Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States
Some consider Ronald Reagan the greatest president in contemporary American history: under his watch, the country saw the longest period of peacetime prosperity in...
John Foster Dulles, Former Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles was hailed as a “master craftsman” of foreign policy. Decades before his work as secretary of state under President Dwight Eisenhower,...
Francis Scott Key, Author of “The Star-Spangled Banner”
Francis Scott Key was a Federalist, a lawyer, attorney general of Washington, D.C., a husband and the father of 11 children. An ancestor and...
Sidney Poitier, Pioneering African-American Actor
Sidney Poitier was the child of tomato farmers in the Bahamas. He moved to New York as a teenager and worked as a dishwasher...
Martin Scorsese, Director of “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull”
“It’s easy to think of Scorsese as a kind of poet of the underworld,” the American Film Institute reflected when they granted him a...
Beverly Cleary, Author of the “Ramona” Books
Beverly Cleary captured the experiences of childhood and created a world of fiction that children have enjoyed for decades. Beloved characters such as Ramona...
Napoleon Bonaparte, French Military Leader
Napoleon Bonaparte is known for being a highly ambitious military leader, leading France in conquests throughout the Middle East and Europe, but he was...
D.H. Lawrence, Author of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”
At the end of his life, D.H. Lawrence wrote, “For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be...
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Baroque Painter
Michelangelo Merisi, popularly known as Caravaggio, spearheaded the Baroque movement, and his paintings are acclaimed for their realism and their depiction of the violent,...
Mary Lyon, Champion of Women’s Higher Education
Mary Lyon was a progressive educator and pioneer of women’s higher education. In 1837 she founded the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley,...
