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The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived: How Characters of Fiction, Myth, Legends, Television, and Movies Have Society, Changed Our Behavior, And Set The Course Of History
Allan Lazar, Dan Karlan, and Jeremy Salter
#UB1642
Paperback, 317 pages; 2006
$13.95
 Members' Price: $11.86
Slightly silly and infinitely entertaining, The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived is also, in fact, seriously interesting. The contemplative coauthors of this unusual book treat the reader to an amusing short essay about each of the 101 fictional characters they deem to be the most significant in American cultural history. Among the great invented luminaries, you'll find Icarus, Santa Claus, Don Juan, King Kong, Jim Crow, Luke Skywalker, Sherlock Holmes, G. I. Joe, Captain Ahab, Alice, Hamlet, HAL 9000, Mary Richards, Bambi, the Marlboro Man, Big Brother, and Archie Bunker. It's tremendous fun to debate the selections and think up your own contenders—I wish Winnie the Pooh had made the cut—but, overall, the authors did a pretty good job! (And, in their defense, the authors did include Pooh on the appendix list of "near misses.")
(CH)
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