Fred Rogers, Host of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”
For more than 30 years Fred Rogers welcomed children and their parents into a realm of imagination on his show, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Through...
Sonia Sotomayor, First Hispanic Supreme Court Justice
Sonia Sotomayor is the first Hispanic and the third female justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Hailing from a working-class background, Sotomayor...
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,...
Ursula K. Le Guin, Writer
Novelist, poet and translator Ursula Le Guin is best known for creating worlds of fantasy and of the far future, but that is only...
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...
Samuel Johnson, Dictionary Writer and Biographer
Not only did Samuel Johnson’s work define the literature of the 18th century, his dictionary defined the language. Sometimes called “the great convulsionary” for...
Orville Wright, First Man to Fly an Airplane
Orville Wright was a leading aviation pioneer of the early 20th century. He and his older brother Wilbur are credited for being the first...
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”...
Rupert Murdoch, Media Mogul
Rupert Murdoch and his conglomerate News Corporation own divisions in virtually every form of today’s media: book publishing, newspapers and television. Whether fan or...
David Hockney, British Pop Artist
The British Pop Art Movement gained a fresh energy when David Hockney emerged on the scene. He’s both a controversial and highly influential figure,...
