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Women's Fiction
People of the Century: One Hundred Men and Women Who Shaped the Last One Hundred Years

People of the Century: One Hundred Men and Women Who Shaped the Last One Hundred Years

List Price: $25.00
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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: People of the Century
Review: It¹s countdown time whether we face it or not. And the bestsellers prove it. We¹ve encountered books predicting happenings for the millennium we¹re about to greet and books listing people, businesses, music, inventions, events that have made impacts during the millennium we¹re leaving. In addition to Life: Our Century in Pictures and Russell Ash¹s The Top 10 of Everything 2000, there are seemingly 1000 collections about these 1000 years. One book worth looking at is PEOPLE OF THE CENTURY with a forward by Dan Rather of CBS and an afterward by Walter Isaacson of Time Magazine. The compilation features 100 men and women who influenced the century, rather than the millennium.We reunite with leaders, artists, and intellectuals who gave us rock Œn¹ roll,jazz, flight; shopping malls, existentialism, bytes; splitting the atom, penicillin, cloning of sheep, and Bob Dylan. Those writing the profiles with reputability include William F, Buckley, Rita Dove, Molly Ivins, Roger Rosenblatt, and Deborah Tannen. Descriptions of the contributors appear in the index along with photo credits, nicely referenced. We readily expect some profiles: Henry Ford, Anne Frank, James Joyce, Rosa Parks, Theodore Roosevelt, and Igor Stravinsky, We might have forgotten others: Sigmund Freud (as profiled by Peter Gay) and Leo Baekeland, the maker of plastics who moved to the U.S. from Belgium in 1889. We ask ³why?² of others. For example, Hitler is included, as is Bart Simpson. Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel bluntly admits how frightening it was to write of Hitler. And some readers might bluntly admit how foolish it is to read about ³forever 10,² make-believe Bart Simpson. Others might question ever-lovin¹ Oprah being among the 100, but the criteria put her on the list. PEOPLE OF THE CENTURY concerns people who ³cast a long shadow.² We are refreshed by some inclusions: Emmeline Pankhurst, for instance, reminds us of the women¹s-right-to-vote, which she achieved for England in 1918 (2 years before America¹s in 1920.) The book is arranged chronologically, beginning in 1903 in nearby Kitty Hawk and moving poignantly to 1989 with the ³unknown,² lone ³everyman² in Tiananmen Square. In this compact history, people are profiled as well as pictured with a ³life-at -a glance² bio. The index needs improvement ( so that readers can more easily locate people by their fields) and so do Dan Rather mixed metaphors. ( The new age is ³taking flight² and becoming a ³rough draft.²) Also Paul Rudnick could use poetic sensitivity when writing about Marilyn Monroe. He callously groups her with American commodities of Coca-cola and Levis. Isaacson¹s afterward reminds us of the century¹s lessons: ³freedom won² and not the pursuit of ³material abundance² but the nurturing of ³the dignity and values of each individual.² Obviously some of these lessons were learned the hard way. PEOPLE OF THE CENTURY reminds us to repeat the goodness of our history, repel the other, and to think as we close this year, this century, this millennium.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: People of the Century
Review: It¹s countdown time whether we face it or not. And the bestsellers prove it. We¹ve encountered books predicting happenings for the millennium we¹re about to greet and books listing people, businesses, music, inventions, events that have made impacts during the millennium we¹re leaving. In addition to Life: Our Century in Pictures and Russell Ash¹s The Top 10 of Everything 2000, there are seemingly 1000 collections about these 1000 years. One book worth looking at is PEOPLE OF THE CENTURY with a forward by Dan Rather of CBS and an afterward by Walter Isaacson of Time Magazine. The compilation features 100 men and women who influenced the century, rather than the millennium.We reunite with leaders, artists, and intellectuals who gave us rock Œn¹ roll,jazz, flight; shopping malls, existentialism, bytes; splitting the atom, penicillin, cloning of sheep, and Bob Dylan. Those writing the profiles with reputability include William F, Buckley, Rita Dove, Molly Ivins, Roger Rosenblatt, and Deborah Tannen. Descriptions of the contributors appear in the index along with photo credits, nicely referenced. We readily expect some profiles: Henry Ford, Anne Frank, James Joyce, Rosa Parks, Theodore Roosevelt, and Igor Stravinsky, We might have forgotten others: Sigmund Freud (as profiled by Peter Gay) and Leo Baekeland, the maker of plastics who moved to the U.S. from Belgium in 1889. We ask ³why?² of others. For example, Hitler is included, as is Bart Simpson. Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel bluntly admits how frightening it was to write of Hitler. And some readers might bluntly admit how foolish it is to read about ³forever 10,² make-believe Bart Simpson. Others might question ever-lovin¹ Oprah being among the 100, but the criteria put her on the list. PEOPLE OF THE CENTURY concerns people who ³cast a long shadow.² We are refreshed by some inclusions: Emmeline Pankhurst, for instance, reminds us of the women¹s-right-to-vote, which she achieved for England in 1918 (2 years before America¹s in 1920.) The book is arranged chronologically, beginning in 1903 in nearby Kitty Hawk and moving poignantly to 1989 with the ³unknown,² lone ³everyman² in Tiananmen Square. In this compact history, people are profiled as well as pictured with a ³life-at -a glance² bio. The index needs improvement ( so that readers can more easily locate people by their fields) and so do Dan Rather mixed metaphors. ( The new age is ³taking flight² and becoming a ³rough draft.²) Also Paul Rudnick could use poetic sensitivity when writing about Marilyn Monroe. He callously groups her with American commodities of Coca-cola and Levis. Isaacson¹s afterward reminds us of the century¹s lessons: ³freedom won² and not the pursuit of ³material abundance² but the nurturing of ³the dignity and values of each individual.² Obviously some of these lessons were learned the hard way. PEOPLE OF THE CENTURY reminds us to repeat the goodness of our history, repel the other, and to think as we close this year, this century, this millennium.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Some Parts Good; Mostly A Dissapointment
Review: This audio presentation of "People of the Century" is I'm afraid mostly a dissapointment. Dan Rather serves as the overall narrator briefly mentioning the 100 people included with a select few of these people given an expanded presentation written usually by a famous author or personality (i.e. Lee Iacocca writing about Henry Ford; Salman Rushdie about Ghandi,etc.).

