Most Influential People of Our Time

Some men and women allowed history to take bigger, more decisive steps than others: scientists, researchers and explorers that were able to push the frontiers of human knowledge; brilliant inventors to whom we owe many comforts and objects that make our life simpler every day, from the radio to the Internet; artists, musicians and stylists, sublime interpreters of beauty and elegance; great industrialists and political leaders; characters with a strong spirituality that have become an example for millions of people and activists who fought relentlessly against prejudice and injustice. This books tells the stories of the great characters of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries and it explains how and why, each in its own way, they contributed to changing the world. From Le Corbusier, one of the founders of modern architecture, and Neil Armstrong, the first terrestrial being to step on the moon, to the French stylist Christian Dior or to Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor of Facebook. Exceptional and fascinating lives, in which talent and "vocation" emerge from the very start, are depicted next to biographies that appeared normal for a long time, until it was History to call: from the revolutionary passion of Fidel Castro to the antiracist one of Nelson Mandela; from the innate genius of Pablo Picasso to Stephen Hawking, astrophysicist who won't stop enquiring the boundaries of the universe. Also characters on the exact opposite side are included, such as Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden. That's because the world does not always change towards a better state: on its path, History sometimes stumbles and falls in horrific abysses. Only knowing its dark side we can make sure that these falls won't happen again. SELLING POINTS: . Features scientists, researchers, and explorers who pushed the frontiers of human knowledge; brilliant inventors; artists, musicians, and stylists; great industrialists and politicians; and activists and spiritual leaders. The list includes: Muhammad Ali, Kemal Ataturk, Marie Curie, Winston Churchill, Jacques Yves Cousteau, Walt Disney, Bob Dylan, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Sigmund Freud, Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Frida Kahlo, John F. Kennedy, Vladimir Lenin, Auguste and Louis Lumiere, Emmeline Pankhurst, Eva Peron, Pablo Picasso, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and many more! b/w photographs throughout