Rating: 
Summary: a bit inaccurate
Review: overall, its a good book, and his reasonings for placing Muhammad as #1 make complete sense-however w/ regards to the biography of Muhammad, and for that matter, of religious figures, he needs to be more careful. For Muhammad, he miscredited him to be the author of the Muslim holy scripture-the Qur'an. Muhammad was illiterate, so there was no possible way those could be his own words. Muslims believe that God revealed those teachings to Muhammad and he in turn preached the words of God to the people. So personally I think Michael Hart shouldve written about the religious figures from the perspective of the religions at which they are esteemed by. (Jesus, Moses, other religious figures) that way if he presented the views of how the respective religions saw these people, then the readers would be more well informed. otherwise, a pretty good book, as you dont learn about some of these people in your history class.
Rating: 
Summary: The fact that so many people commented indicates something
Review: Even if you do not agree with, say, Mohammed's ranking as THE most influential person who ever lived (comparing with his #3 ranking of Jesus Christ), or of his ranking Hitler at all (at #39), or of him not listing the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Leonardo da Vinci or Benjamin Franklin (all of whom are "near misses"), or of modern figures such as Mother Teresa, Elvis Presley (or for that matter in the first edition, no living person), his reasons are both compelling and highly readable. Other reviewers are correct; this is a book that is difficult to put down, and a decent historical reference as well. It also makes one wonder who may be included in a similar book in, say, 2050 (George W. Bush? Gaetan Dugas? Homer Simpson?)Very good reading.
Rating:
Summary: who would you pick?
Review: The whole point of this book is that the premise is impossible to satisfy. Noone will agree with all the choices made by the author, and that is made very clear in the introduction. It is simply HIS opinion, and the book is designed to make you justify your position. It is great fun to see where your personal favorites in history land in the ranking and to discover people you had never heard of and see their influence on all of us. For example, the author only gave Jesus a third place ranking, stating that His philosophy of non-retaliation and loving your enemies has never been tried. Had He been more influential, perhaps us Christians would be more loving. What do you think? Whatever you think, think you will.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun, but the standard of comparison is skewed and biased
Review: In this book, Michael Hart, a scientist by trade, presents HIS opinion of the 100 most important people in history (almost half of whom, not surprisingly, were scientists). Not an easy task, by any means, and one which is sure to draw criticism from every side. The book itself is not incredibly well-written, and some of the biographies are meager and inadequate. Sometimes Hart begins rambling about something (such as Shakespeare's real identity or Gorbachev's reforms), and the result is an unusually large section devoted to that particular subject.
I agree with some of Hart's findings. That, however, is not the point. I strongly disagree with his standard of comparison. His argument is that "scientific advances have done far more to shape the world we live in" than have political or military events. That's why you'll find men such as William Morton (who developed anesthesia) over 50 places higher than Elizabeth I or Cyrus the Great, and over 30 places higher than Julius Caesar or William the Conqueror. In fact, you'll also find several important political leaders (Abraham Lincoln and Henry VIII among them) absent from the list in favor of the man who invented the contraceptive pill.
If Hart underestimates the politicians, he completely scorns the world of art and literature. Two literary figures (Shakespeare at #31 and Homer at an unflattering #98), an artist (Michaelangelo at #50), and two composers (Beethoven and Bach at #s 45 and 72, respectively) are all that grace this list, and men like Dante, Virgil, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Mozart go either entirely unnoticed or appear on a lengthy list at the end of the book of people Hart rejected. 5 people out of 100 seems a gross under representation of the entire world of art to me, but Hart has his reasons. "In general," he says in Shakespeare's biography, "literary and artistic figures have had comparatively little influence on human history." As if deliberately adding insult to injury, he says that the vast majority of people encounter such artistic greats as Shakespeare only when forced to read or study them in college! On another note, he implies that, aside from his work being influential in science, Einstein's theories are widely understood and that ordinary people's lives are profoundly affected by them.
