1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [79]
Lisa, Manuel (1772–1820) Born in New Orleans of Spanish parents, Lisa became a U.S. citizen following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In 1807, he built a trading post fort at the mouth of the Bighorn River (in modern Montana), which developed into a center of the great American fur trade—the first important industry of the American West, which opened up commerce with the Indians of the region and generally spurred exploration and settlement of the Far West. Lisa’s establishment became the headquarters from which a generation of “mountain men”—fur traders and trappers—explored the remotest reaches of the North American continent.
Lodge, Henry Cabot (1850–1924) Like his chief rival, Woodrow Wilson, Lodge held a Ph.D. in political science and had been a college professor. In 1893, he was elected senator from Massachusetts and served until his death in 1924. An advocate of isolationism, he successfully opposed Wilson’s attempt to bring the United States into the League of Nations after World War I. Lodge’s opposition ushered in a Republican-dominated period of U.S. withdrawal from world affairs.
Lodge, Henry Cabot (1902–1985) Grandson and namesake of Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924), Lodge had a distinguished career in Republican politics, including service in the U.S. Senate (1937–1944, 1947–1952) and, most fatefully, as ambassador to South Vietnam during (1963–1964 and 1965–1967), the years of the expanding Vietnam War—an expansion Lodge advocated. In 1969, Lodge also served as chief negotiator in the Paris Peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam.
Loeb, Richard (1905–1936) On May 21, 1924, with college friend Nathan Leopold, Loeb kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Robert (“Bobbie”) Franks for no other purpose than to commit the “perfect crime.” At trial, the pair was defended by Clarence Darrow, who did not claim the innocence of his clients, but successfully mitigated their sentence from death to life imprisonment, arguing for the first time in American legal history that they were psychopaths—sane, yet incapable of moral judgment. In contrast to Leopold, who, after parole in 1958, dedicated himself to working among the poor of Puerto Rico as a hospital technician, Loeb, the more ruthless of the two, was murdered by a fellow inmate, toward whom he had made sadistic homosexual overtures.
London, Jack (1876–1916) London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco and led a life as an adventurous hobo-drifter, educating himself in public libraries. Inspired by the “superman” philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, he began to write stories of man against the elements, each tale suffused with his romantic interpretation of Nietzsche’s amoral will to survive and dominate. London wrote rapidly and became the most highly paid author in America. His most memorable works include Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906)—both set in Alaska—and The Sea Wolf (1904), his fullest portrait of the hero as a Nietzschean superman. No American writer has been more widely translated.
Long, Huey (1893–1935) Long rose from backwoods Louisiana poverty to become governor of the state and a U.S. senator. He was a charismatic demagogue, not above shameful displays of emotion and even buffoonery, which earned him the sobriquet “Kingfish.” Campaigning on the slogan “every man a king,” he developed a Share-the-Wealth program in which increased inheritance and income taxes, plus a severance tax on oil, were intended to redistribute wealth to the poor. He was also, however, a corrupt political boss, whose tenure in office amounted to a dictatorship.