Rosa Parks, Mother of the Civil Rights Movement
Rosa Parks was a seamstress and NAACP secretary whose simple act of civil disobedience—her refusal to give up her seat on the bus to...
Harvey Pekar, Author of the ‘American Splendor’ Comic Books
Harvey Pekar has made a career out of being an ordinary man. As a comic book writer, he documented the most mundane details of...
Jack Welch, Former CEO of General Electric
Jack Welch was CEO of General Electric for 20 years, beginning his tenure in the midst of 1981’s tough economic conditions and leading the...
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Father of Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson—essayist, minister, poet and philosopher from New England—was the founding father of the transcendentalist movement and the creator of many literary works...
Oskar Schindler, Keeper of “List” That Saved 1,200 Jews
Oskar Schindler was a Nazi party member, philanderer and war profiteer who saved approximately 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. Schindler is now revered as...
Luciano Pavarotti, World Famous Opera Singer
Luciano Pavarotti, the so-called “King of the High Cs,” brought opera to the masses with his clear, pitch-perfect voice. In a life that began...
Thurgood Marshall, Civil Rights Lawyer and Supreme Court Justice
Before Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court, he was also the most successful person to argue cases before the...
Martin Luther King Jr., Civil Rights Pioneer
Born into a life of religion, Martin Luther King Jr. used his faith to help guide a divided nation toward racial equality, breaking barriers...
Walter Cronkite, CBS News Anchor
To his colleagues, he was “Old Iron Pants,” and to everyone else, he was “The Most Trusted Man in America.” For more than half...
Andrea Bocelli, Opera and Pop Singer
An idyllic farm surrounded by vineyards and olive groves in the Tuscan countryside was the setting for Andrea Bocelli’s childhood. But this soft-spoken singer,...
