En 2006, la magazine The Atlantic a réunit dix éminents historiens pour déteminer la liste des 100 Américains qui, a leurs yeux, ont eu le plus d’infuence sur l’Histoire des Etats-Unis. Un tel exercice, reconnaît le magazine, est un peu dérisoire tant il est subjectif. Mais il existe.
A partir de cette liste, un autre exercice intéressant est de compter le nombre de ceux que vous connaissez.
Je propose la classification ci-dessous :
Moins 20 bonnes réponses : votre connaissance des Etats-Unis est très faible.
Entre 21 et 40 bonnes réponses : vous avez quelques notions, mais aussi beaucoup de lacunes.
Entre 41 et 60 bonnes réponses : vous connaissez assez bien l’histoire des Etats-Unis ;
Entre 60 et 80 bonnes réponses : Assez bien, mais vous pouvez améliorer vos connaissance.
Plus de 80 bonnes réponses : niveau expert, mais rien ne vous empêche de vous documenter sur ceux que vous ne connaissez pas.
Bonne chance
(Pour ce qui me concerne, j’ai réalisé 63)
Liste ci-après.
| Personnalités | |
| 1 Abraham Lincoln He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over America’s second founding. |
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| 2 George Washington He made the United States possible—not only by defeating a king, but by declining to become one himself. |
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| 3 Thomas Jefferson The author of the five most important words in American history: “All men are created equal.” |
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| 4 Franklin Delano Roosevelt He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and then he proved it. 5 Alexander Hamilton Soldier, banker, and political scientist, he set in motion an agrarian nation’s transformation into an industrial power. |
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| 6 Benjamin Franklin The Founder-of-all-trades— scientist, printer, writer, diplomat, inventor, and more; like his country, he contained multitudes. |
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| 7 John Marshall The defining chief justice, he established the Supreme Court as the equal of the other two federal branches. |
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| 8 Martin Luther King Jr. His dream of racial equality is still elusive, but no one did more to make it real. |
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| 9 Thomas Edison It wasn’t just the lightbulb; the Wizard of Menlo Park was the most prolific inventor in American history. |
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| 10 Woodrow Wilson He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy. |
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| 11 John D. Rockefeller The man behind Standard Oil set the mold for our tycoons—first by making money, then by giving it away. |
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| 12 Ulysses S. Grant He was a poor president, but he was the general Lincoln needed; he also wrote the greatest political memoir in American history. |
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| 13 James Madison He fathered the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights. |
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| 14 Henry Ford He gave us the assembly line and the Model T, and sparked America’s love affair with the automobile. |
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| 15 Theodore Roosevelt Whether busting trusts or building canals, he embodied the “strenuous life” and blazed a trail for twentieth-century America. |
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| 16 Mark Twain Author of our national epic, he was the most unsentimental observer of our national life. |
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| 17 Ronald Reagan The amiable architect of both the conservative realignment and the Cold War’s end. |
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| 18 Andrew Jackson The first great populist: he found America a republic and left it a democracy. |
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| 19 Thomas Paine The voice of the American Revolution, and our first great radical. |
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| 20 Andrew Carnegie The original self-made man forged America’s industrial might and became one of the nation’s greatest philanthropists. |
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| 21 Harry Truman An accidental president, this machine politician ushered in the Atomic Age and then the Cold War. |
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| 22 Walt Whitman He sang of America and shaped the country’s conception of itself. |
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| 23 Wright Brothers They got us all off the ground. |
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| 24 Alexander Graham Bell By inventing the telephone, he opened the age of telecommunications and shrank the world. |
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| 25 John Adams His leadership made the American Revolution possible; his devotion to republicanism made it succeed. |
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| 26 Walt Disney The quintessential entertainer-entrepreneur, he wielded unmatched influence over our childhood. |
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| 27 Eli Whitney His gin made cotton king and sustained an empire for slavery. |
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| 28 Dwight Eisenhower He won a war and two elections, and made everybody like Ike. |
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| 29 Earl Warren His Supreme Court transformed American society and bequeathed to us the culture wars. |
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| 30 Elizabeth Cady Stanton One of the first great American feminists, she fought for social reform and women’s right to vote. |
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| 31 Henry Clay One of America’s greatest legislators and orators, he forged compromises that held off civil war for decades. |
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| 32 Albert Einstein His greatest scientific work was done in Europe, but his humanity earned him undying fame in America. |
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| 33 Ralph Waldo Emerson The bard of individualism, he relied on himself—and told us all to do the same. |
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| 34 Jonas Salk His vaccine for polio eradicated one of the world’s worst plagues. |
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| 35 Jackie Robinson He broke baseball’s color barrier and embodied integration’s promise. |
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| 36 William Jennings Bryan “The Great Commoner” lost three presidential elections, but his populism transformed the country. |
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| 37 J. P. Morgan The great financier and banker was the prototype for all the Wall Street barons who followed. |
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| 38 Susan B. Anthony She was the country’s most eloquent voice for women’s equality under the law. |
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| 39 Rachel Carson The author of Silent Spring was godmother to the environmental movement. |
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| 40 John Dewey He sought to make the public school a training ground for democratic life. |
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| 41 Harriet Beecher Stowe Her Uncle Tom’s Cabin inspired a generation of abolitionists and set the stage for civil war. |
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| 42 Eleanor Roosevelt She used the first lady’s office and the mass media to become “first lady of the world.” |
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| 43 W. E. B. DuBois One of America’s great intellectuals, he made the “problem of the color line” his life’s work. |
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| 44 Lyndon Baines Johnson His brilliance gave us civil-rights laws; his stubbornness gave us Vietnam. |
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| 45 Samuel F. B. Morse Before the Internet, there was Morse code. |
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| 46 William Lloyd Garrison Through his newspaper, The Liberator, he became the voice of abolition. |
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| 47 Frederick Douglass After escaping from slavery, he pricked the nation’s conscience with an eloquent accounting of its crimes. |
