The Ten Biggest Developments in Television

We’re coming up on 75 years of television history, so it’s a nice time to look back and see what the big breakthroughs were. After somewhat careful study, I think it’s safe to say these ten developments had the greatest seismic impact.

This is, of course, an American perspective, with some global influence. The history of television in, say, India, I’m sure would be very different. Without further ado, then, here’s my list:

 

The Sitcom

Exemplar: I Love Lucy

In its first season, I Love Lucy got just over 50% of American households tuning in to watch. At its peak, it’s ratings would top out at just shy of 70% - it was the dominant show for four years running in the mid-1950s.

Television initially was like vaudeville – lots of variety shows and anthology programs. Light entertainment, and some dramatic serials like The Lone Ranger and Martin Kane, Private Eye rounded it out. Sitcoms were new – the radio precursors, like Fibber McGee & Molly, were now made visual. Lucille Ball was a brilliant physical comedian, showcasing the potential of this new format, and soon other sitcoms joined in: The Honeymooners, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and the oeuvre of Norman Lear, which dominated ratings into the 1980s.

 

Early Experimental Shows

Exemplar: Monty Python’s Flying Circus

There were, in the first two decades of popular television (1950-1970) some really bizarre, envelope-pushing programs. Arguably the first to take advantage of the new medium was Ernie Kovacs, who in the mid-50s created spoof ads and weird characters. The Twilight Zone and The Prisoner were early sci-fi pioneers full of twists and psychological nuance, in an era when the most popular dramas were still predictable ‘good guy wins’ westerns like Gunsmoke and Bonanza.

By 1969, when Monty Python first aired in the UK, there were seemingly no more rules – you could be as weird and wild as you wanted to be, and someone would be watching. Surreal humor mixed with pantomime-style drag, interspersed with songs and cut-out animation… It became a cult classic.

 

Sports

Exemplar: The Superbowl

Since 1967, the Superbowl has almost always been the most-watched program of the year, every year. Sports broadcasting goes back to the dawn of TV: The first televised game in America was in 1939 (watched by around 400 people) between two college basketball teams. Live sports broadcasting started in 1951. In tens of millions of American households, Monday and Sunday nights became rededicated to watching football. It helped make the sport more popular than America’s favorite past-time, baseball.

In 1960 CBS first broadcast the Olympics in American homes, and, recently, the World Cup has finally gained traction in the U.S. Sports TV now dominates the culture: from dedicated channels like ESPN, to gaming (the Madden series), to the multi-million dollar Superbowl ads and halftime shows that enter into pop vernacular.

 

Educational Television

Exemplar: Sesame Street

Howdy Doody launched in 1947 – one of the earliest popular children’s television shows. It had puppets, a clown, and lots of zany humor. Children’s television leaned heavily on the ‘entertainment’ end of the ‘entertainment-art’ spectrum in those early years. In the late 1960s, that changed.

In 1968 Mr. Rogers Neighborhood talked to children as equals, and focused on important lessons about managing emotions. There were still puppets: just used to educate. A year later, Sesame Street, with Jim Henson’s Muppets, did much the same – using research and data to create appropriate lessons and programing. They were models that continued right up to the present, with shows like Blue’s Clues and Bluey following in their tradition.

 

The Miniseries

Exemplar: Roots

When Roots aired in 1977 in America, it caused a sensation. The miniseries became the new standard for high-quality television – the peak of ‘art’ on the ‘entertainment-art’ spectrum. The BBC dominated the field for the next few years, with miniseries like I, Claudius, Brideshead Revisited, and The Singing Detective.

But the phenomenon wasn’t limited to the English-speaking world. In the 1980s Fassbinder produced Berlin Alexanderplatz in Germany, and Poland’s Kieslowski released Decalogue. 21^st Century miniseries are considered some of the best-rated shows of all-time, such as Band of Brothers and Chernobyl. The maturity and depth of these programs set expectations for the prestige dramas in the future.

 

Cable

Exemplar: MTV

The old dominance of the big three – NBC, ABC, and CBS – was being chipped away. HBO launched, nationally, in 1975. The Disney Channel and AMC in 1983 and 1984, respectively. Premium content channels were diversifying the landscape – and chipping away, too, at a more shared cultural identity. Over the course of the 1980s, most people began paying for cable – 60% of American households by 1992.

Prohibition : American History :: Music Television : Television History. It was so important while it lasted, but is now a relic of an earlier era. That said, from 1981 into the mid-1990s, MTV and VH1 were something to watch. Musicians embraced film in a whole new way, often with experimental and artistic vision. Music videos became part of pop culture, and some became iconic, like Michael Jackson’s Thriller, or Britney Spears’ …Baby One More Time.

 

Animation

Exemplar: The Simpsons

Let’s face it: early cartoons on television were lousy. From Hannah Barbera right up through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the world of animation on television had few glimmers of potential (Rocky and Bullwinkle is a noteworthy stand-out). But in the late 80s and early 90s that all changed. In 1989 The Simpsons premiered, launching the longest-running sitcom, and a cultural tidal wave. In 1992 Batman: The Animated Series premiered, bringing far more artistry and maturity to children’s cartoons.

Then it was off to the races – an explosion of pushing boundaries and innovation, from Beavis and Butt-Head to Animaniacs. Japan also had its own renaissance in the decade, producing classics like Cowboy Bebop and Evangelion – which eventually entered America’s popular culture. This was the decade when cartoons became shows for adults, too – laying the foundation for series like BoJack Horseman and Rick and Morty in the decades to come.

 

Story Arcs and Prestige Drama

Exemplar: The Sopranos

Prior to the 1990s, story arcs were the domain of soap operas – shows like Dallas. You could, meanwhile, tune into to any episode of Laverne and Shirley or Cheers and be fine. But that began to change, as story arcs infiltrated sitcoms – perhaps most notably with Friends.

This tolerance for investing more time into story also took off in the new field of prestige dramas. You couldn’t just drop in on an episode of Twin Peaks, The X-Files, or The Sopranos. Increasingly adult and sophisticated themes, combined with superlative acting, meant top-shelf dramas were pulling away from the rest of the pack. 1999 is the Big Bang for a new golden age in television – with higher expectations, production values, and stories.

 

Reality TV

Exemplar: Survivor

Gameshows had long been popular and part of television history: The $64,000 Question was the most watched program in 1956. But gameshows were quickly relegated to daytime entertainment. Decades later, in 1992, The Real World turned the cameras on a bunch of people living together. Take those two ideas – regular people constantly on camera, and pitting them against one another as contestants in a game show – then set it in an exciting locale, and you get Survivor.

Seven of the ten years of the 2000s were dominated by reality TV in ratings – from standard gameshows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to the new talent shows like American Idol. The cameras also captured the “unscripted” fly-on-the-wall shows like Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Survivor launched a whole genre of competition programs, like The Amazing Race. We even tuned in to watch people date competitively on programs like The Bachelor.

 

Streaming

Exemplar: Stranger Things

In 2007, Netflix and Hulu launched their streaming services. Soon, premium cable and the old networks got onboard: HBO, Disney, Paramount+. Newcomers also arrived, like Apple TV and Amazon Prime. In 2015, a little over half of households had streaming – by 2023, it’s now over 80%.

Two main things arose from this development. First, the long-simmering trend of critically-acclaimed prestige content went into overdrive – most would say a new golden age in TV had arrived. The number of shows produced in a single year became overwhelming. Over the course of the 1980s, there were roughly 200 sitcoms produced in America. In 2009, alone, there were 210 scripted shows. By 2022 there were 599. This was perhaps the last nail in the coffin of TV as shared cultural resource, began in the days of I Love Lucy. Second, we became a nation of binge-watchers. 1.8 billion hours, representing over 140 million households worldwide, were spent watching Stranger Things – and that’s just for season four. More time is spent on TV than ever before.

