Peggy Guggenheim, Art Collector
American heiress Peggy Guggenheim was considered to be as intriguing as the art she collected. One of the pioneering collectors of Abstract Expressionism, she...
Richard Wright, Groundbreaking Author of “Black Boy” and “Native Son”
Richard Wright, the first African-American man to make a living as an author, is known for landmark books like “Native Son” and “Black Boy.”
Richard...
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...
Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States
Early on, it hardly seemed as if Harry S. Truman—a farmer, an army captain in World War I and a haberdasher—was on track to...
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.”...
Carole King, Chart-Topping Singer-Songwriter
Carole King started playing the piano at age 4 and hasn’t stopped since. Out of college in the 1960s King was writing some of...
Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher
“Nietzsche’s actual thought is a…system, at the beginning of which stands the death of God…the ensuing nihilism, and at its end the self-surmounting of...
Connie Chung, Award-Winning Journalist
American journalist Connie Chung forged new territory in network news and broadcast journalism. As the first Asian American and second woman to be a...
Jean Piaget, Developmental Psychologist
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget was the first to realize that the cognitive processes of children differ from those of adults. Over his 75-year career...
Woody Guthrie, Folk Musician
Woody Guthrie was a folk music master. During his career, he gave the world more than 1,000 songs, including notable classics like “This Land...