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| 48 Robert Oppenheimer The father of the atomic bomb and the regretful midwife of the nuclear era. |
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| 49 Frederick Law Olmsted The genius behind New York’s Central Park, he inspired the greening of America’s cities. |
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| 50 James K. Polk This one-term president’s Mexican War landgrab gave us California, Texas, and the Southwest. |
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| 51 Margaret Sanger The ardent champion of birth control—and of the sexual freedom that came with it. |
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| 52 Joseph Smith The founder of Mormonism, America’s most famous homegrown faith. |
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| 53 Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Known as “The Great Dissenter,” he wrote Supreme Court opinions that continue to shape American jurisprudence. |
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| 54 Bill Gates The Rockefeller of the Information Age, in business and philanthropy alike. |
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| 55 John Quincy Adams The Monroe Doctrine’s real author, he set nineteenth-century America’s diplomatic course. |
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| 56 Horace Mann His tireless advocacy of universal public schooling earned him the title “The Father of American Education.” |
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| 57 Robert E. Lee He was a good general but a better symbol, embodying conciliation in defeat. |
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| 58 John C. Calhoun The voice of the antebellum South, he was slavery’s most ardent defender. |
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| 59 Louis Sullivan The father of architectural modernism, he shaped the defining American building: the skyscraper. |
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| 60 William Faulkner The most gifted chronicler of America’s tormented and fascinating South. |
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| 61 Samuel Gompers The country’s greatest labor organizer, he made the golden age of unions possible. |
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| 62 William James The mind behind Pragmatism, America’s most important philosophical school. |
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| 63 George Marshall As a general, he organized the American effort in World War II; as a statesman, he rebuilt Western Europe. |
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| 64 Jane Addams The founder of Hull House, she became the secular saint of social work. |
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| 65 Henry David Thoreau The original American dropout, he has inspired seekers of authenticity for 150 years. |
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| 66 Elvis Presley The king of rock and roll. Enough said. |
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| 67 P. T. Barnum The circus impresario’s taste for spectacle paved the way for blockbuster movies and reality TV. |
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| 68 James D. Watson He codiscovered DNA’s double helix, revealing the code of life to scientists and entrepreneurs alike. |
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| 69 James Gordon Bennett As the founding publisher of The New York Herald, he invented the modern American newspaper. |
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| 70 Lewis and Clark They went west to explore, and millions followed in their wake. |
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| 71 Noah Webster He didn’t create American English, but his dictionary defined it. |
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| 72 Sam Walton He promised us “Every Day Low Prices,” and we took him up on the offer. |
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| 73 Cyrus McCormick His mechanical reaper spelled the end of traditional farming, and the beginning of industrial agriculture. |
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| 74 Brigham Young What Joseph Smith founded, Young preserved, leading the Mormons to their promised land. |
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| 75 George Herman “Babe” Ruth He saved the national pastime in the wake of the Black Sox scandal—and permanently linked sports and celebrity. |
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| 76 Frank Lloyd Wright America’s most significant architect, he was the archetype of the visionary artist at odds with capitalism. |
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| 77 Betty Friedan She spoke to the discontent of housewives everywhere—and inspired a revolution in gender roles. |
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| 78 John Brown Whether a hero, a fanatic, or both, he provided the spark for the Civil War. |
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| 79 Louis Armstrong His talent and charisma took jazz from the cathouses of Storyville to Broadway, television, and beyond. |
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| 80 William Randolph Hearst The press baron who perfected yellow journalism and helped start the Spanish-American War. |
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| 81 Margaret Mead With Coming of Age in Samoa, she made anthropology relevant—and controversial. |
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| 82 George Gallup He asked Americans what they thought, and the politicians listened. |
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| 83 James Fenimore Cooper The novels are unreadable, but he was the first great mythologizer of the frontier. |
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| 84 Thurgood Marshall As a lawyer and a Supreme Court justice, he was the legal architect of the civil-rights revolution. |
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| 85 Ernest Hemingway His spare style defined American modernism, and his life made machismo a cliché. |
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| 86 Mary Baker Eddy She got off her sickbed and founded Christian Science, which promised spiritual healing to all. |
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| 87 Benjamin Spock With a single book—and a singular approach—he changed American parenting. |
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| 88 Enrico Fermi A giant of physics, he helped develop quantum theory and was instrumental in building the atomic bomb. |
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| 89 Walter Lippmann The last man who could swing an election with a newspaper column. |
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| 90 Jonathan Edwards Forget the fire and brimstone: his subtle eloquence made him the country’s most influential theologian. |
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| 91 Lyman Beecher Harriet Beecher Stowe’s clergyman father earned fame as an abolitionist and an evangelist. |
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| 92 John Steinbeck As the creator of Tom Joad, he chronicled Depression-era misery. |
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| 93 Nat Turner He was the most successful rebel slave; his specter would stalk the white South for a century. |
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| 94 George Eastman The founder of Kodak democratized photography with his handy rolls of film. |
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| 95 Sam Goldwyn A producer for forty years, he was the first great Hollywood mogul. |
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| 96 Ralph Nader He made the cars we drive safer; thirty years later, he made George W. Bush the president. |
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| 97 Stephen Foster America’s first great songwriter, he brought us “O! Susanna” and “My Old Kentucky Home.” |
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| 98 Booker T. Washington As an educator and a champion of self-help, he tried to lead black America up from slavery. |
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| 99 Richard Nixon He broke the New Deal majority, and then broke his presidency on a scandal that still haunts America. |
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| 100 Herman Melville Moby Dick was a flop at the time, but Melville is remembered as the American Shakespeare. |