 

Updated: 50 Characters Who've Stuck With Me

Way, waaaaaaaaaay, back in 2011 I came up with a list of 50 Characters who've stuck with me. It's a personal list - not, for example, the "50 Greatest Characters of All Time". Looking it over I realized I'd read quite a few of my favorite books since then, and that the list was no longer representative.

So I've gone ahead and updated it. One difference from the old list is that I include plays in this one - not just novels. Another difference is I shied away from any blatant historical characters (Claudius from I, Claudius, for example). One similarity is that I also stayed far away from any sacred texts (no Rama, for example). Without further ado - with lots of potential spoilers ahead - here are my top 50:

50. Steinbeck – Lennie Small, Of Mice and Men

“Lennie covered his face with huge paws and bleated with terror.”

The man with the child's mind, Lennie is a deeply sympathetic and tragic character. Steinbeck's laborers are all portrayed with pathos, but Lennie is not being overwhelmed by historical forces – his personal struggles are of his own actions and grasping to do the right thing.

 

49. Blume – Margaret, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret

“Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret. I’m going to temple today—with Grandma. It’s a holiday. I guess you know that. Well, my father thinks it’s a mistake and my mother thinks the whole idea is crazy, but I’m going anyway. I’m sure this will help me decide what to be. I’ve never been inside a temple or a church. I’ll look for you God.”

It’s not quite real – it’s close – but it was still a far cry better than what adolescent or YA literature had produced up to that point in time. Because of her everyday foibles Margaret is very relatable, and because of her spiritual queries, she is slightly elevated above the many run-of-the-mill heroines who succeeded her.

 

48. Saramago – The Doctor’s Wife, Blindness

“We are so afraid of the idea of having to die, said the doctor's wife, that we always try to find excuses, for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn”

The protagonist of Saramago’s classic white-knuckle tale, the doctor’s wife, navigates the world in which everyone else has lost their sight – except her. How she at times tries to blend in, and at other times has to stand out, makes for a potent allegory of the nature of humanity. But she is real enough so that, by the end, we feel a connection to her as more than a looking-glass.

 

47. Voltaire – Dr. Pangloss, Candide

“Pangloss sometimes said to Candide: ‘There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts.’”

Pangloss is the dopey, ever-optimistic 'metaphysico-theologico-cosmologist'. The classic example of a muddleheaded academic, Pangloss continually preaches that this 'is the best of all possible worlds' to cheer Candide, despite the earthquakes, executions and dismemberments affecting our poor hero.

46. Nottage – Mama Nadi, Ruined

“We’d argue – fight. You’d get jealous…. We know this story. It’s tiresome.”

It’s no accident that Nottage has won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama multiple times – she is one of America’s best living playwrights, and her characters are fully-fleshed, and real. The ‘detached barkeep’ is given new life in Mama Nandi in this complexly feminist, war-torn, Congolese love story.

 

45. McEwan – Briony, Atonement

“There did not have to be a moral. She need only show separate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding, above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”

Children make excellent villains, since their minds, actions, and intentions can be so foreign and disruptive to our world. Briony is possibly the best example of this in literature, as she is just old enough to lash out maliciously, but just naïve enough to not fully comprehend the brutality of her actions until it is far, far too late.

 

44. Wright – Bigger Thomas, Native Son

“‘I didn’t want to kill!’ Bigger shouted. ‘But what I killed for, I am! It must’ve been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder….What I killed for must’ve been good!’”

One of America’s great tragic characters, Bigger Thomas’ crime is the dual-identity identified by authors like WEB DuBois: the two-ness of being both an American and black. In the era he inhabits, that identity can only spell disaster, and as he struggles against the obvious injustice we follow his tortured path of reasoning and self-justification.

 

43. Didion – Maria, Play It As It Lays

“By the end of the week she was thinking constantly about where her body stopped and the air began about the exact point in space and time that was the difference between Maria and other.”

The incandescent glare of the L.A.-Vegas world that Maria inhabits, makes for a nerve-rattling portrayal of a woman’s torn inner life. As she glides along the razor’s edge, we feel the pulling conflict between her numbness and hyper-awareness. It’s a breathtaking and page-turning portrait.

 

42. Lindgren – Pippi Longstocking, Pippi Longstocking

“‘What does the sign say?’ ask Pippi. She couldn’t read very well because she didn’t want to go to school as other children did.

‘It says, “Do you suffer from freckles?”’ said Annika.

‘Does it indeed?’ said Pippi thoughtfully. ‘Well, a civil question deserves a civil answer. Let’s go in.’

She opened the door and entered the shop, closely followed by Tommy and Annika. An elderly lady stood back of the counter. Pippi went right up to her. ‘No!’ she said decidedly.”

Decades before other amusing, strong-willed, peculiar children (such as Calvin or Lilo) there was Pippi. An earthquake in children’s literature, she transformed expectations of kids acting like precious angels – or miniature adults – and showed them as the little weirdos they really are.

 

41. Powell – Widmerpool, A Dance to the Music of Time

“He moistened his lips, though scarcely perceptibly. I thought his mixture of secretiveness and curiosity quite intolerable.”

The boorish man who no one can stand, yet who somehow keeps rising in the world – that is Widmerpool. Throughout Powell’s epic saga it is Widmerpool who provides a sort of awful ballast. Nick, the narrator/cypher, continuously runs into the man as their fates crisscross and become somewhat entangled. We all have met Widmerpools in our lives. Hopefully some of us have managed to shake them.

 

40. Grass – Oskar, The Tin Drum

“Besides, my mama’s death had come as no great surprise to me. To Oskar, who accompanied her on Thursdays into the Altstadt and to the Church of the Sacred Heart on Saturdays, it seemed as if she’d been seeking a chance for years to dissolve her triangular relationship.”

Since The Tin Drum is the great kaleidoscopic vision of Germany directly before, during the Nazi era, and shortly after, it requires one of the most unconventional characters in fiction to portray the topsy-turvy world: Oskar. Deciding at three he didn’t want to grow, and using his voice to shatter glass, he became a template for other great 20^th century narrators (Midnight’s Children comes to mind) while remaining wholly original.

39. Borges – Ireneo Funes, Funes the Memorious

“He remembered the shapes of the clouds in the south at dawn on the 30th of April of 1882, and he could compare them in his recollection with the marbled grain in the design of a leather-bound book which he had seen only once, and with the lines in the spray which an oar raised in the Rio Negro on the eve of the battle of the Quebracho.”

Borges wasn't really known for his characters, but Funes proves a fascinating exception. He remembers everything he's ever experienced, with each moment of his life a distinct mental image from the last. How he copes with this burdensome gift presents an intriguing character portrait.

38. Carroll – The Cheshire Cat, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

“‘But I don't want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: ‘we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.’”

Alice is, for my money, the best Victorian character. But of all the peculiar people and creatures she runs into in Wonderland and the Looking-Glass World few resonate, or are as beloved, as the Cheshire Cat. I think if cats could talk they'd converse with us much in the same way – uttering sparse, decisive pronouncements, before disappearing.

37. Gaiman – Morpheus, Sandman

“‘Did I hear you say that you had no intention of ever dying?’

‘Um. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. It's a mug's game. I won't have any part of it.’

‘Then you must tell me what it's like. Let us meet here again, Robert Gadling. In this tavern of the White Horse. In a hundred years.’”

Morpheus – the titular Sandman of Gaiman’s epic graphic novel – has his ups and downs, quirks, and tenderness. His character is, fittingly, the most-malleable: unlike the simple two-dimensionality of many of his Endless siblings. This makes a tour of the world through his eyes particularly rich and varied.

36. Gogol – The Nose, The Nose

“‘Good sir,’ Kovalev went on with a heightened sense of dignity, ‘the one who is at a loss to understand the other is I. But at least the immediate point should be plain, unless you are determined to have it otherwise. Merely — you are my own nose.’
The Nose regarded the Major, and contracted its brows a little.”

