The Atlantic Unveils 100 Most Influential Americans List

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Which 100 Americans have had the most influence on our country? That is the question recently tackled by The Atlantic within its December issue. Beginning today, The Atlantic's 100 Most Influential Americans List is available on its website, http://www.theatlantic.com/. In its 150th year of publishing, the country's oldest continuously published magazine challenged 10 award winning historians and authors to determine who have been the 100 most influential figures in American history. Following the publication of The Atlantic's 100 Most Influential Americans List, readers can submit their own lists of Influentials at http://www.theatlantic.com/, and can cast their votes for figures who were left off the List but should not have been. Results will be published in the January-February issue of The Atlantic.

Written and compiled by associate editor Ross Douthat, The Atlantic's 100 Most Influential Americans List engaged 10 panelists to consider influence based on a person's impact, for good or ill, both on his or her own era and on the way we live now. The balloting was averaged and weighted to emphasize consensus -- and candidates received extra points if they appeared on multiple ballots.

"Our goal in compiling the Atlantic's 100 Most Influential Americans List wasn't to end a debate about historical influence, but to start one," says James Bennet, editor of The Atlantic. "We're not planning to engrave this list on a marble wall somewhere. Instead, we hope it will provoke discussion and even some serious disagreement about who made America and how. Why is Walt Disney ranked ahead of Elizabeth Cady Stanton? How did Woodrow Wilson make the top 10 but not Ronald Reagan? How can Bill Gates be ahead of Elvis Presley, or Presley ahead of Lewis and Clark, or Lewis and Clark ahead of Ralph Nader, or Nader ahead of Richard Nixon? The debates over the rankings in our offices have been fascinating and, at times, feisty. We hope other people have as much fun debating them as we have. But the point of the exercise is a serious one: to help us understand the influences that have shaped modern America, and made us who we are today."

Presidents, Religious Leaders, Inventors and Writers Ruled the List

The Atlantic's 100 Most Influential Americans List begins in ranking order with Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and John Marshall. Every panelist cast a vote for these seven figures, proving that a political career was the surest way to a historical legacy.

While we are still a country of immigrants, the native-born comprise the bulk of the list; just seven of the final 100 were born outside the continental United States. Also, the East Coast had a head start; 63 of the 100 were born in the original 13 colonies; and 26 in New England alone. The Atlantic's List of inventors included Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bill and Eli Whitney. Founding and leading a religion landed many on the List including Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy. And finally, more than 30 of the figures on the List are writers.

Panelists did vote for many 20th century figures -- as well as many athletes, musicians, artists, and entertainers. For every vote for a 'mutton- chopped' Victorian, at least one vote went to a more contemporary cultural figure, such as Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan, or Tiger Woods. But the consensus favored Gilded Age industrialists and our Founding Fathers.

One of the panelists, historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin, looked "for public figures who changed the daily lives of people, both at the time and afterward. In particular, I looked for great public figures who made it possible for people to lead expanded lives -- materially, psychologically, culturally and spiritually."

To see a complete listing of The Atlantic's 100 Most Influential Americans List and to cast your own vote for the most influential Americans visit http://www.theatlantic.com/.

"The Atlantic, founded in 1857, and based in Washington, D.C., is the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. The Atlantic covers politics, society, foreign affairs, science, literature, history, and more. Its readers are highly educated, with a deep interest and involvement in public affairs. For more information about The Atlantic visit http://www.theatlantic.com/."

Editor's Note: Addendum of The Atlantic's 100 Most Influential Americans List below:

  THE ATLANTIC'S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL LIST

  1 Abraham Lincoln
  2 George Washington
  3 Thomas Jefferson
  4 Franklin D. Roosevelt
  5 Alexander Hamilton
  6 Benjamin Franklin
  7 John Marshall
  8 Martin Luther King Jr.
  9 Thomas Edison
  10 Woodrow Wilson
  11 John D. Rockefeller
  12 Ulysses Grant
  13 James Madison
  14 Henry Ford
  15 Theodore Roosevelt
  16 Mark Twain
  17 Ronald Reagan
  18 Andrew Jackson
  19 Thomas Paine
  20 Andrew Carnegie
  21 Harry Truman
  22 Walt Whitman
  23 Wright Brothers
  24 Alexander Graham Bell
  25 John Adams
  26 Walt Disney
  27 Eli Whitney
  28 Dwight D. Eisenhower
  29 Earl Warren
  30 Elizabeth Cady Stanton
  31 Henry Clay
  32 Albert Einstein
  33 Ralph Waldo Emerson
  34 Jonas Salk
  35 Jackie Robinson
  36 William Jennings Bryan
  37 J.P. Morgan
  38 Susan B. Anthony
  39 Rachel Carson
  40 John Dewey
  41 Harriet Beecher Stowe
  42 Eleanor Roosevelt
  43 W.E.B. DuBois
  44 Lyndon Baines Johnson
  45 Samuel F.B. Morse
  46 William Lloyd Garrison
  47 Frederick Douglass
  48 Robert Oppenheimer
  49 Frederick Law Olmsted
  50 James K. Polk
  51 Margaret Sanger
  52 Joseph Smith
  53 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
  54 Bill Gates
  55 John Quincy Adams
  56 Horace Mann
  57 Robert E. Lee
  58 John C. Calhoun
  59 Louis Sullivan
  60 William Faulkner
  61 Samuel Gompers
  62 William James
  63 George Marshall
  64 Jane Addams
  65 Henry David Thoreau
  66 Elvis Presley
  67 P.T. Barnum
  68 James D. Watson
  69 James Gordon Bennett
  70 Lewis and Clark
  71 Noah Webster
  72 Sam Walton
  73 Cyrus McCormick
  74 Brigham Young
  75 George Herman "Babe" Ruth
  76 Frank Lloyd Wright
  77 Betty Friedan
  78 John Brown
  79 Louis Armstrong
  80 William Randolph Hearst
  81 Margaret Mead
  82 George Gallup
  83 James Fenimore Cooper
  84 Thurgood Marshall
  85 Ernest Hemingway
  86 Mary Baker Eddy
  87 Benjamin Spock
  88 Enrico Fermi
  89 Walter Lippmann
  90 Jonathan Edwards
  91 Lyman Beecher
  92 John Steinbeck
  93 Nat Turner
  94 George Eastman
  95 Sam Goldwyn
  96 Ralph Nader
  97 Stephen Foster
  98 Booker T. Washington
  99 Richard Nixon
  100 Herman Melville