Shining the spotlight on a hundred men and women who really made a difference to the world's most powerful nation, this book features the lives and achievements of extraordinary Americans – presidents and sports figures, film stars and physicists, generals and Internet mavericks – from the age of the Founding Fathers to the present. Telling the stories of lives of men and women over the last 300 years, the book celebrates their achievements and presents a revealing history of the United States. Selected by the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, the book contains surprises and insights into the personalities that created America and is bound to cause debate.