Abraham Lincoln, “The Great Emancipator”
Abraham Lincoln worked his way from a log cabin to the White House, teaching himself law and earning the faith of the electorate through...
Alberto Giacometti, Sculptor
Famous for his sculptures of stick-thin figures with razor-sharp, fine features, Alberto Giacometti was an artist who defied categorization. His work flirted with nearly...
Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Emissary of Nationalist China
Known for her political prowess and powerful husband, Madame Chiang Kai-shek led a somewhat transient life, spending significant portions of her 105 years in...
George Pullman, Inventor of the Sleeper Car
Inventor and industrialist George Pullman literally raised Chicago from the sewer and built luxury railroad cars for the elite. The media praised his “utopian”...
Lincoln Steffens, One of the First Muckrakers
Lincoln Steffens was an American journalist active during the early 20th century. A famous muckraker, Steffens is remembered for pioneering a style of critical,...
Leo Szilard, Physicist and Contributor to the Manhattan Project
Leo Szilard, the Hungarian Jewish physicist, molecular biologist and inventor, worked on the Manhattan Project but expressed himself as a “scientist of conscience,” using...
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...
Saul Bellow, American Novelist
“The backbone of 20th-century American literature”—this was novelist Philip Roth’s assessment of Saul Bellow. His struggle with modernism, his Jewish upbringing, his feelings of...
Tony Kushner, Writer of “Angels in America”
“My day job is playwright. My citizen job is activist...I succeed and fail at both my jobs, but I try to do them both.”...
Brigham Young, Mormon Prophet
He led a church through its infancy, guided thousands of pioneers on a historic cross-country migration, helped settle the state of Utah and was...
