1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [8]
Bellamy, Edward (1850–1898) Son of a Baptist minister, Bellamy was strongly moved by social inequality and the plight of the poor. In 1888, he published Looking Backward, a novel set in Boston in the year 2000 that depicted America under a utopian socialism built on cooperation, brotherhood, and industry suited to human need. The book was a million-selling bestseller and catapulted Bellamy to international celebrity. Visionary and often naïve, his utopianism had a powerful effect on late 19th-century reform and Progressive politics.
Bellow, Saul (1915–2005) Born in Quebec of Russian-Jewish émigré parents, Bellow was raised in the poor neighborhoods of Montreal and Chicago and began to write realistic, darkly comic novels in which characters struggle to find purpose and ethical stability in a world alternately indifferent and entangling. Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976 and was a distinguished university professor.
Benjamin, Judah (1811–1884) Born in St. Croix, Judah was taken to Charleston, South Carolina, in his early youth and became an American citizen. He practiced law and became the first professing Jew elected to the U.S. Senate in 1852 (he was reelected 1858). An advocate of slavery, he left the Senate when South Carolina seceded from the Union and was named attorney general in the Confederate government, then secretary of war, and, finally, secretary of state (February 7, 1862). He fled to England after the Civil War, set up a law practice there, and in 1872 rose to become a queen’s counsel.
Bennett, James Gordon (1795–1872) Born in Scotland, Bennett immigrated to American in 1819, taught school, then worked as a journalist. On May 6, 1835, he founded The New York Herald, printing it in a cellar. He was aggressive in gathering news, which ranged from the first Wall Street financial article ever printed (June 13, 1835) to sensational reports of fires, murders, and war. He developed many of the techniques of modern reporting, and he was the first newspaper publisher to make extensive use of the telegraph. He illustrated his paper extensively and even included a society page.
Benton, Thomas Hart (1889–1975) Missouri-born Benton was the son of a famous Congressman. He worked as a newspaper cartoonist as a young man, then studied serious art in Europe and at the Art Institute of Chicago. Turning his back on the prevailing Modernist styles, he traveled through the rural South and Midwest, capturing people and landscapes and emerging as the foremost of the Regionalists, who transformed the humble American scene into memorable art.
Berle, Milton (1908–2002) Born Milton Berlinger in New York, Berle earned his living as a vaudevillian, movie actor (in silent films and talkies), nightclub comic, and marginally successful radio comedian until he was tapped in 1948 to host the Texaco Star Theatre on the fledgling medium of television. Berle proved to be a comic sensation, perfectly suited to “the tube” and so popular that his presence drove sales of television sets and was instrumental in establishing the medium. He was justly dubbed “Mr. Television.”
Berlin, Irving (1888–1989) Born Israel Baline in a part of Russia that is now Belarus, Berlin was the son of a Jewish cantor, who immigrated with his family to New York in 1893. Berlin worked as a street singer after his father died in 1896 and wrote his first song in 1907. Despite a lack of formal musical education, Berlin emerged as a leader in the creation of the American popular song and the Broadway musical. He is widely considered the greatest of American popular songwriters.
Bernays, Edward L. (1891–1995) Born in Vienna—a nephew of