woolf established herself as one of the leading
writers of modernism. The Waves is perhaps Woolf's most difficult novel. It follows in soliloquies the lives of six persons from
childhood to old age. In these works Woolf developed innovative literary techniques in order to reveal women's experience and
find an alternative to the male-dominated views of reality. In her essay 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown' Woolf argued that John
Galsworthy, H.G. Wells and other realistic English novelist dealt in surfaces but to get underneath these surfaces one must u se
less restricted presentation of life, and such devices as stream of consciousness and interior monologue and aband on linear
narrative. Marital disappointments and frustrations she often dealt ironically.
During the inter-war period, Woolf was a central character of the literary scene both in London and at her home near
Sussex. In the event of a Nazi invasion, Woolf and her husband had made provisions to kill themselves. After the final attack of
mental illness, Woolf loaded her pockets full of stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse near her Sussex home on March
28, 1941. On her note to her husband she wrote: "I have a feeling I shall go mad. I cannot go on longer in these terrible times. I
hear voices and cannot concentrate on my work. I have fought against it but cannot fight any longer. I owe all my happiness t o
you but cannot go on and spoil your life." Woolf's suicide has much colored the interpretation of her work.
Virginia Woolf's concern with feminist thematics are dominant in A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN (1929). In it she made
her famous statement: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." The book originated from
two expanded and revised lectures the author presented at Cambridge University's Newnham and Girton Colleges in October
1928. Woolf examined the obstacles and prejudices that have hindered women writers. She separated women as objects of
representation and women as authors of representation, and argued that a change in the forms of literature was necessary
because most literature had been "made by men out of their own needs for their own uses." In the last chapter Woolf to uched
the possibility of an androgynous mind. Woolf refers to Coleridge who said that a great mind is androgynous and states that
when this fusion takes place the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties. "Perhaps a mind that is purely masculin e
cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine..." THREE GUINEAS (1938) urged women to make a claim for
their own history and literature.






94) Steve Wynn

Even, or maybe especially, in Las Vegas there is no such thing as a sure thing - with the exception of Steve Wynn.
Wynn, the 65-year-old son of a back east bingo parlor operator who came to Vegas 40 years ago as a slot and keno manager,
has left an indelible imprint on a city and industry where making a splash can be as hard as making a score. And he's not done
yet.
Wynn does casinos and hotels like they were meant to be done in Las Vegas - big, glamorous, expensive, exploding,
luxurious, colorful, expensive and unforgettable, from the pirate ship fights at Treasure Island to the Mirage's exploding
volcano to the cascading water dance at the Bellagio's spectacular fountains.
As a landmark developer and operator Wynn is already synonymous with the names of people who built Las Vegas
into an international gaming, entertainment and resort mecca - Frank Sinatra, Howard Hughes, Elvis and Wayne Newton, men
who with muscle, music, money, glamour and shtick laid the foundation for what Vegas has become. Wynn's latest ventures are,
true to character, his grandest yet.
Wynn Las Vegas opened in April of 2005 on the site of the old Desert Inn, one of the grand dames of Vegas gaming.
Built for a stunning $2.7 billion, the luxury hotel and casino features more than 2,700 rooms, 111,000-square-foot casino,
223,000-square-feet of meeting space and 76,000-square-feet of retail space.
Visitors can play 18 holes of golf; shop at upscale stores featuring the finest names in retail, including: Dior, Cartier,
Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Oscar de la Renta. They can dine on Italian, French, Japanese, Southeast Asian an d classic American
cuisine in one of the 22 restaurants, cafes and lounges. Or, if they choose, relax and unwind in spas and fitness centers. An d if
the gambling gods are smiling, pick up a Ferrari or Maserati at the onsite Wynn/Penske luxury auto dealersh ip. There is also
top entertainment and over the top special effects at Wynn Las Vegas.