As a whole, I think the impact of art in history has been grossly underestimated by Hart. Writing in Greece began to appear about the same time as Homer is supposed to have composed his epics. Isn't that "influential?" Chaucer was the first author to write extensively in middle English. Considering everything written in English today, wasn't that "influential?" Besides the literary and artistic bias, don't expect to find such figures as Socrates and Benjamin Franklin (who wrote a lot and influenced many people, but in a sometimes intangible way) on the list, either. As much as Hart denies it, I have to argue that art influences many facets of human history, even his beloved science.
One of the reasons I bought this book was for what I assumed would be 100 short biographies of great men and women. Unfortunately, most of the biographies are inadequate, and the bulk of the writing is composed of Hart comparing one figure to another, and using his standards of comparison to estimate their greatness. This book would be infinitely more useful if more space were devoted to just the pure, biographical fact.
Overall, then, the book IS somewhat entertaining, and some of the choices are fun to think about. Still, I don't know if it's worth reading the entire book. Probably the best approach would be to look at the table of contents, see the list, and read a couple of biographies. Then you can decide if you actually want to invest the necessary time to read this book, and if you want to shell out the money to buy it.
Rating:
Summary: History in biography
Review: These mini-biographies are fascinating to read, and while reading, you can pick up a surprising amount of world history. It doesn't matter if you disagree with the order of the rankings; in fact, the process and the reasons for the rankings act as a harmless catalyst for new and deeper thinking. These biographies may be short, but they are serious and well-researched. They are not written in the somewhat humorous style of other history popularizers such as Davis in his "Don't Know Much" series or Loewen in his "Lies." (good too, but different).
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, Informative, Modified
Review: I know of at least two editions of this book. One, written prior to the fall of communism, placed such figures as Lenin, Marx, Mao and others higher on the list. After the dust settled, he reworked the list, dropping them a few (or several) notches.
This is a great gift book and an even better bathroom read. It's rather compact chapters are easily perused and follow a pattern:
A brief introduction, a short, intelligent biography, many times introducing new, unknown elements, then a summation and reasons for the ranking. As other reviewer have stated, the listing is controversial but given circumstances in the modern world, incredibly prescient. (He ranks Mohammed as most influential.) As should be, the philosophers and religious leaders are near the top. One finds
a general assortment of explorers, scientist, social movement leaders, royalty and thinkers. All in all, an excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: A PAINLESS HISTORY OF EVERYTHING
Review: You can see that even those who hate the book have spent time with it and have been inspired to serious thought by it. I've been in awe of this book for years, and I'm gratified that the feeling is shared by many. The book provides a vision of how our world got to be this way, and, perhaps, of how it might be different had it not been for certain individuals. And what an impressive effort this is; writing such a book required a rare breadth of knowledge, covering the fields of religion, political and military history, science, philosophy, and all the arts, plus the spark to approach history in this different way. Even if you love the book and even if you agree with almost everything in it, you're still bound to find flaws.The JFK thing is a nice microcosm of what is great, what is weak, and what is controversial about the book. JFK's inclusion is ridiculed by many readers, and we can easily see that they have a point -- but so does Mr. Hart, who may well be right that the moon landing will forever be one of the very-most-remembered events of the century; BUT EVEN SO, isn't he breaking his basic "rule" here, by emphasizing something other than INFLUENCE? Being remembered does not necessarily equal influence. Yes, sometimes he loses his focus, more so in the revised edition. Perhaps the most salient example is his insistence on referring to Shakespeare as Edward de Vere and his devoting considerable space to the argument that de Vere was the real author. Even if one agrees with him on this point (as I do), this book isn't the place for it. You get the feeling that maybe by the time of the revised edition, Hart no longer had such a consuming interest in the original project and couldn't help himself from going off in other directions. But it's all forgiveable. This book is great, and unique (notwithstanding the many knock-offs). You'll pick it up again and again, you'll think about it, you'll argue about it -- and you'll have a great time.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful and Provocative
