As centuries go, this has been one of the most amazing: inspiring, at times horrifying, always fascinating. Sure, the 15th was pretty wild, with the Renaissance and Spanish Inquisition in full flower, Gutenberg building his printing press, Copernicus beginning to contemplate the solar system and Columbus spreading the culture of Europe to the Americas. And of course there was the 1st century, which if only for the life and death of Jesus may have had the most impact of any. Socrates and Plato made the 5th century B.C. also rather remarkable. But we who live in the 20th can probably get away with the claim that ours has been one of the top four or five of recorded history. Let’s take stock for a moment. To name just a few random things we did in a hundred years: we split the atom, invented jazz and rock, launched airplanes and landed on the moon, concocted a general theory of relativity, devised the transistor and figured out how to etch millions of them on tiny microchips, discovered penicillin and the structure of DNA, fought down fascism and communism, bombed Guernica and painted the bombing of Guernica, developed cinema and television, built highways and wired the world. Not to mention the peripherals these produced, such as sitcoms and cable channels, “800” numbers and Websites, shopping malls and leisure time, existentialism and modernism, Oprah and Imus. Initials spread like graffiti: NATO, IBM, ABM, UN, WPA, NBA, NFL, CIA, CNN, PLO, IPO, IRA, IMF, TGIF. And against all odds, we avoided blowing ourselves up. All this produced some memorable players. Look around. There’s Lenin arriving at the Finland Station and Gandhi marching to the sea to make salt. Winston Churchill with his cigar, Louis Armstrong with his horn, Charlie Chaplin with his cane. Rosa Parks staying seated on her bus and a kid standing in front of a tank near Tiananmen Square. Einstein is in his study, and the Beatles are on The Ed Sullivan Show. In this special issue, the first of five in which we’ll pick and profile the 100 most influential players of this century, we start with the category of leaders, politicians and revolutionaries. Future issues will look at artists and entertainers, business titans, scientists and thinkers, then heroes and inspirations. By the end of 1999 we plan to sum it all up with, among other things, a choice of the Person of the Century. It’s not a simple task, but it helps to start by looking at what the great themes of this century have been. Rarely does a century dawn so clearly and cleanly. In 1900 Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, ending the Victorian era. Her Majesty, as if on cue, died the following January, after a 63-year reign. Her empire included one-quarter of the earth’s population, but the Boer War in South Africa was signaling the end of the colonial era. In China, the Boxer Rebellion heralded the awakening of a new giant. In America, cars were replacing horses, 42% of workers were in farming .