Above all Wynn is a shrewd business man who knows how to make a buck. The amount of money he makes on
gaming, hotel rooms and restaurant tabs - that is, the pure profit he is generating with every transaction - are tops on the
industry. Time magazine called Wynn, who became a billionaire in 2004, "not only a great salesman of insane ideas and a
clever real estate player but also the gaming industry's most brilliant designer."
Wynn's life story sounds like an ad from the Vegas convention and visitors bureau - come out here and get rich,
which is basically what Wynn did. Wynn was born Stephen Weinberg in 1942 and was raised in Utica, N.Y. His dad ran bingo
parlors across the northeast. He graduated from a private high school in 1959 and then studied English literature at The
University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1963.
After his father died the year he graduated from college Wynn took over the bingo operation and eventually invested
in the Frontier Hotel and Casino. In 1967 he and his wife, Elaine, moved to Las Vegas and Wynn managed the casino's keno
and slots operations. In 1971 Wynn got to do a deal with one of the men he would one day be compared to, the reclusive
billionaire Howard Hughes. Wynn worked a deal with Hughes and Caesar's Palace to buy a controlling interest in the Golden
Nugget.
In what would be a pattern throughout his career Wynn invested heavily in renovating the Golden Nugget, increasing
its foot traffic and profits and attracting a more upscale clientele. By 1980 he opened a second Golden Nugget in Atlantic City,
only to sell it six years later and use the money to build the Mirage across from the Desert Inn. It opened in 1989 and one i ts
major entertainment acts was Siegfried and Roy.
At 3,000 rooms and dripping with luxury and glit z, the Mirage was not only Wynn's first major casino development
in Las Vegas; it was the first major property to be built on the strip in years. Working with financer Michael Milken, the Mirage
was financed with junk bonds. Though some speculated Wynn was taking too much of a risk for not only building the project
but in the way he was paying for it, the Mirage became a fast hit, its outdoor volcano and indoor forest b ringing lots of
gawkers and plenty of bodies to fill hotel rooms, restaurants and the casino. The project also touched off a bit of a renaiss ance
on the Strip as other players followed Wynn's lead and went upscale.
During the 1990s Wynn built t wo more lavish projects, Treasure Island and Bellagio. Treasure Island was a heavily-
themed casino that for a time helped make Vegas a family-friendly destination with its pirate ship fight staged right on the Strip
in Buccaneer Bay, a man-made Caribbean lagoon.
Bellagio was more classic Wynn. Its artificial lake and stunning "dancing fountains" water show became a "must
see" Vegas attraction while high rollers gravitated to the upscale restaurants and shops that Wynn brought in from around the
world. He also began to display some of his personal art collection that features works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Andy Warhol
and others.
The consummate deal maker, Wynn sold his Mirage Resorts company to MGM Grand in 2000. He then began laying
the ground work for Wynn Las Vegas, as well as his next and possibly most ambitious endeavor - Wynn Macau.
Wynn opened a $1.2 billion casino in China in September. According to a statement from Wynn Resorts Limited he
is already considering an expansion that will add a hotel and second cas ino to Wynn Macau. "He's always raising the bar," said
equity analyst Jacobs. "He has shown that even if you build the most expensive property out there, if you do it right you can
make a nice return for your investors. People haven't done very well betting against Steve Wynn."







95) Boris Yeltsin

The first-ever popularly elected leader of Russia, Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was a protg of Mikhail Gorbachev's.
Ironically, Yeltsin would both save and end Gorbachev's rule.
Born on February 1, 1931, in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), Yeltsin worked on various construction projects from
1955 to 1968. He joined the Communist Party in 1961 during Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist reforms. In 1976, Yeltsin became first
chairman of the Sverdlosk party committee. In that capacity, he met Gorbachev, who held the same position in Stavropol.
When Gorbachev took power in 1985, he chose Yeltsin to reform the corrupt Moscow party hierarchy. In 1986,
Gorbachev made Yeltsin a non-voting member of the Politburo. Yeltsin, widely hailed as an effective reformer, soon became
dissatisfied with the pace of perestroika, or restructuring. After challenging party conservatives and even Gorbachev himself ,
Yeltsin resigned from the party leadership in 1987 and from the Politburo in 1988.
