1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [11]
Boas, Franz (1858–1942) Boas was born and educated in Germany, but earned his greatest fame as professor of anthropology at Columbia University (New York City) from 1899 to 1942. During this period he developed the relativistic approach to anthropology, which focused non-judgmentally on the variety of human cultures, and which became the preeminent definition of the field. Boas taught a generation of great American anthropologists, including Margaret Mead.
Boesky, Ivan (1937– ) Boesky rose to fame and wealth as an arbitrageur—essentially a stock trader who bet on the outcome of corporate takeovers. Boesky’s tactics were characterized as brazen, and, as it turned out, were based on tips he received from corporate insiders, a form of “insider trading” in violation of federal law. His plea bargain in the mid 1980s became iconic of the era’s corporate greed—and he himself earned additional notoriety for a 1986 speech at the University of California, Berkeley, in which he proclaimed “I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”
Bogart, Humphrey (1899–1957) Son of a prominent New York physician, Bogart became a journeyman stage actor in the 1920s then found greatness as ruthless killer in the 1935 Sherwood Anderson play The Petrified Forest. This brought him film roles—typically playing gangsters—followed by two iconic starring turns, in High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon (both 1941). For many fans, his portrayal of Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942) remains his masterpiece: the sensitive “tough guy” as altruistic hero.
Bok, Edward (1863–1930) Born in the Netherlands, Bok grew up poor in Brooklyn and rose to edit the Ladies’ Home Journal from 1889 to 1919. In this position he wielded great moral and social influence, using the pages of the magazine to champion everything from women’s suffrage to wildlife conservation. He refused advertising from the makers of ineffectual or harmful patent medicines, an action that spurred passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act.
Boone, Daniel (1734–1820) Boone was born in Pennsylvania but moved to the North Carolina frontier and made his living as a far-ranging hunter and trapper. Contrary to popular belief, he did not “discover” Kentucky, but he did explore and settle a part of it, blazing a trail through Cumberland Gap, thereby opening Kentucky and the rest of the trans-Appalachian West to widespread settlement. Always courageous, always resourceful, Boone fought in the French and Indian War as well as the Revolution, laid claim to vast tracts of wilderness, and earned legendary fame even during his lifetime—yet he failed financially and died in relative obscurity on the Missouri frontier.
Booth, Edwin (1833–1893) A member of America’s most celebrated theatrical family, Booth rose to become the most acclaimed American actor of his day and was judged a tragedian equal to the finest English actors. His phenomenal success was dogged by drink and by the crime of his brother, John Wilkes Booth, who murdered Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865.
Booth, John Wilkes (1838–1865) No name is more infamous in American history than that of John Wilkes Booth, a matinee idol, whose sympathies with the Confederate cause in the Civil War prompted him to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. After shooting the president as he watched a performance at Washington’s Ford’s Theatre, Booth made his escape and remained at large for eleven days until, cornered in a Virginia tobacco barn, he was fatally shot.
Borden, Lizzie (1860–1927) The daughter of a successful Fall River (Massachusetts) businessman, Borden lived with her father and stepmother. On August 4, 1892, the couple was found brutally murdered—bludgeoned and hacked, possibly by an axe. Lizzie (who had tried to purchase poison the day before the slayings) was indicted for both murders but acquitted (because of inadequate circumstantial evidence) after a trial that created an international sensation. Despite the verdict, most Americans believed