1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [81]
Luce, Henry (1898–1967) Luce launched Time magazine with his Yale University chum Briton Haden in 1923 and took it over completely after Haden’s death in 1929. That same year, Luce introduced Fortune, a unique magazine devoted to business. Time was aimed at presenting news with a point of view; Fortune was intended to be indispensable to the person of business; and in 1936, Life was introduced as a popular picture magazine. With this triumvirate, Luce had created the first great American magazine empire and became one of the most influential opinion makers in the world.
Luciano, Lucky (1896–1962) From the day Luciano (born Salvatore Lucania) emigrated from Italy with his parents at age ten, he embraced criminal activity, beginning with strong-arm robbery, shoplifting, and extortion, and soon graduating to drug dealing before entering the organized underworld of New York City and rising to the top of the various rackets. By the early 1930s, Luciano had become capo di tutti capi (“boss of all the bosses”) and in 1934 succeeded in organizing criminal enterprises nationwide into a kind of cartel or syndicate of unprecedented power and influence. Successfully prosecuted by New York’s Thomas E. Dewey in 1936, Luciano was given a 30– to 50–year sentence, ruling his criminal empire from his cell. In 1946, his sentence was commuted to deportation. He then continued to influence American criminal enterprise even from abroad.
Luks, George (1867–1933) Luks made his early living in art as a newspaper correspondent-artist and then as a newspaper cartoonist. He earned enough money to finance study in Paris during 1902–1903, where he was not only exposed to modern art, but to the rich life of the city. It was this latter interest that he brought back with him when he returned to New York. With like-minded artists, Luks founded a group called simply The Eight, which soon became associated with a larger movement in American urban realism. The press dubbed it the “Ashcan School,” and Luks was one of the leading practitioners of this distinctly modern, distinctly American style.
MacArthur, Douglas (1880–1964) The son of Medal of Honor winner General Arthur MacArthur, Douglas MacArthur was a star cadet at West Point and served valiantly in World War I. At the outbreak of World War II, he was in command of the Philippines and fought a gallant but doomed defense against the Japanese invasion until he was ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to evacuate to Australia. He then assumed overall command of the Southwest Pacific Theater and was a prime architect of the U.S. victory over Japan. He was appointed to head the U.S. occupation government of Japan after the war and proved to be an enlightened administrator who was tremendously popular with the Japanese and who brought genuine democracy into Japanese government—for the first time in that nation’s history. In 1950, MacArthur took command of U.S.-led United Nations forces at the outbreak of the Korean War. The conflict occasioned both his greatest military exploit—the daring and brilliant Inchon Landing (which temporarily turned the tide of the war)—and his dismissal by President Harry S. Truman for insubordination when he refused to fight the “limited” war national policy dictated. MacArthur’s best modern biographer, William Manchester, aptly dubbed him the “American Caesar.”
Macdonald, Dwight (1906–1982) During the 1940s, Macdonald made his debut as a man of letters by founding the magazine Politics, which published work by the most important literary, philosophical, and political thinkers of the day. He earned widespread notoriety as an extraordinarily perceptive film critic and staff writer