The Nose is Gogol's most peculiar story – a man loses his nose and finds it a bread roll, followed by its putting on a suit and traipsing around St. Petersburg. The Nose acts in a manner befitting a Russian petty official, as perhaps our noses would if they had coats and boots of their own.

35. Kafka – The Officer, The Penal Colony

“‘It’s a remarkable apparatus,’ said the Officer to the Explorer and gazed with a certain look of admiration at the device, with which he was, of course, thoroughly familiar.”

As maybe the most disturbing portrayal of a cog in the system the Officer is totally desensitized to his monstrous apparatus – a device used on the condemned that, in the Officer's deluded mind, leads not only to a punishment, but a sort of grisly revelation.

 

34. Stoker – Count Dracula, Dracula

“You think to baffle me, you with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher's. You shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest, but I have more. My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side. Your girls that you all love are mine already. And through them you and others shall yet be mine, my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed. Bah!”

Dracula is a fairly chilling character. He is intelligent, but in a cunning, destructive, way. His immense powers are diverse, but he understands his weaknesses: so much so that he applies himself fully to ensuring his plans will not fail. The reader anxiously reads on to see if his cares pay off.

 

33. Wagner – Trudy, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

“I show'em this can of Campbell's tomato soup.
I say,
‘This is soup.’
Then I show'em a picture of Andy Warhol's painting
of a can of Campbell's tomato soup. I say,
‘This is art.’

‘This is soup.’

‘And this is art.’

Then I shuffle the two behind my back.

Now what is this?

No.
this is soup and this is art!”

As Trudy – the bag-lady with the alien chums – stands on the corner of Walk Don’t Walk, she regales us with tales of explaining humanity’s peculiar habits to her interstellar friends. Full of wit and wisdom, the play offers many potent observations on modern life, and Trudy, the classic wise fool, comes across as the most real character of the lot.

 

32. Miller – Batman, The Dark Knight Returns

“This should be agony. I should be a mass of aching muscle--broken, spent, unable to move. And, were I an older man, I surely would... But I'm a man of thirty--of twenty again.”

Consistently considered the most complex portrait of the caped crusader, Miller's Batman is now fifty-five, retired and struggling to cope with his former identity. His choice to put the suit back on unleashes a series of events that culminate in one of the most rewarding fights in pop culture history. Perhaps more critically it also allows for a compelling look at how we cope with who we once were.

 

31. Lowry – The Giver, The Giver

“Simply stated, although it's not really simple at all, my job is to transmit to you all the memories I have within me. Memories of the past.”

I must have been one of the first middle school classes to read The Giver and, like most since, was struck between the eyes. The last remnant of a civilization lost, he is profoundly isolated, yet this is not his principle characteristic. Rather, his sage warmth resonates as a guide into the past.

 

30. Le Guin – The Child, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

“It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible.”

The Child in Le Guin's short piece of horror will haunt you. The story could simply have been an ethical allegory, but so much attention and detail goes into developing The Child as a believable, real, character, that you, too, are convinced that you'd walk away from Omelas.

 

29. Dickens – Ebeneezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol

“‘You will be haunted,’ resumed the Ghost, ‘by Three Spirits.’

Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done.

‘Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?’ he demanded, in a faltering voice.

‘It is.’

‘I—I think I’d rather not,’ said Scrooge.”

Scrooge approaches his reform like many of us, in the classic Augustinian tradition – “make me a saint, but not yet.” Using his wit as a shield he tries to parry the extraordinary sights and happenings throughout the classic, but in the end is overwhelmed with sincerity.

28. Rowling – Severus Snape, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

“…you have your mother’s eyes.”

Snape’s tragic arc (if we’re using more modern, derisive, lingo, his simping) is so totally believable. Most of us have met a figure like him in our lives – or at some point felt we could never love another, no matter what. The lifelong pining that motivates his tragedy – perhaps the most common encountered in real life – is not as grandiose as Medea’s, or Hippolytus’, or Lancelot’s. Rowling pulls off her most interesting character in the process.

27. Tolkien – Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings

“You cannot pass! I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. The dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udun! Go back to the shadow. You shall not pass!”

Before Gandalf the sorcerer was Merlin. Arguably, Gandalf is now seen as the quintessential wizard. His age, his knowledge, and his abilities keep us captivated throughout. Tolkien clearly depicts him as the cornerstone for the fellowship, the most respected and appreciated of all the epic's characters.

26. Turgenev – Bazarov, Fathers and Sons

“Madame Odintsov looked at Bazarov. His pale face was twitching with a bitter smile. 'This man did love me!' she thought, and she felt pity for him, and held out her hand to him with sympathy.
But he too understood her. ‘No!’ he said, stepping back a pace. ‘I'm a poor man, but I've never taken charity so far. Good-bye, and good luck to you.’

‘I am certain we are not seeing each other for the last time,’ Anna Sergyevna declared with an unconscious gesture.

‘Anything may happen!’ answered Bazarov, and he bowed and went away.”

Bazarov – the haughty intellectual torn between the nihilism of the age and his deep commitments to humanity. He is, like many on this list, a tragic figure: destined for great things with his resolutions but brought down haphazardly, inconspicuously almost, having only just begun his story. Written off as an afterthought of accident he had only just begun to make peace with his conflicts.

25. Shelly – The Monster, Frankenstein

“I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy.”

Compare the above recollections, when the Monster engages his creator with the story of his flight and persecution, to that of Boris Karloff's portrayal, later inspiration for Lurch. Abandoned by his creator his struggles have us thinking his nobility is greater than that of Frankenstein's selfish obsessions and loathing for the life he has made.

 

24. Conrad – Kurtz, Heart of Darkness

“‘Oh, but I will wring your heart yet!’ he cried at the invisible wilderness.”

Not Kurtz's most famous line, but emblematic of his peculiar relation to the wilderness. Achebe has rightly condemned Conrad's work for its blatantly racist depictions of Africans; but the psychological aspect of Kurtz and the protagonist of Heart of Darkness is the reason for its classic status. Kurtz doesn't so much stick with, as haunt us.

 

23. Waugh – Sebastian Flyte, Brideshead Revisited

“I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him. That was unavoidable for, from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities of behavior, which seemed to know no bounds... I was struck less by his looks than by the fact that he was carrying a large teddy-bear.”

It’s hard to not love Sebastian, and his love affair with Charles set in those carefree interwar days at Oxford and Brideshead, is one of literature’s most beautiful. It couldn’t resonate so deeply, though, if Sebastian wasn’t such a perfect mix of innocence and, to use his term, “sin”. As that golden world disappears, so too the ability for their romance, and everything reverts to the ordinary, the tragic.

 

22. Christie – Hercule Poirot, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“He talked a lot about the little gray cells of the brain, and of their functions. His own, he says, are of the first quality.”

Poirot is one of the very few fictional characters to get an obituary in the New York Times. He began as a detective of the Holmes-bent: he eventually alleviated the need for evidence almost altogether.  While he became more intuitive, though, we also learned more about him as a person – his successes and failures, loves and losses.

 

21. Atwood – Offred, The Handmaid’s Tale

“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.”

Offred guides us through the inner struggles of the finest dystopia since Fahrenheit 451, in which women are relegated to second-class citizens in a far-right Christian nationalist America. Her journey, as she claws at the scraps of her humanity that’s being denied to her, is harrowing and powerful – rightfully becoming an icon in the early 21^st century.

 

20. Orwell – Boxer, Animal Farm

“I do not understand it. I would not have believed that such things could happen on our farm. It must be due to some fault in ourselves. The solution, as I see it, is to work harder. From now onwards I shall get up a full hour earlier in the mornings.”

Boxer may well be the most tragic character on this list. The allegory of Soviet revolution sees the pigs controlling the other animals, but Boxer, the worker, has blind faith in their leaders. The noble plow-horse, whose unfailing solution to problems is to condemn himself with his slogan “I will work harder!” is the inspiration to the other animals on the farm – with a grim reward. I probably think about him at least once a week.