Demoted to a deputy construction minister, Yeltsin remained popular with the people of Moscow. Popular
demonstrations -- a new phenomenon in the U.S.S.R. -- erupted in support of Yeltsin. When Gorbachev introduced contested
elections for the new Congress of People's Deputies in 1989, Yeltsin won a landslide victory. He was later elected president of
the Russian parliament over Gorbachev's objections.
In July 1990, Yeltsin quit the Communist Party. The following year, he was elected president of the Russian Soviet
Federated Socialist Republic, the first popularly elected leader in Russian history. Yeltsin's place in history was assured during
the August 1991 coup by communist hard-liners. With Gorbachev detained at his country house, Yeltsin became the leader of
the resistance to the coup, rallying his followers and demanding Gorbachev's return.
When the coup collapsed after a few days, Gorbachev did return to Moscow -- but the center of power had shifted.
On August 23, Yeltsin humiliated Gorbachev in front of the Russian parliament, forcing him to read out documents implicating
Gorbachev's own party colleagues in the coup against him.
Meanwhile, Yeltsin was negotiating with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus for a new arrangement to replace the
Soviet Union. When the Commonwealth of Independent States was established on December 8, 1991, U.S. President Bush was
notified before Gorbachev. On December 25, Gorbachev resigned as president of a Soviet Union that had effectively ceased to
exist.
Faced with a stagnating economy, a hostile legislature, an attempted coup and a military debacle in Chechnya,
Yeltsin's prospects seemed dim in the 1996 elections. But Yeltsin staged another comeback, defeating communist challenger
Gennady Zyuganov in a July runoff.
In November 1996, Yeltsin underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery and was confined to the hospital for months;
health problems would continue to be a concern throughout his presidency.

Yeltsin became increasingly unpopular in his second term, as economic progress remained elusive and rumors of ill health
became more pervasive. He appeared in public more sporadically, replacing government ministers as crises arose. On New
Year's Eve 1999, Yeltsin surprised his nation and much of the world by announcing his resignation -- giving Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin the additional title of acting president.






96) Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong loved to swim. In his youth, he advocated swimming as a way of strengthening the bodies of Chinese
citizens, and one of his earliest poems celebrated the joys of beating a wake through the waves. As a young man, he and his
close friends would often swim in local streams before they debated together the myriad challenges that faced their nation. But
especially after 1955, when he was in his early 60s and at the height of his political power as leader of the Chinese People's
Republic, swimming became a central part of his life. He swam so often in the large pool constructed for the top party leader s
in their closely guarded compound that the others eventually left him as the pool's sole user. He swam in the often stormy
ocean off the north China coast, when the Communist Party leadership gathered there for its annual conferences. And, despite
the pleadings of his security guards and his physician, he swam in the heavily polluted rivers of south China, drift ing miles
downstream with the current, head back, stomach in the air, hands and legs barely moving, unfazed by the globs of human
waste gliding gently past. "Maybe you're afraid of s inking," he would chide his companions if they began to panic in the water.
"Don't think about it. If you don't think about it, you won't sink. If you do, you will."
Mao was a genius at not sinking. His enemies were legion: militarists, who resented his journalistic barbs at their
incompetence; party rivals, who found him too zealous a supporter of the united front with the Kuomintang nationalists;
landlords, who hated his pro-peasant rhetoric and activism; Chiang Kai-shek, who attacked his rural strongholds with relentless
tenacity; the Japanese, who tried to smash his northern base; the U.S., after the Chinese entered the Korean War; the Soviet
Union, when he attack ed Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist policies. Mao was equally unsinkable in the turmoil much of which he
personally instigated that marked the last 20 years of his rule in China.
