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immigrated to the United States in 1902. After joining the International Workers of the World (IWW) in 1910, he became an organizer, using his talent as a composer of folksongs to help drive recruitment. His most famous song, “The Preacher and the Slave,” has the capitalist preacher promising workers that they “will eat, bye and bye / In that glorious land above the sky; / Work and pray, live on hay, /You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.” In 1914, Hill was charged with the robbery-murder of a Salt Lake City grocer and his son. Despite thin circumstantial evidence, he was convicted—undoubtedly because of his radical beliefs. He was executed on November 19, 1915, and was celebrated as a martyr to the American labor movement.

Hinckley, John (1955– ) On March 30, 1981, Hinckley, a feckless off-and-on college student, fired his Rohm RG-14 revolver six times at President Ronald Reagan as he left the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., after a speaking engagement. A ricocheted bullet hit the president in the left lung. Other shots resulted in a catastrophic head wound to Press Secretary James Brady and lesser injuries to police officer Thomas Delehanty and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy. Hinckley later claimed that after seeing the 1976 Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver, he became obsessed with the young actress Jodie Foster and believed that he could capture her attention by killing the president. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was confined to Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Hiss, Alger (1904–1996) Hiss was a distinguished State Department official and adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt before and during World War II. He served as temporary secretary-general of the United Nations and as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 1946 to 1949. In 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a self-proclaimed reformed Communist, accused Hiss of passing classified documents to him for transmission to a Soviet agent. Hiss denied the charges; although he was never indicted for espionage, he was tried and convicted of perjury. He served more than three years of a five-year sentence and spent the rest of his life in an effort to prove his innocence—and was frequently cited by the American left as an example of right-wing persecution. (Soviet documents released after Hiss’s death in 1996 provide strong evidence of his guilt.)

Hoffman, Abbie (1936–1989) Hoffman was a civil rights activist, who, in 1968, organized the Yippies—the Youth International Party—which protested the Vietnam War and the American “Establishment.” In an era of protest, Hoffman was skilled at drawing media attention, engaging in a kind of street theater to dramatize the protest movement.

Holladay, Ben (1819–1887) Born in Kentucky, Holladay settled in Missouri, where he opened a store and hotel. During the U.S.-Mexican War (1846–1848), he made a fortune supplying the U.S. Army and used his profits to finance the purchase of army-surplus oxen and wagons, which became the basis of his freighting business between Salt Lake City, Utah, and California. Holladay steadily expanded, purchasing the Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express, which he ultimately sold to Wells Fargo and Co. in 1866. Having pioneered big-time overland stagecoach and freight operations in the American West, he bought into steamship and railroad companies, but was wiped out in the financial panic of 1873 and retired three years later with a much-diminished fortune.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. (1841–1935) In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Holmes to the U.S. Supreme Court after a distinguished career as a jurist, a professor of law, and a legal philosopher. He sat on the court until he retired in 1932, when he was nearly 91 years old. Although he never served as chief justice, Holmes was the most famous jurist ever to sit on the high court. His opinions were brilliantly reasoned and eloquently written—many of them expressing the view of the dissenting minority. Holmes was a steadfast exponent of judicial restraint, who