My criticism lies in the fact that some major figures were briefly mentioned while some lesser lights were highlighted. Examples of this include only brief mentions of people like Ronald Reagan and Ray Kroc(founder of McDonald's)while questionable figures like Margaret Sanger, Watson and Crick, and Charlie Chaplin are given expanded treatment.

There is of course the fact that many of these articles are slanted ideologically and that some articles are written by unabashed fans of the historical figure (i.e. Arthur Schlessinger on FDR)while other articles are written by critics (i.e. Richard Shickel on Walt Disney) thus furthuring to unbalance the presentations.

The Best Inclusions in my view: Rushdie on Ghandi, Iacocca on Ford, and Elie Wiesel on Adolph Hitler.

While you might learn something from this work, you would be better off reading individual biographies of these people

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Some Parts Good; Mostly A Dissapointment
Review: This audio presentation of "People of the Century" is I'm afraid mostly a dissapointment. Dan Rather serves as the overall narrator briefly mentioning the 100 people included with a select few of these people given an expanded presentation written usually by a famous author or personality (i.e. Lee Iacocca writing about Henry Ford; Salman Rushdie about Ghandi,etc.).

My criticism lies in the fact that some major figures were briefly mentioned while some lesser lights were highlighted. Examples of this include only brief mentions of people like Ronald Reagan and Ray Kroc(founder of McDonald's)while questionable figures like Margaret Sanger, Watson and Crick, and Charlie Chaplin are given expanded treatment.

There is of course the fact that many of these articles are slanted ideologically and that some articles are written by unabashed fans of the historical figure (i.e. Arthur Schlessinger on FDR)while other articles are written by critics (i.e. Richard Shickel on Walt Disney) thus furthuring to unbalance the presentations.

The Best Inclusions in my view: Rushdie on Ghandi, Iacocca on Ford, and Elie Wiesel on Adolph Hitler.

