1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [139]
Winfrey, Oprah (1954– ) Winfrey was the product of a broken home, but overcame adversity early on to become a TV news anchor at age 19 in Nashville, Tennessee. She rose through jobs in larger television markets, and in 1984 moved to Chicago as host of A.M. Chicago, transforming the failing program into a popular hit. In 1985 it was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show then syndicated nationally the following year. Since then, Winfrey has built a media empire, becoming one of the most popular and influential figures on television—as well as the publisher of a national magazine and the head of a major production company.
Winthrop, John (1588–1649) One of England’s persecuted Puritans, Winthrop joined the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629 and was elected first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. From the founding of the colony until 1648, he was chosen governor 12 times and was regarded by the colonists as a stern but loving father. Without doubt, his strong hand helped to ensure the survival and prosperity of the colony, but he was also a force for Puritan intolerance and came into conflict with such advocates of liberality and non-orthodoxy as Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson.
Wirt, William (1772–1834) Wirt first came to national prominence as the prosecutor in Aaron Burr’s 1807 trial for treason, and in 1817 President James Monroe named him attorney general. He served for 12 years, through the administration of President John Quincy Adams, and permanently transformed the position into a powerful one by identifying and prosecuting important cases for the government. Wirt was also an author of note, publishing in 1817 The Life and Character of Patrick Henry, which published for the first time many of Henry’s most famous speeches. Some believe that Henry’s ringing “Give me liberty or give me death!” speech was actually invented by Wirt for his book.
Wister, Owen (1860–1938) Although he was an easterner, Wister earned his fame as an author of westerns, most notably the 1902 novel The Virginian, which introduced into American culture the leading elements of the enduring popular picture of the cowboy, including the cowboy’s upright code of ethics, his naïve way with women, and the showdown gun duel.
Wolfe, Thomas (1900–1938) A native of Asheville, North Carolina, Wolfe tried unsuccessfully to become a playwright, then turned to fiction, creating in a very short time four long novels that were based in large part on his own coming of age. Lyrical, rhapsodic, and epic, Wolfe’s fiction deals with time and memory as well as growing up in America. William Faulkner thought him the greatest novelist of his generation—rating himself second.
Wolfe, Tom (1930– ) Wolfe earned instant fame with his first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1964), a collection of essays that reported on (and satirized) American fads and personalities of the early 1960s. This was followed by The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), a chronicle of the psychedelic drug culture of the later 1960s. These works established Wolfe as a hip, irreverent verbal virtuoso, who applied the techniques of a novelist to journalism, creating what was soon dubbed the “New Journalism.” Wolfe continued to apply this technique The Right Stuff (1979), about the early U.S. manned space program, and he also wrote more conventional novels, which satirized aspects of contemporary culture.
Wood, Grant (1892–1942) Iowa-born Wood depicted not the impressive landscapes of the eastern or western mountains, but the humbler surroundings of his native Midwest, creating an art movement known as Midwestern Regionalism. His approach was highly stylized, even geometric, and slyly satiric, as in his classic American Gothic of 1930, which has become a familiar icon of “middle-American” values and mindset.
Wood, Leonard (1860–1927) Wood began his military career as a civilian contract surgeon, later becoming a medical officer. He served as military governor of Cuba (1899–1902), introducing a host