 

19. Ellis – Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan

“Did you ever want to set someone's head on fire, just to see what it looked like? Did you ever stand in the street and think to yourself, I could make that nun go blind just by giving her a kiss? Did you ever lay out plans for stitching babies and stray cats into a Perfect New Human? Did you ever stand naked surrounded by people who want your gleaming sperm, squirting frankincense, soma and testosterone from every pore? If so, then you're the bastard who stole my drugs Friday night. And I'll find you. Oh, yes.”

Jerusalem is a punk vision of Hunter S. Thompson in a world where he got his way – all the libertarian schemes have come true in the sci-fi America of tomorrow, so that all sorts of crimes, drugs, and what-have-you is legal. And, like Thompson, Jerusalem is committed to truth via journalism, and getting people to pay attention to the important issues while their being distracted by all the shiny.

 

18. Spark – Jean Brodie, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“I'm not saying anything against the Modern side. Modern and Classical, they are equal, and each provides for a function in life. You must make your free choice. Not everyone is capable of a Classical education. You must make your choice quite freely.”

Brodie is a wonderful villain, because she comes on so like a friend. She uses her power to twist and warp the lives of the girls who look up to her, and ends up endangering them in the process. Abusing her influence as a teacher, she crosses the professional guardrails that protect her students: A cautionary tale for us all.

 

17. Melville – Captain Ahab, Moby Dick

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!”

He’s a bit over the top, that Ahab. I’d just be like, “WHALE! WHALE! KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT!” But that’s why I’m not a character of classic literature. Melville made some very memorable characters – Bartleby and the rest – but Ahab, who at worst is a living personification of vengeance, is not larger than life. He is kept – just – within the bounds of reality.

16. Gilman – The Narrator, The Yellow Wallpaper

“Of course I never mention it to them any more—I am too wise,—but I keep watch of it all the same.

There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.”

Gilman’s story is apparently rather contentious. It was my literary introduction to feminism, and the narrator, forced to stay bed-ridden, causing her mental deterioration, made me shiver. The recognition that Victorian and Edwardian women often were amongst the most repressed in modern times comes through with a stark shudder from our narrator’s tale.

15. Solzhenitsyn – Ivan Denisovich, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“Shukhov licked his spoon clean and returned it to his boot, then put on his cap and made for sick bay.”

The lean prose of this classic was so well-crafted so as to merit a Nobel Prize, rarely given for a single outstanding work. Denisovich – Shukhov to the narrator – is a gulag prisoner whose life in the camps is one of sweat tempered by cold, hard beds and rules, and spoons kept in one’s boot. That he manages to eke out a personality in the midst of describing the wretched conditions of prison life instead of a generic scene of suffering endows Denisovich with its classic quality.

14. Twain – Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

‘All right, then, I'll GO to hell’--and tore it up.”

It would be easy to suggest, from this list, that I prefer a certain type of character: the person who must confront themselves in order to make an important choice. I would argue that most all great literature deals with this theme, whether it is deciding who to marry, how to kill, whether to be lawful, and so forth. In this sense, Huck's dilemma, that of his escape with the slave Jim, will probably no longer be encountered – it is not, perhaps, as practical a guide as some other entries. But Huck's process in his decision is one of the best in fiction, and identifiable.

13. Eliot – Dorothea, Middlemarch

“‘They are lovely,’ said Dorothea, slipping the ring and bracelet on her finely turned finger and wrist, and holding them towards the window on a level with her eyes. All the while her thought was trying to justify her delight in the colors by merging them in her mystic religious joy.”

Woolf said that Middlemarch was “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.” Dorothea is not a simple sketch – she does not exist as just a torn lover or a trying to reconcile her joys in life with her religious reveries. Eliot was better than that and portrays Dorothea as a very complex character who does not have all of her problems solved. Nor does Eliot leave the resolutions unresolved for shock value. Instead they are left, for that is how life is.

 

12. Kertesz – Narrator, Kaddish for a Child Not Born

“‘No’ — I could never be another person’s father, fate, god,
‘No’ — it should never happen to another child, what happened to me; my childhood.”

The breathless agita of the nameless narrator is caused when asked a simple question (we eventually discern): Do you ever want to have children? The entire work is the at times rational and at times frenzied thoughts that go through his mind as his justification for those two letters: “No” – including everything from the commonplace conundrum of struggles in love to the horror of his own childhood experience in Auschwitz.

 

11. Dostoevsky – The Grand Inquisitor, The Brothers Karamazov

“But we will gather the sheep once more and subject them to our will for ever. We will prove to them their own weakness and make them humble again, whilst with Thee they have learnt but pride, for Thou hast made more of them than they ever were worth. We will give them that quiet, humble happiness, which alone benefits such weak, foolish creatures as they are, and having once had proved to them their weakness, they will become timid and obedient, and gather around us as chickens around their hen. They will wonder at and feel a superstitious admiration for us, and feel proud to be led by men so powerful and wise that a handful of them can subject a flock a thousand millions strong. Gradually men will begin to fear us. They will nervously dread our slightest anger, their intellects will weaken, their eyes become as easily accessible to tears as those of children and women; but we will teach them an easy transition from grief and tears to laughter, childish joy and mirthful song.”

The famed story-within-a-story from The Brothers Karamazov tells of Jesus returning to earth and getting caught in the Inquisition’s snare. The Grand Inquisitor recognizes the man as the true Christ, and imprisons him accordingly – as a danger to his power and the beliefs he is trying to foster. The crescendo of his monologue can leave one shaken.

 

10. Soyinka – Olunde, Death and the King’s Horseman

“JANE: Well, it is a little hot I must confess, but it’s all in a good cause.

OLUNDE: What cause Mrs. Pilkings?

JANE: All this. The ball. And His Highness being here in person and all that.

OLUNDE (mildly): And that is the good cause for which you desecrate an ancestral mask?

JANE: Oh, so you are shocked after all. How disappointing.

OLUNDE: No I am not shocked Mrs. Pilkings. You forget that I have now spent four years among your people. I have discovered you have no respect for what you do not understand.”

Of the great works of post-colonialism, Nigerian Nobel laureate Soyinka’s masterful handling of the complexities is, to my mind, the best. Olunde, like his Sudanese literary predecessor, Mustafa, from Season of Migration to the North, travels to England and comes back again. Unlike Mustafa’s sense of hopelessness and, inevitably, indifference leading to his demise, Olunde returns and still cares – more deeply than he often lets on – about his heritage and culture. That passion will tragically conflict with the colonial world.

9. Woolf – Clarissa Dalloway, Mrs. Dalloway

“She was not old yet. She had just broken into her fifty-second year. Months and months of it were still untouched. June, July, August! Each still remained almost whole, and, as if to catch the falling drop, Clarissa (crossing to the dressing-table) plunged into the very heart of the moment, transfixed it, there--the moment of this June morning on which was the pressure of all the other mornings, seeing the glass, the dressing-table, and all the bottles afresh, collecting the whole of her at one point (as she looked into the glass), seeing the delicate pink face of the woman who was that very night to give a party; of Clarissa Dalloway; of herself.”

Woolf, who praised Eliot’s efforts in creating English literature for adults, then surpassed her. Mrs. Dalloway’s inner monologue threading together the different character’s accidental meetings slowly reveals a woman who is identifiable, taken from reality rather than created for a message. It allows us to enter a sequencing of thoughts which does not seemed forced.

 

8. Austen – Fitzwilliam Darcy, Pride and Prejudice

“‘Come, Darcy,’ said he, ‘I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance.’

‘I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and there is not another woman in the room whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with.’”

Darcy is hard, maybe impossible, to live up to, many guys would contend. But, really, they forget that it was his faults, his pride predominately, which are examined for the first half of the book. What makes him stick is that he can be full of contradictions and still do the right thing – and that's not such a hard template to live up to.