Review: This is one of the most interesting books I've ever come across and I enjoy reading and re-reading it very much. Hart's thesis is INFLUENCE IN HISTORY. He makes an explicit distinctin between power and influence, even though the most powerful men in history often have a good deal of longterm influence, for good or ill. Bear this in mind as you read the book. As can be expected, with rankings of this kind there's never going to be any agreement among people. I'll be frank: if I had disagreed with most of Hart's views I wouldn't have picked up the book in the first place. Having said that, I do have my own opinions. Bohr should not have been omitted in the second edition. Many eminent physicists would place him ahead of Rutherford. Why Franklin Roosevelt was not included? He got America out of the Great Depression and played a crucial role in winning the Second World War, the greatest military conflict in human history. It seems to me FDR is one of history's most influential persons. Ben Franklin should be on the list - for the same reason that Edison is on the list. (Franklin after all co-invented one thing that really matters: the United States of America!) Hitler is ranked way too low. Hart's argument that Hitler failed in his goals seems to me irrelevant when the question is IMPACT on world history. Hitler was a despicable person. More importantly, he failed in almost all his objectives; about this no one can disagree. But Hitler disrupted the world to a greater extent than anyone else I can think of, and for this reason alone I would place him much higher, probably in the top three. (Similarly, Stalin's place should be higher. I can't believe that Asoka, whose international impact is next to nil, is #53 when the "most powerful dictator in history" whose impact is worldwide, is #66! Also, the distance between Alexander the Great and Mao Zedong - 56 spots - seems to me unreasonable.) Muhammad is one of history's most influential figures, no doubt, but whether he should be #1 is difficult to say. Hart argues that he united the Arabs, and this is the main reason. A secondary reason is the fact that he was both a political and a religious leader. My questions would be the following: First, are the Arabs really so united? Second, how important are the Arabs in history? And finally, is the combination of political and religious leadership in one person a unique phenomenon? Given the fact that Islam is one of the great three religions in the world, there can be no doubt as to Muhammad's importance. One would have to be quite prejudiced to place him below the top five. My question would be, merely thinking of longterm influence, and leaving temporary power or prestige or morality aside, who should be #1? I don't have a good answer to that, but I'm tempted to consider Newton or Marx. Adam Smith is the greatest economist ever, in my opinion. Yet he seems to me to belong in the same category as Francis Bacon: intellectual pioneers whose views are both correct and prophetic, but are unimportant because they didn't influence people in their actions, except in retrospect. (That's very different from Marx, for example.) Given the unique emphasis on scientists in this book - fully justified in my view - I am absolutely horrified that such giants of mathematics as Gauss and Riemann are not on the list. The impact of the latter on Relativity is very significant, apart from his place in mathematics. Had Riemann not existed, Einstein would not have been able to put his General Theory in anything but descriptive terms. (Alternatively Einstein would have had to invent the non-Euclidean geometry himself. Incidentally, this would be very reminiscent of Newton's invention of calculus! Had this occurred, then there can be no doubt who should have been placed before Newton, who is #2: Einstein himself!) This is a book no one should miss. It can be dipped into and read in any order you like. The facts are often accurate and the reasoning penetrating. Anyone interested in history and biography should read this book. I learned much and found it entertaining as well.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book.....but JFK????
Review: My wife and I are really diggin' this book. Thank God the author did not write any more than he did about those old Chinese dudes or the chemists and scientists. 4 pages is enough for me regarding those boring guys. The writer does a great job supporting his reasoning for the ranking and stuff but I was really puzzled when JFK popped up. You gotta be kidding me? JFK? He got it for putting a man on the moon. Hey author dude!!! JFK basically just cut the check. Throw a bone to the guy that invented the multi-stage rocket in the 1920s? He is the one that got the ball rolling. The space race was huge (satillite tv, gps, etc...) but the MAN ON THE MOON????...so what! You can do better than that.
Rating:
Summary: Unique, thought-provoking list of influential people
Review: This is one of the most interesting books I've read. It gives information about people you have, or should have heard of, and forces you to think through the relative value of various professions and great people. For instance:
Is science more influential than music? Is religion as influential as art? How could we have allowed an evil person like Hitler to be so influential? Was Bach more influential than Einstein?
A great book to read and re-read. A must for every bookshelf. [You can easily find Hart's list in a web-search, but don't cheat yourself. Get the book and read it!] It is interesting to see how Hart revised his list for the second edition.
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