A Century Redefined

THROUGHOUT ITS HISTORY, EDITORS OF TIME AIMED THEIR curiosity at those who broke free of gravity. Week after week, year after year, the magazine featured an individual on the cover, often from Washington but also from Wall Street or Hollywood, from foreign palaces and humming factories, all outstanding and almost always men. The “great man theory of history,” so aligned with the American gospel of bootstraps and bravado, meant that power boiled down to biography, and to be on the cover of TIME meant that you had, literally, made big news.

I wonder how