 

7. Shakespeare – Hamlet, Hamlet

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

The enigmatic aspects of Hamlet’s character have fascinated theatergoers and readers for four centuries. Is he mad, or wise? Is he in love, or just messing about? This inability to get a grip on his motivations and inner world – despite all the plays “words, words, words” – provides a keen insight into lived experience of the human condition. A great existential precursor, Hamlet’s struggles resonate as our own.

 

6. Doyle – Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

“‘The train of reasoning ran, “Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.” The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished.’”

Holmes specifically sneers at Edgar Allan Poe’s rational sleuth Auguste Dupin. Holmes initially has much in common with Dupin, though, when he puts his mental faculties to use to solve mysteries of the criminal sort. But Dupin is more a caricature, a scribble of sorts. Holmes over the years got richer and more interesting. His failings were many, and from the start. But his status as one of the world’s most beloved characters is not for nothing.

 

5. Moore – Ozymandias, Watchmen

“I did it thirty-five minutes ago.”

Ozymandias sees his fellow men through a horrifying lens of self-improvement and raw utilitarianism. His actions, or interpretations, of how to deal with the world is what makes him one of the more chilling villains ever created. The Comedian, for a point of contrast, remains troubled by his morals – whereas Ozymandias tries to solve them.

 

4. Cervantes – Don Quixote, Don Quixote

“At this point they came in sight of thirty forty windmills that there are on plain, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire, ‘Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth.’

‘What giants?’ said Sancho Panza.”

When you get an adjective created for a character’s unique combination of traits, it’s not then surprising that they’re memorable. We can’t help but feel an affinity towards the mad knight-errant, and his good-hearted nobility. From his book-induced delusions to his mirth-provoking chivalry, Don Quixote still remains one of the best creations in literature.

 

3. Lagerkvist – Barabbas, Barabbas

“Then the man had been led out to be crucified - and he himself had been unshackled and told he was free. It was none of his doing. It was their business. They were quite at liberty to choose whomever they liked, and it just turned out that way. They had both been sentenced to death, but one of them was to be released. He was amazed himself at their choice.”

Few English-speaking readers may be familiar with the Nobel Prize-winning Lagerkvist, but this portrayal is a cornerstone for his accolades. Barabbas has to grapple with his unique position for the rest of his life, and goes about doing so while seeing the emerging Christian sect develop and react to him (especially when he meets one of the disciples). His is a singular portrait that we can still identify with.

2. Tolstoy – Ivan Ilyich, The Death of Ivan Ilyich

“The pain did not grow less, but Ivan Ilyich made efforts to force himself to think that he was better. And he could do this so long as nothing agitated him. But as soon as he had any unpleasantness with his wife, any lack of success in his official work, or held bad cards at bridge, he was at once acutely sensible of his disease.”

Ilyich is (surprise!) another existential character, only his dilemma is one we all face: dying and death. While it begins as chastisement for a life poorly spent, the drawn-out process of Ilyich's demise resonates. Tolstoy's characters sometimes are a little two-dimensional (The Cossacks, many in War and Peace, and his short stories). But between moralizing in Family Happiness and musing in “Master and Man” he portrayed it perfectly.

1. Joyce – Stephen Daedalus, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“He turned the handle and opened the door and fumbled for the handle of the green baize door inside. He found it and pushed it open and went in.

He saw the rector sitting at a desk writing. There was a skull on the desk and a strange solemn smell in the room like the old leather of chairs.

His heart was beating fast on account of the solemn place he was in and the silence of the room: and he looked at the skull and at the rector's kind-looking face.

—Well, my little man, said the rector, what is it?

Stephen swallowed down the thing in his throat and said:

—I broke my glasses, sir.”

Joyce’s young Daedalus experienced childhood as I felt it. The confusion, the fear, the wonder and nervous shy quality – even in his circumstantial details, from the blonde hair to the all-boy’s school to the boarding school – I felt instant kinship. I would try and deal with the subject objectively, but Daedalus just got to me.

Kennedy Center Honors 2024

The Kennedy Center Honors are for lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts. There are, however, some glaring omissions. Back in 2020 I made a list of overlooked artists who deserved to win, but shockingly hadn't. This past December one of my original nine, Renee Fleming, got her award. Here is my updated list, then, with two new additions, bringing the total to ten:

Francis Ford Coppola, 84.

1. Francis Ford Coppola. Director of The Godfather, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. Granted, Coppola hasn’t made the same quality of films since the 1970s, but he’s still a landmark film director.

Prior Kennedy Center Honorees: Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg.

Alternate: Coen Brothers.

Richards (80), Jagger (80), and Wood (76).

2. The Rolling Stones. Essential rock band who recorded Exile on Main Street, Let It Bleed, and Sticky Fingers. Famous songs include “Satisfaction,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Miss You”.

Prior Kennedy Center Honorees: The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles.

Alternate: Public Enemy.

Neil Young, 78.

3. Neil Young. Singer-songwriter known for his work with Crosby, Stills, and Nash and Crazy Horse. Famous songs include “Heart of Gold,” “Like a Hurricane,” “Rockin’ in the Free World”.

Prior Kennedy Center Honorees: Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen.

Alternate: Van Morrison.

Alan Menken, 74.

4. Alan Menken. Composer of film scores including Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas. EGOT-winner who provided the music for the Disney Renaissance and Broadway shows.

Prior Kennedy Center Honorees: John Williams, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Stephen Sondheim.

Alternate: Hans Zimmer.

Willie Colon, 73.

5. Willie Colon. Salsa pioneer – a musical format that is so far unrepresented by the Honors – and one of the last men standing of the famed Fania Records. Inducted into multiple Halls of Fame and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Recording Academy.

Prior Kennedy Center Honorees: Gloria Estefan, Linda Ronstadt, Wayne Shorter.

Alternate: Arturo Sandoval

Denzel Washington, 69.

6. Denzel Washington. One of the finest actors of a generation, winning multiple Oscars, a Tony, and many more. Also was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Prior Kennedy Center Honorees: Sidney Poitier, James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman.

Alternate: Samuel L. Jackson

Whoopi Goldberg, 68.

7. Whoopi Goldberg. Actress and comedienne from The Sister Act, The Color Purple, Ghost. EGOT winner, now known for her television role on The View.

Prior Kennedy Center Honorees: Lily Tomlin, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball.

Alternate: Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Daniel Day-Lewis, 66.

8. Daniel Day-Lewis. Actor from My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood, and Lincoln. Generally regarded as one of the best actors of the past thirty years, with three Oscars.

Prior Kennedy Center Honorees: Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman.

Alternate: Leonardo DiCaprio.

Aaron Sorkin, 62.

9. Aaron Sorkin. Screenwriter and playwright known for A Few Good Men, The West Wing, and The Social Network. Author known for his quick, witty dialogue and prestige drama movies.

Prior Kennedy Center Honorees: Neil Simon, Norman Lear, Edward Albee.

Alternate: Tony Kushner.

Audra McDonald, 53.

10. Audra McDonald. Broadway actress and singer known for “A Raisin in the Sun,” “Porgy and Bess,” and “Ragtime”. Has won more Tony awards than any other person.

Prior Kennedy Center Honorees: Helen Hayes, Mary Martin, Julie Andrews.

Alternate: Bernadette Peters.

The Seventy-Six Things That Changed America the Most From 1776 to 1900

To be patriotic, I decided to go back the country's founding, and bring the total of landmark developments up to 176 (1,776 was just too many). Without further ado:

The Seventy-Six Things That Changed America the Most From 1776 to 1900

Declaration of Independence

The origins of the United States come from the Declaration of Independence – a document most all Americans could quote, at least in part. It was adopted on July 2, 1776, and two days later the language was agreed upon. America was officially leaving Great Britain. Published a few months earlier, Paine’s Common Sense helped colonists embrace the bold idea.