While you might learn something from this work, you would be better off reading individual biographies of these people

Rating: 0 stars
Summary: THE GIFTBOOK OF THE CENTURY.
Review: This is the century that split the atom, probed the psyche, spliced genes, and cloned sheep. Plastic, the silicon chip, and rock-and-roll were invented. Airplanes, rockets, satellites, televisions, computers and atom bombs were built. Traditional ideas about logic, language, learning, mathematics, economics, and even space and time were overthrown and radically refashioned. PEOPLE OF THE CENTURY presents the one hundred most influential leaders, artists, intellects, and heroes who shaped his monumental era.

This century's one hundred most influential people were selected by the editors of TIME magazine and featured in a series of documentaries produced by CBS News. Here, their profiles are crafted by this era's finest writers, from Salman Rushdie, Elie Wiesel, and Edmund Morris to Molly Ivins, William F. Bukley, and Robert Hughes, and many more. Lavishsly illustrated by hundreds of memorable photos, PEOPLE OF THE CENTURY is the ultimate millennial keepsake.

THE ONE HUNDRED MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE

Sigmund Freud, Emmeline Pankhurst, Theodore Roosevelt, Leo Baekeland, Henry Ford, The Wright Brothers, Mohandas Ghandi, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, A.P. Giannini, Winston Churchill, Willis Carrier, Albert Einstein, Margaret Sanger, Helen Keller, Alexander Fleming, Pablo Picasso, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, James Joyce, Igor Stravinsky, Robert Goddard, John Maynard Keynes, Coco Chanel, Eleanor Roosevelt, Louis B. Mayer, Charles Edward Merrill, David Ben-Gurion, Le Corbusier, The Kennedys, T.S. Eliot, Adolf Hitler, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charlie Chaplin, Edwin Hubble, Ho Chi Minh, David Sarnoff, Leo Burnett, Mao Zedong, Martha Graham, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Bill W., Jean Piaget, Lucky Luciano, Juan Trippe, Stephen Bechtel, Louis Armstrong, Enrico Fermi, Walt Disney, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, Charles Lindbergh, Ray Kroc, The Leakey Family, Kurt Godel, Philo Farnsworth, William Levitt, Rachel Carson, Walter Reuther, William Shockley, Estee Lauder, Mother Teresa, Ronald Reagan, Lucille Ball, Alan Turing, Rosa Parks, Hillary and Tenzing, Thomas Watson Jr., Jonas Salk, Frank Sinatra, Watson and Crick, Sam Walton, Nelson Mandella, Billy Graham, Jackie Robinson, Pope John Paul II, Akio Morita, Andrei Sakharov, Marlon Brando, Margaret Thatcher, Pete Rozelle, Marilyn Monroe, Che Guevara, Martin Luther King Jr., Anne Frank, Harvey Milk, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jim Henson, The Beatles, Pele, Bruce Lee, Bob Dylan, The American GI, Muhammad Ali, Aretha Franklin, Lech Walesa, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Gates, Diana Princess of Wales, Bart Simpson, Unknown Tiananmen Square Rebel.

