Biographical profile of Steve Jobs the founder of Apple Computers and the man who led an evolution in American technology and culture. He ushered in the world of personal computing with the Apple and Mac line of computers changed the way we buy and listen to music with the iPod iTunes and the iTunes Store introduced us to a new wave of animated films and technology through Pixar with such hits as "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo" and gave us a new paradigm for mobile telep...

Microsoft founder Bill Gates writes: "Genuine pioneers don't stop after just one discovery or innovation. They are driven to build on their accomplishments and to follow them into new frontiers." He was speaking about Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com which ushered in the brave new world of internet commerce; and the mind behind Kindle, the ebook platform that blazed the road for what has become the eBook Reformation or eBook Revolution, affecting, even transforming, publishers, auth...

Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old founder of Facebook, is the youngest self-made billionaire in history. He is also considered by many to be one of the most influential persons in the information age. His impact on American culture is virtually unprecedented. The recent film, "Social Network" does not portray him in the kindest light, but is it a work of fact or fiction? Separating fiction from fact, award-winning author Daniel Alef, tell the true story of Zuckerberg's meteoric rise and h...

Biogrphical profile of one of America's most intriguing financiers, a man who made a fortune on Wall Street as a speculator. As to his chosen path, he said: "I am a speculator; and I make no apologies for it. The word comes from the Latin speculari -- to observe. I observe." Dispensing advice from his "office" at Lafayette Park across from the White House or at Central Park in New York, Baruch became a confidante or adviser to American presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Jack Kennedy. He w...

Thomas Nast has been called the greatest political cartoonist of all time. He was much more than that. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant attributed his presidential victory in the 1868 campaign "to the sword of (Indian-fighting Gen. Phil) Sheridan and the pencil of Nast." Nast could smite the most powerful titans with a single stroke of that pencil. New York's "Boss" Tweed would attest to this. He went to prison and died there because of Nast. So would Horace Greeley who saw his efforts to ascend th...

Central Park, a verdant refuge from the teeming, ever-shaded concrete corridors that crisscross Manhattan is beloved by both tourists and New Yorkers. The 700-acre park with winding paths, undulating hills, carpets of flowers in spring equally resplendent with fall colors dotted with lakes, was America's first major metropolitan park.Visitors and residents owe it all to Frederick Law Olmsted, one of America's first, and certainly best-known, landscape architects. Although Central Park was his...

Mary Kay Ash is the quintessential example of a Phoenix rising from the ashes. After 10 years at World Gift Co. a direct sales organization Ash resigned when an underling she had trained was promoted ahead of her--because he was a male. Ash a 45-year-old unemployed divorcee with three children was at her nadir. But a few months later she formed what is now known as Mary Kay Inc. a cosmetics company that grew into a behemoth with current annual revenues in excess of 2.4 billion. And she did it...

Sergey Brin once described the Internet as the repository of all our knowledge and the company he and Larry Page founded a mere decade ago Google Inc. provides access to the Internet for a majority of the Western world. Google has altered the world we live in with a profound impact on just about everything we do. In addition to the search engine Google has given us many other products including YouTube Google Earth GMail and the Android operating system for cell phones. It is now difficult to...

Biographical profile of America's first millionaire, John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant who arrived in Manhattan with five English pounds in his pocket and amassed ownership of large swaths of Manhattan en route to becoming the largest and wealthiest landholder in New York. Astor established a major fur trading firm that extended its operations across the nation, helping blaze the Oregon Trail. He founded Astoria in 1811, the first American settlement on the West Coast. His ships cross...

Biographical profile of William Wrigley, Jr., the master salesman who established the Wrigley chewing gum empire. Wrigley's story, as told by award-winning author and syndicated columnist Daniel Alef, is the quintessential Horatio Alger-like tale of rising from the depth of poverty to achieve unrivaled success and fortune through hard work, perseverance, dedication and an innate understanding of human nature--the earmarks of a great salesman. Although Mars, Inc., the confectionery giant,...

Biographical profile of Amelia Earhart. Earhart's disappearance has mesmerized the American public ever since her fateful around-the-world flight in 1937. However, the public's fascination with Lady Lindy began long before her disappearance as she ventured into what was an almost exclusively male domain: airplanes and flight, flaunting convention with panache. This is her story.

In 2008 U.S. domestic airlines carried nearly 750 million passengers domestically and internationally. The growth of commercial air transportation and the number of passengers flying today can be laid at the feet of one of the great aviation pioneers, Juan Trippe, who began a crusade to create an air network that would link America to the world. The Yale graduate was absorbed by flight and airplanes. He established Pan American World Airways with a fleet of flying boats linking the U.S. to As...