 

Winning the Revolutionary War

Declaring independence, however, didn’t achieve it. With fighting having begun in 1775, the Revolutionary War, led by George Washington, was not over quickly. Many episodes became part of America’s founding mythos, like the Christmas retreat across the Delaware. For a little over five years the new nation fought on, until the victory at Yorktown in 1781 meant freedom.

 

The Constitutional Convention

America’s early history is a sort of odd prelude, governed under the Articles of Confederation, which were wholly inadequate to running a federal government. For six years the problems continued, until in 1787 a convention drafted the new Constitution, and argued for more central authority and powers. It has remained the foundation of America’s political and legal system ever since.

 

The Bill of Rights

It took a few years of wrangling to get the new states to approve the Bill of Rights – after the Constitution had been adopted. Easily the most well-known part of the document, the first ten amendments have become the guiding principles for America’s citizens, including freedoms of speech and religion, and the right to bear arms or a speedy trial.

 

Survey of American Roads

In 1789 an early civil engineer with tons of foresight – Christopher Colles – created the Survey of the Roads of the United States. It was the first mapping of its kind, to help connect travelers and encourage trade. Colles had other great ideas too: his ideas for New York’s waterways and canal system would eventually be realized half a century later.

 

The Cabinet

When Washington was sworn in as the first President, he had to figure out what that meant. Immediately he decided to create a cabinet of advisors – which was radical, because the Constitution had no such offices in its description. Jefferson was Secretary of State, Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury, and Henry Knox Secretary of War. There are now fourteen such positions, in the 21^st century.

 

National Bank

Hamilton is well-known for his work to create a National Bank – again, not found in the Constitution. Two main issues remained from after the Revolution and Confederation era: dealing with states’ debts and currencies, and getting the new federal government a line of international credit. It was an idea that the U.S. fought with a readopted numerous times in the 1800s.

 

Whiskey Rebellion

The Federal government, it almost goes without saying, will not tolerate armed rebellion. But this was put to the test almost immediately, and was initially no sure thing. When troops, led by Washington himself, had to stop an uprising of farmers outraged by the imposition of a tax on whiskey, it proved the newly empowered government had more clout than the former Confederation.

 

Stepping Down After Two Terms

Washington could have been a king in all but name. By stepping down after his second term, while still in good health, he set an extraordinary precedent that was honored until the Second World War (and then codified in a Constitutional amendment). Retiring to Mount Vernon, he reverted to being just another citizen – which also modeled what should happen to retired Presidents.

 

XYZ Affair

This was more than a diplomatic spat – it set a crucial precedent for America’s handling of foreign affairs. At the root of it was a question: who gets to conduct foreign affairs? The government? Individual people? And what was the literal price of negotiating? The latter was the affront of the time – French diplomats insisting on being paid bribes. Not giving in changed foreign policy forever.

 

Washington, D.C. Established

America already had some major cities, from Boston to Charleston. But the Constitution called for a capital – and so D.C. began to be planned, from the boulevards, to the White House, to the Capitol building. It would be the first statement of the new nation – moving its original capital from New York to the Potomac.

 

Second Great Awakening

Starting in the 1790s, a Protestant religious fervor swept through America, and inspired many new sects and movements – some of them quite radical. The Shakers, for example, believed in celibacy and the end of the world. The Baptists grew significantly in this era as well. By the 1840s the movement had died out, but not without lasting cultural consequences.

 

USPS

The federalization of the Postal Service began in 1775 under Ben Franklin, but really got off the ground in 1792. It was instrumental in the early years of delivering newspapers to the people as well, besides just mail – which the young government thought was vital, to help keep the populace well-informed. To this day, the USPS is essential for American shipping.

 

The Cotton Gin

Eli Whitney’s 1793 patent for a machine that helped process cotton radically transformed the South. Tobacco had been America’s main cash crop since the days of Jamestown – but that would shift to cotton as a result of Whitney’s machine. Since cotton still had to be picked by hand, though, many see the cotton gin as exacerbating the argument for the usefulness of slavery.

 

Mills

The precursor to modern factories, mills began operating in New England in the 1790s, first in Rhode Island – producing textiles. Staffed with child laborers and young, unmarried, women, mill work was tedious and often dangerous – powered initially by waterwheels and eventually by steam power. It marks the north beginning to industrialize, distinct from the agrarian south.

 

The Alien and Sedition Acts

One of the first blows to the Bill of Rights was when Adams tried to ban speech that was critical of the U.S. government and tried to deport anyone who didn’t agree with American policy during a time of national crisis. It stained his reputation forever, but the acts didn’t stand. That said, in the centuries to come, similar curbs on free speech have resurfaced again and again.

 

Peaceful Transfer of Power

The election of 1800 saw the Federalists, led by John Adams, defeated by Jeffersonian Republicans. Adams, like Washington, became a private citizen, and a new administration with very different goals and ideas came to power. Compared to the English history they’d inherited (think of the War of the Roses) such a transfer of power was revolutionary.

 

West Point

The United States Military Academy was launched in 1802, and became the cadet training corps for the U.S. Army. In the Revolutionary War, Washington had to get whatever soldiers he could to fight. By the early 1800s, the country started to formalize its armed forces, and began developing its navy at the same time, which would slowly become a powerhouse.

 

Marbury v. Madison

The 1803 decision codified the role of the Judicial branch, and the Supreme Court especially. Courts now could strike down any law that was in violation of the U.S. Constitution – the main source of judicial review and power to this day. In the short term, the dispute was over judicial appointments from the outgoing administration: something familiar to 21^st century Americans.

 

Louisiana Purchase and Manifest Destiny

When Jefferson purchased all the land from New Orleans to Montana from the French it kickstarted a westward movement that would spread white supremacy and an agrarian vision across the Great Plains. By the 1840s the concept had developed into a fever-pitch, under the banner of ‘Manifest Destiny’ – that God himself wanted this for his favorite nation.

 

Webster’s Dictionary

American English got its first dictionary in 1806, and has pulled away from England’s speech patterns and spellings ever since. Some American words are weirdly anachronistic – holding onto terms the British have since given up, and others were brand new (and often heavily indebted to indigenous naming). Soon we’d be “two countries separated by the same language.”

 

Steamboats

Robert Fulton launched his first – and the world’s first – steamship in 1807. No longer hampered by the variable winds, steamships could travel anywhere, anytime. As they got larger they managed to take on increasingly rough seas, became loaded with guns, and began developing into the backbone of America’s naval and trade vessels.

 

End of Transatlantic Slavery

In 1808 the United States, at least legally and formally, stopped importing new enslaved peoples from Africa. This did nothing for the people in the U.S. who were enslaved, or their progeny, but it was an important first step for the nation ridding itself of the evil. The perpetual enslavement of those already here would last another half century.

 

The War of 1812

The British came back, via Canada, and burned the White House. The war inspired Francis Scott Key to pen America’s national anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner, which helped launch the national obsession with its flag. Meanwhile, the Battle of New Orleans made Andrew Jackson an American hero and household name.

 

Tecumseh’s War

As America began, under Jefferson, looking to the west, the Ohio Valley became the focal point of the wars with native peoples. Since the Revolution, the Appalachian Mountains had provided a sort of buffer between the indigenous confederations and tribes and the new nation. Tecumseh raised an enormous army from across the continent to keep that boundary. Having lost, the Americans pushed their way in.

 

Failed Compromises

Each new state that entered the Union led to discussions about whether it was to be a slave state or a free state – trying to preserve a balance between the two in Washington, so the South wouldn’t bolt. Many compromises were made, such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which all had the same effect: kicking the can of the issue down the road.

 

Monroe Doctrine

In 1823 James Monroe first stated his cornerstone of foreign policy, which would define the nation’s view until the present day: Europe was to stay out of the western hemisphere. By now, of course, America had grown substantially, and the Spanish were already on the run in South America, thanks to Bolivar. Territory and military engagements in the Americas were to be under U.S. purview, moving forward.

