The Atlantic Unveils 100 Most Influential Americans List

Yahoo ^ | 11/22/06

[Borges]

1 Abraham Lincoln 2 George Washington 3 Thomas Jefferson 4 Franklin D. Roosevelt 5 Alexander Hamilton 6 Benjamin Franklin 7 John Marshall 8 Martin Luther King Jr. 9 Thomas Edison 10 Woodrow Wilson 11 John D. Rockefeller 12 Ulysses Grant 13 James Madison 14 Henry Ford 15 Theodore Roosevelt 16 Mark Twain 17 Ronald Reagan 18 Andrew Jackson 19 Thomas Paine 20 Andrew Carnegie 21 Harry Truman 22 Walt Whitman 23 Wright Brothers 24 Alexander Graham Bell 25 John Adams 26 Walt Disney 27 Eli Whitney 28 Dwight D. Eisenhower 29 Earl Warren 30 Elizabeth Cady Stanton 31 Henry Clay 32 Albert Einstein 33 Ralph Waldo Emerson 34 Jonas Salk 35 Jackie Robinson 36 William Jennings Bryan 37 J.P. Morgan 38 Susan B. Anthony 39 Rachel Carson 40 John Dewey 41 Harriet Beecher Stowe 42 Eleanor Roosevelt 43 W.E.B. DuBois 44 Lyndon Baines Johnson 45 Samuel F.B. Morse 46 William Lloyd Garrison 47 Frederick Douglass 48 Robert Oppenheimer 49 Frederick Law Olmsted 50 James K. Polk 51 Margaret Sanger 52 Joseph Smith 53 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 54 Bill Gates 55 John Quincy Adams 56 Horace Mann 57 Robert E. Lee 58 John C. Calhoun 59 Louis Sullivan 60 William Faulkner 61 Samuel Gompers 62 William James 63 George Marshall 64 Jane Addams 65 Henry David Thoreau 66 Elvis Presley 67 P.T. Barnum 68 James D. Watson 69 James Gordon Bennett 70 Lewis and Clark 71 Noah Webster 72 Sam Walton 73 Cyrus McCormick 74 Brigham Young 75 George Herman "Babe" Ruth 76 Frank Lloyd Wright 77 Betty Friedan 78 John Brown 79 Louis Armstrong 80 William Randolph Hearst 81 Margaret Mead 82 George Gallup 83 James Fenimore Cooper 84 Thurgood Marshall 85 Ernest Hemingway 86 Mary Baker Eddy 87 Benjamin Spock 88 Enrico Fermi 89 Walter Lippmann 90 Jonathan Edwards 91 Lyman Beecher 92 John Steinbeck 93 Nat Turner 94 George Eastman 95 Sam Goldwyn 96 Ralph Nader 97 Stephen Foster 98 Booker T. Washington 99 Richard Nixon 100 Herman Melville

[Issaquahking]

Where's Nikola Tesla? Immigrant who invented AC Power, without him, we'd still be in the dark ages - literally!

[MACVSOG68]

96 is pretty disturbing.

You don't think he was influential?

[Salvation]

Thanks for the formatting!

[unkus]

That is a relief. I bet Billy Bob is not happy.

[steve8714]

#51 is worse.

[SoFloFreeper]

"BUBBLING UNDER THE TOP 100"
(not necessarily in any order and in my opinion):

Ernie Kovacs


Steven Spielberg

Billy Graham

William McKinley

Edgar Allan Poe

[absolootezer0]

ok, they'll put up presley but not cohen?

[unkus]

Thank you

[staytrue]

Where are the internet guys Yang, Filo, Brin, and Page.

Where is Steve Jobs ?

How about Madonna ?

[swain_forkbeard]

Thanks. I must have botched the search somehow.

[LonePalm]

I take it that Rachel Carson was meant as a NEGATIVE influence.

She was arguably the person responsible for the greatest number of deaths in the 20th Century.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous, nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[steve8714]

Jonathan Edwards #90? Fot "Sunshine"?

[HarmlessLovableFuzzball]

Rush Limbaugh has probably influenced more people than everybody in that list put together. I know he did me.

[Hawthorn]

Abraham Lincoln was more influential than George Washington? Absurd! If not for George Washington (and Andrew Jackson), there would have been no Union for Lincoln to preserve.

(And slavery would eventually have died out anyway, as in Brazil.)

Or Lyndon Baines Johnson more influential than Samuel F.B. Morse and Robert E. Lee? Another obvious joke.

I could go on and on. But my chief conclusion is that we need a law against all of these meaningless journalistic "rankings" -- including but not limited to: best cities to live, leading universities and colleges, best states for raising children, top vacation spots for singles, etc. etc.

Then we learn of a person named "Lewis and Clark" -- or do they mean to say "Lewis N. Clark?" Whom did he influence?

[JZelle]

I didn't see Barack Obama on the list.

[MACVSOG68]

John Quincy Adams at #55??? Why?

Perhaps if nothing more than keeping the Democrats out for four years....

[SoFloFreeper]

Limbaugh ought to at least be on the bubbling under list, too.

[edcoil]

WHAT????

No Elvis?

[bootless]

A great start, but at first glance we can take Rachel Carson and Margaret Sanger off the list. Influential, sure. Admirable? No.

[Cymbaline]

39 Rachel Carson
51 Margaret Sanger
29 Earl Warren

Some real winners there...