The top 100 Americans

The Atlantic Monthly has come up with its list of the 100 most influential Americans, compiled by 10 historians. Some of their selections are just, but most are way off base. Margaret Sanger? Elvis Presley? Jonas Salk? Jackie Robinson? I don't think any of these people were particularly influential. Some on the list, such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Louis Sullivan, James Gordon Bennett, Walter Lippmann, George Eastman, and Stephen Foster, I had never even heard of before I saw the list. Overall the list includes far too many singers, songwriters, authors, architects, inventors, and businessmen, and too few politicians and military leaders. In addition to those already mentioned, John Dewey, Horace Mann, William Faulkner, Samuel Gompers, P.T. Barnum, James Watson, William James, Sam Walton, Cyrus McCormick, Margaret Mead, William Hearst, George Gallup, Benjamin Spock, John Steinbeck, Sam Goldwyn, Booker T. Washington, and Louis Armstrong need to go.

I also think Martin Luther King, Earl Warren, John Marshall, FDR, Alexander Graham Bell, Dwight Eisenhower, and Woodrow Wilson are too high on the list, and Robert E. Lee is way too low. Andrew Jackson is a little too low too. Rockefeller, Carngeie, Morgan, Ford, Bill Gates, and Sam Walton don't all need to be on the list, and none should be in the top 50.

Who should be on the list that isn't? Well, there are only 17 presidents for starters, and there should probably be about 40 on there, putting aside uninfluential ones like Grover Cleveland. James Monroe, JFK, George W. Bush, and James Buchanan (the only bachelor president) are particularly egregious omissions. I also think Timothy McVeigh should be on the list. Being the most murderous American is an important (although not necessarily good!) distinction. Maybe even Scott Peterson should; he's probably the second most famous American murderer. Condi Rice should definitely be on the list, and so should William T. Sherman, Jefferson Davis, and George Patton. If there needs to be an entertainer, it should be Shirley Temple. Also, it's weird that Eleanor Roosevelt is the only first lady on the list. Martha Washington, Mary Lincoln, and Jackie Kennedy are just as important.

The full list of the Atlantic's choices is here.