 

“Jim Crow” and Stephen Foster

By the late 1820s, or early 1830s, the noxious racial stereotype of Jim Crow had been formed. Minstrel shows soon followed, and blackface entertainment based on painful racial stereotypes. At the same time, Stephen Foster – no stranger to minstrelsy himself – began writing a host of popular songs about the South, many of which have been passed down, in sanitized forms, to today.

 

Transcendentalism

People and nature are good – and that goodness reflects the divine. Such were the teachings of America’s first major philosophical movement, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Self-reliance was also preached, and the concept of ‘civil disobedience’ was given its first-ever articulation from Henry David Thoreau, which would inspire everyone from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Democracy in America

The first great historical survey of America was written by an outsider – which helps lend it credibility. Clearly, the United States, now nearly a half century old, was becoming a power to reckon with on the world stage – De Tocqueville’s work presented the nation to the world. It was this work which framed America as a ‘great experiment’.

 

Jacksonian Democracy

The Constitution said that voters were only land-owning white men. Surprisingly it wasn’t for a number of decades that non-landowning men were able to be voters. The Jacksonian era ushered in a new period of populism and the Democratic Party, which remains, in the 2020s, one of the longest-standing of political parties in the world.

 

The Trail of Tears

In the American South, there were the five ‘civilized’ tribes, which had dutifully complied with all requests made of them: to speak English, dress as Americans, and cultivate the land. Andrew Jackson, however, hated all Indians, and so set forth the tragic Trail of Tears, a forced march to the west which killed many, and a powerful symbol of the displacement of North America’s indigenous peoples.

 

Colt’s Interchangeable Parts

One of the first pioneers of interchangeable parts was Samuel Colt. His firearms revolutionized the early industrial era: taking a complex piece of equipment and making it easy to manufacture. When part of your gun broke, you could now replace a single piece, instead of the entire, expensive, revolver. Colt weapons helped define the U.S.

 

Telegraph

In the mid-1830s Morse invented the functional telegraph and Morse Code, which revolutionized communication. Far faster than the post office or a galloping horse, you could now send a message to someone as quick as electricity. The first functional telegraph lines were set up in the D.C. area by the 1840s, and stayed in place well after the telephone.

 

Streetcars

In the 1830s the streetcar was developed in America, in places like Harlem and New Orleans. Slowly horses began to be phased out of the cities of North America as trams and trolleys became electrified. Urban spaces began to fundamentally alter how people lived in ways separate from the towns and villages in more rural areas.

 

Seneca Falls

Long considered the birth of American feminism and the suffrage movement, the great names of the age were involved in the planning and execution including Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. A few years later Sojourner Truth delivered her famed ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ – another milestone in the early days of feminism.

 

Homesteading and the Oregon Trail

In 1836 the first wagon train to Oregon set out from Missouri. Half a million would take the route. Starting in the 1840s, homesteading helped defining the American west. Places like Nebraska had 40% of their land claimed by homesteaders, as wave after wave of settlers set up in the Great Plains. 1.6 million people took free land past the Mississippi River.

 

The Smithsonian

The Castle building was founded in the 1840s, and began mostly as an academic institution. In time, the Smithsonian has come to play the role of our National Museum – the warehouse of our collective history as a country. From the actual Star-Spangled Banner to modern touchstones like Julia Child’s kitchen and Obama’s Hope poster, it’s become the repository of our cultural memory.

 

Frederick Law Olmsted

Olmsted was the landscaper of America’s urban green spaces. From New York’s Central Park to the emerald necklaces of cities like Chicago and Boston, he set up parks all over. He also planned a variety of college campuses from UC Berkeley and Stanford to the University of Maine. Most famously, perhaps, was the work he did on the National Mall.

 

Annexing Texas and the Mexican-American War

The history of Texas joining the Union is complicated. Oversimplifying, a bunch of Americans went over the border of Mexico and tried to set up shop (which failed spectacularly – remember the Alamo?). But the U.S. decided to take the land anyway. American troops marched to Mexico City, and land from San Francisco to San Antonio became part of the United States.

 

The Gold Rush

When gold was discovered in the Sierra's foothills, it sparked a global race to California to strike it rich. People came from all over, and the first major hub of America’s West Coast was established. Similar rushes followed, such as the silver rush in Nevada a decade later, or the gold rush in Alaska in the 1890s.  America was fast becoming a land of prosperity.

 

The Underground Railroad and Growing Abolitionism

Abolitionism had been part of the U.S. since the founding and before. In 1850 the Fugitive Slave Act made abetting runaway enslaved people a crime. The underground railroad had already transported 100,000 people to freedom by 1850, and Harriet Tubman became an American heroine. In 1852 Uncle Tom’s Cabin became a smash hit, and inflamed abolitionist sentiments even more.

 

Paleontology

In the 1850s the first complete dinosaur skeletons were discovered in the United States. For the next half century, culminating in 1902’s discovery of T. Rex, America led the burgeoning field of paleontology. Darwin was just around the corner, and dinosaur fossils would play a pivotal role in redefining history and science.

 

Mormons Head to Utah

The U.S. Army in 1858 marched on Salt Lake City – a watershed moment. The Mormons, founded in upstate New York, had been driven out of everywhere, most recently Missouri, before heading to Utah. Sending troops against American citizens – even those of a new faith – hadn’t really happened before. The Church of Latter-Day Saints didn’t go away, of course – in eventually thrived.

 

Slave Rebellions and Violence

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was a catastrophe, leading to Bleeding Kansas, where people killed each other to determine if the new states would be slave or free. Slave rebellions, such as Nat Turner’s uprising in 1831, provided a template for John Brown’s uprising at Harper’s Ferry, which shocked the country. The disastrous Dred Scott decision made things worse. Violence was breaking out across the nation.

 

The Civil War

Finally, it all came to a head. One of the world’s first modern wars, the conflict famously pitted brother against brother, and millions died. Abraham Lincoln shepherded the nation through its greatest trial. The Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation: the nation changed forever. The Confederacy fell, but a myth of antebellum plantation life proliferated in the decades that followed.

 

Reconstruction Amendments

By Juneteenth, slavery was basically ended in the U.S. The best part of Reconstruction was the three Constitutional Amendments it spawned: abolishing slavery in the 13^th, citizenship in the 14^th, and voting rights in the 15^th. They would become a new bedrock of civil and political rights in America – even if they took the better part of a century to actually come to fruition.

 

Failed Reconstruction Policies

Lincoln’s assassination nearly stopped Reconstruction in its tracks, though. It limped on, with a few early victories – the first black Congressmen and Senators, for example. But soon the Klan had been organized, and Andrew Johnson simply wasn’t up to the task of guiding the grieving nation. Sharecropping replaced slavery, and black citizens’ lives were still essentially not free.

 

ASPCA and Cruelty to Animals

In 1866 the first laws against cruelty to animals were passed, and Henry Bergh launched the American Society for the Prevention to the Cruelty of Animals days later. A shift in consciousness was underway, changing attitudes regarding everything from work horses to dog fighting – and people began to consider animals’ welfare. Nowadays nearly 4 million pets are adopted through the ASPCA each year.

 

American Literature

From Edgar Allan Poe in the 1840s to Mark Twain in the 1880s, in the mid-century American literature came into its own. Leaves of Grass and Moby Dick in the 1850s helped lead the way in poetry and prose, with many brilliant artists following, including Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The nation was finding its voice.

 

Steel Production

Bessemer steel had been discovered in the 1850s, either in the UK or the U.S. Because of this, modern steel production really took off in the second half of the 19^th century. Production settled especially in the Great Lakes region, from Pittsburgh to Detroit. By the 1890s new processes replaced Bessemer, but steel remained part of America’s manufacturing culture.

 

Trans-Continental Railroad

With the famed golden spike in Promontory, Utah, the first transcontinental railroad was completed, linking the east coast to the west. Slowly things like stagecoaches and the wagon trains of the earlier generation began to be replaced. Railroad workers, especially the Chinese, became part of the fabric of the country.

