Came across this list on Time.com of the 20 most influential Americans.  For a nation that is so deeply religious, it is odd to leave out religious leaders before Martin Luther King, Jr.  And there is no mention of those others who have helped to shape the national character and thinking.  This list commits the oft-committed sin of being focused on technological advance and political leadership, as if practical advances are more significant than our hearts and minds. 

What of John Winthrop, Jonathan Edwards, the painters of the Hudson River School, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William James, Reinhold Neibuhr, and more?