FEATURED WRITERS

Dan Rather, Peter Gay, Marina Warner, Edmund Morris, Ivan Amato, Lee Iacocca, Bill Gates, Salman Rushdie, David Remnick, Daniel Kadlec, John Keegan, Molly Ivins, James Gleick, Gloria Steinem, Diane Schuur, David Jackson, Dr. David Ho, Robert Hughes, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Paul Gray, Philip Glass, Jeffrey Kluger, Robert B. Reich, Ingrid Sischy, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Budd Schulberg, Jospeh Nocera, Amos Oz, Witold Rybczynski, Hugh Sidey, Helen Vendler, Elie Wiesel, Daniel Dennett, Ann Douglas, Michael D. Lemonick, Stanley Karnow, Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner, Stuart Ewen, Jonathan D. Spence, Terry Teachout, Andrew Llyod Webber, Susan Cheever, Seymour Papert, Edna Buchanan, Richard Branson, George J. Church, Stanley Crouch, Richard Rhodes, Richard Schickel, Milton Viorst, Reeve Lindbergh, Jacques Pepin, Donald C. Johanson, Douglas Hofstadter, Neil Postman, Richard Lacayo, Peter Matthiessen, Irving Bluestone, Gordon Moore, Grace Mirabella, Bharati Mukherjee, Peggy Noonan, Richard Zoglin, Paul Gray, Rita Dove, Jan Morris, John Greenwald, Wilfrid Sheed, Bruce Handy, Robert Wright, John Huey, Andre Brink, Harold Bloom, Henry Aaron, William F. Buckley Jr., Kenichi Ohmae, Fang Lizhi, Romesh Ratnesar, Richard Shickel, Paul Johnson, Michael Lewis, Paul Rudnick, Ariel Dorfman, Jack E. White, Roger Rosenblatt, John Cloud, Tatyana Tolstaya, James Collins, Kurt Loder, Henry Kissinger, Joel Stein, Jay Cocks, Colin Powell, George Plimpton, Christopher John Farley, Timothy Garton Ash, Roger Ebert, Deborah Tannen, Joshua Quittner, David Gelernter, Ian Buruma, Richard Corliss, Pico Iyer, Walter Isaacson.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Well written and interesting though a biased list of greats
Review: This presentation of 100 great people of the century (as selected by the editors of TIME) is noteworthy both for its bias and limited scope - it is heavy on Americans and late 20th century personalities - and for its writing. Each person is presented to the reader through an essay, and most of these essays are not capsule biographies so much as meditations on the nature of the person and his/her influence. The strange pairing of certain authors and subjects (Elie Wiesel on Adolf Hitler or Salman Rushdie on Mohandas K. Ghandi) allow for some interesting insights and speculation. More sympathetic pairings of author and subject (George Plimpton on Muhammad Ali, Rita Dove on Rosa Parks, Philip Glass on Igor Stravinsky) offer equally interesting, though less speculative, pieces that are quite fun to read.

Overall, the quality of writing in the book is quite high, and even when it isn't (as, for example in Bill Gate's essay on the Wright brothers or Lee Iacocca on Henry Ford) the insights of the author - because of who and what they are - allow the ideas to take on a level of significance that makes up for so-so skills as an essayist.

I received this as a Christmas present and spent most of Christmas day reading through all the essays. It provided a very pleasant way to review the century we are leaving. My one regret with the book is the inclusion of a few subjects that simply don't belong (Brue Lee, Bart Simpson? )which necessarily restricted the field that could be included. It is, of course, a personal bias and everyone will have their own take on who should or should not have been represented, but in the entire list there is only one novelist, one poet, one composer, one painter; yet there are numerous political and military figures. Understandable in terms of overt impact on history, but it sells the cultural aspects of the century short._

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: If you've never heard of Winston Churchill, this CD is for y
Review: Very disappointing. Much of the narrative spits out facts that everyone already knows. Most of the rest is decoration, trite commentary and superficial philosophizing. The piece on Bill Gates is typical. It was delivered in a contemptuous tone, skipped the exciting history of Microsoft, and even dismissed "The Road Ahead" as trivial! Similarly, Iacocca's piece on Henry Ford does not even mention Ford's infamous bigotry. In fairness, I must say that I did learn a bit about the lesser known people, and enjoyed the imaginative piece on Gandhi. On the whole, though, if you've ever heard of Winston Churchill, this CD will probably bore you.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: If you've never heard of Winston Churchill, this CD is for y
Review: Very disappointing. Much of the narrative spits out facts that everyone already knows. Most of the rest is decoration, trite commentary and superficial philosophizing. The piece on Bill Gates is typical. It was delivered in a contemptuous tone, skipped the exciting history of Microsoft, and even dismissed "The Road Ahead" as trivial! Similarly, Iacocca's piece on Henry Ford does not even mention Ford's infamous bigotry. In fairness, I must say that I did learn a bit about the lesser known people, and enjoyed the imaginative piece on Gandhi. On the whole, though, if you've ever heard of Winston Churchill, this CD will probably bore you.


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