Mao was born in 1893, into a China that appeared to be falling apart. The fading Qin dynasty could not contain the
spiraling social and economic unrest, and had mortgaged China's revenues and many of its natural resources to the apparently
insatiable foreign powers. It was, Mao later told his biographer Edgar Snow, a t ime when "the dismemberment of China"
seemed imminent, and only heroic actions by China's youth could s ave the day.
Mao's earliest surviving essay, written when he was 19, was on one of China's most celebrated early exponents of
cynicism and realpolit ik, the fearsome 4th century B.C. administrator Shang Yang. Mao took Shang Yang's experiences as
emblematic of China's crisis. Shang Yang had instituted a set of ruthlessly enforced laws, designed "to punish the wicked and
rebellious, in order to preserve the rights of the people." That the people continued to fear Shang Yang was proof to Mao the y
were "stupid." Mao attributed this fear and distrust not to Shang Yang's policies but to the perception of those policies: "At the
beginning of anything out of the ordinary, the mass of the people always dislike it."
After the communist victory over Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, and the establishment of the People's Republic of China,
Mao's position was immeasurably strengthened. Despite all that the Chinese people had endured, it seems not to have been too
hard for Mao to persuade them of the visionary force and practical need for the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s. In Mao's
mind, the intensive marshaling of China's energies would draw manual and mental labor together into a final harmonious
synthesis and throw a bridge across the chasm of China's poverty to the promised socialist paradise on the other side.
In February 1957, Mao drew his thoughts on China together in the form of a rambling speech on "The Correct
Handling of Contradict ions Among the People." Mao's notes for the speech reveal the curious mixture of joc ularity and cruelty,
of utopian visions and blinkered perceptions, that lay at the heart of his character. Mao admitted that 15% or more of the
Chinese people were hungry and that some critics felt a "disgust" with Marxism. He spoke too of the hundreds of thousands
who had died in the revolution so far, but firmly rebutted figures quoted in Hong Kong newspapers that 20 million had
perished. "How could we possibly kill 20 million people?" he asked. It is now established that at least that number died in
China during the famine that followed the Great Leap between 1959 and 1961. In the Cultural Revolution that followed only
five years later, Mao used the army and the student population against his opponents. Once again millions suffered or perishe d
as Mao combined the ruthlessness of Shang Yang with the absolute confidence of the long-distance swimmer.
Rejecting his former party allies, and anyone who could be accused of espousing the values of an older and more
gracious Chinese civilizat ion, Mao drew his sustenance from the chanting crowds of Red Guards. The irony here was that from
his youthful readings, Mao knew the story of how Shang Yang late in life tried to woo a moral administrator to his service. But
the official turned down Shang Yang's blandishments, with the words that "1,000 persons going 'Yes, yes!' are not worth one
man with a bold 'No!'"
Mao died in 1976, and with the years those adulatory cries of "Yes, yes!" have gradually faded. Leaders Mao trained,
like Deng Xiaoping, were able to reverse Mao's policies even as they claimed to revere them. They gave back to the Chinese
people the opportunities to express their entrepreneurial skills, leading to astonishing rates of growth and a complete
transformation of the face of Chinese cities.
Despite the agony he caused, Mao was both a visionary and a realist. He learned as a youth not only how Shang Yang
brought harsh laws to the Chinese people, even when they saw no need for them, but also how Shang Yang's rigors helped lay
the foundation in 221 B.C. of the fearsome centralizing state of Qin. Mao knew too that the Qin rulers had been both hated and
feared and that their dynasty was soon toppled, despite its monopoly of force and efficient use of terror. But in his final y ears,
Mao seems to have welcomed the association of his own name with these distant Qin precursors. The Qin, after all, had
established a united state from a universe in chaos. They represented, like Mao, not the best that China had to offer, but
something ruthless yet canny, with the power briefly to impose a single will on the scattered emotions of the errant multitude.
It is on that grimly structured foundation that Mao's successors have been able to build, even as they struggle, with obvious
nervousness, to contain the social pressures that their own more open policies are generating.