 

“The Wild West” and Barbed Wire

Barbed wire transformed the west in the 1870s, as the Great Plains changed from bison to cattle. Ranchers divvied up the land with their new fences, and cowboys became mythical figures, driving herds to the midwestern slaughterhouses. Saloons, outlaws, and all the rest followed. Gunslingers and the OK Corral – it all became part of America’s story.

 

Baseball

After the Civil War, baseball, the slowly-developing pastime, became a professional sport. In the last decades of the century, it went on to become America’s favorite sport, and leagues were up and running by the 1870s. Precursors of the World Series followed in the next decade, and cities began to have their own teams and rivalries.

 

Third Great Awakening

Another religious movement came in the second half of the century. Some of the new denominations included the Pentecostal sect, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Science. The Salvation Army followed, and Christianity got linked to health and wellness. YMCAs, developed in the UK, came to the US, and it was at a Y where basketball was invented in the 1890s.

 

Civil Service Reform

When James Garfield was assassinated in 1881 by a deranged office-seeker, one good thing came out of it as a consequence – the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Finally, employment in the U.S. government would be accounted on merit, and not as favors, patronage, or nepotism. Of course at the local level favors still ruled, like in Boss Tweed’s corrupt Tammany Hall – but it was an important start.

 

Chinese Exclusion Act

One of America’s more infamous racist policies was when the Chinese were barred entry to the country in 1882. Never before had a group of people been denied entry to the country, and it created a bleak precedent. The Chinese, who had, in the west especially, taken on many roles in society that were otherwise unwanted, would not be readmitted legally for decades.

 

Gilded Age Wealth

By the 1880s unchecked accumulation of wealth in America had created a fabulously opulent elite comprised of railroad magnates, shipping magnates, and other corporate titans and robber barons. Names like Astor, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt became part of America’s story. Their fortunes built both extraordinary mansions and civic structures across the continent.

 

Haymarket Affair

The very first rumblings of unionism responded to gilded age wealth and poor working conditions. But in 1886 a bomb went off at a gathering in Chicago which set organized labor back for decades. The rally had begun in demand of an eight-hour working day. Still, by 1894, the U.S. government made Labor Day a federal holiday – showing the tide was turning in support of working peoples.

 

Helen Keller

Starting in 1887, Anne Sullivan began helping Helen Keller, who was mute, deaf, and blind, learn how to speak. It was a watershed in the history of disability, and Keller went on to become an inspiration, and leant her fame to many movements, from feminism to Socialism. Easily the most famous icon of disability, Keller became a crucial advocate in changing people’s opinions about the roles of the disabled.

 

Johnstown Flood

In 1889, Johnstown, PA, flooded: One of the worst disasters in American history, it killed 2,200 people. The cause was human, though – not just a random accident. A wealthy group of businessmen had created dangerous conditions in a reservoir above the valley, endangering its inhabitants below. The court battle that followed helped define legal responsibility to this day.

 

The Reservation System

By the mid-1880s, the reservation system for native peoples was completed. Geronimo and his followers, members of the Chiricahua Apache, gave themselves up – the last “wild Indians” of America. Tragedies followed, like the Massacre at Wounded Knee, in South Dakota in 1890. Concurrent with the end of the frontier, the internment of native peoples closed an iconic American chapter.

 

Pain Relief

Between the synthetization of aspirin and the development of medical ether for anesthesia, pain relief changed drastically in the last decades of the 1800s. Morphine had begun being medically used in the first half of the century – but it was, of course, highly addictive. Aspirin was nonaddictive, and anesthesia was a far cry better than ‘bite down on this stick’.

 

Changes in Journalism

Nellie Bly famously went undercover and had herself admitted to an insane asylum in 1887. It launched the modern field of investigative journalism. A decade later, and yellow journalism was in full swing – sensationalized and ginned-up stories that were written to sell copy – whether true or not. Famously this pitted Pulitzer against Hearst: whoever won, the reading public lost.

 

Thomas Edison

Edison – and his associates – created the gramophone and motion pictures. Recorded sound revolutionized music and entertainment, and then movies revolutionized drama and entertainment all over again. If he’d only made these two breakthroughs, he’d be a legend. But he did so much more, including developing the first commercially viable electric lightbulbs.

 

Electrifying Cities

From whale oil to gaslight, city streets had been poorly illuminated for decades. Electrifying the cities meant you could stay out late at night, and could be (more or less) safe. It also meant trading gas and candles for electric lighting in the home, and eventually outlets for the home. Electric gadgetry followed, from sewing machines to dishwashers, which were all now viable appliances.

 

Statue of Liberty

One of the nation’s most potent symbols, Lady Liberty has been lighting the way to America since 1886. From France, the colossal statue has become visual shorthand for the U.S. It also inspired one of America’s most well-known poems, by Emma Lazarus, which begins “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

 

Ellis Island and Tenement New York

European immigration to America became a flood in the years after Reconstruction. This was critical since it was no longer as exclusively English-speaking: Italians, Germans, and Eastern Europeans (notably Jews) came in droves. Most, after disembarking at Ellis Island, stayed in New York City, living in crowded high-rise tenements in ethnic or religious enclaves.

 

Hull House

Besides NYC, Chicago was another major destination for immigrants in the 1880s, and so in 1889 Jane Addams launched Hull House. It was a simple premise to our minds: build a home for immigrants newly arrived to get on their feet, find a job, learn the language, etc. Yet this was a totally new concept, and earned Addams one of America’s first Nobel Peace prizes.

 

Kodak Cameras

In the early 1890s, the Kodak corporation made a huge leap in the viability of cameras with their easy-to-develop film rolls. Photography had been popular since the 1840s, with daguerreotypes, but this breakthrough took photography out of the early days into the modern – say goodbye single-plate photos. The technology was widespread throughout the next century.

 

JP Morgan

Already a powerhouse by the 1870s, by the 1890s Morgan was seemingly unstoppable. He almost single-handedly bailed out the U.S. government in the Panic of 1895 – an absurd amount of wealth. He ran his namesake company, but was also involved in U.S. Steel, General Electric, Western Union, and more. In the 1907 Panic he again had to save the financial sector, effectively on his own.

 

Plessy v. Ferguson

Arguably the most disastrous Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott. Plessy codified the segregation that had been increasing with Jim Crow and Black Codes in the South. It allowed segregation to spread, unabated, across the nation – which it did. In turn, black southerners in the decades to come would begin leaving to find safety and opportunity in the Great Migration.

 

Populists

William Jennings Bryan ran for President three times between 1896 and 1908 and never won. His political career was, in some ways, the high watermark of the late 1800s populism. Agrarian and rural in origin, this was a seriously left-wing movement, that was trying to improve the lives of America’s forgotten people. In some ways, its failure led that demographic to swing conservative.

 

Overseas Imperialism

Alaska was America’s first noncontiguous holding of note, since the 1860s. But it wasn’t really ‘overseas’ in the same way that, say, Hawai’i was. In 1898 the U.S. annexed the kingdom – newly created by fruit boss Sanford Dole for the sole purpose of acquiescing to American imperialism. The rightful monarch had already been overthrown a few years earlier. Manifest Destiny, it seemed, didn’t end at the Pacific.

 

Spanish-American War and Philippine-American War

Finally kicking the Spanish out of the hemisphere, taking Cuba, their last stronghold, and the Philippines, which… definitely wasn’t in the realm covered under the Monroe Doctrine. The war with the Philippines that followed was brutal, and led to American occupation for a half century. Meanwhile, in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and eventually the Virgin Islands became U.S. territories.

 

Radio

In 1899 Marconi, the Italian inventor of modern radio technology and broadcasting, came to the United States and demonstrated what he’d been showing off in Great Britain for a few years. Americans took to radio in droves, and soon no house would be without one. Some programs that started on radio continued into the television era, such as the soap opera Guiding Light. It revolutionized communication.