Index

Voices

Every line has a name attached, and a reason for the attachment. This is the roll of who is in the book.

A

Chinua Achebe1930–2013 · Novelist of Things Fall Apart
John Adams1735–1826 · Lawyer, then second president
Maya Angelou1928–2014 · Autobiographer of the caged bird
Susan B. Anthony1820–1906 · Organizer of the vote
Hannah Arendt1906–1975 · Theorist of totalitarianism
Aristotle384–322 BCE · Philosopher of the Ethics
Neil Armstrong1930–2012 · The first person on the Moon
W. H. Auden1907–1973 · Poet who revised September 1, 1939
Augustine of Hippo354–430 · Bishop, and author of the Confessions
Marcus Aurelius121–180 · Emperor, writing to himself
Jane Austen1775–1817 · Novelist of the free indirect

B

Johann Sebastian Bach1685–1750 · Cantor at Leipzig
Francis Bacon1561–1626 · Essayist and chancellor
James Baldwin1924–1987 · Essayist who would not look away
Simone de Beauvoir1908–1986 · Author of The Second Sex
Ludwig van Beethoven1770–1827 · Composer against the deafness
The Bhagavad Gitac. 2nd century BCE–2nd century CE · Dialogue on the field of Kurukshetra
William Blake1757–1827 · Poet and engraver
Jorge Luis Borges1899–1986 · Librarian of labyrinths
Emily Brontë1818–1848 · Author of Wuthering Heights
Elizabeth Barrett Browning1806–1861 · Poet of the Sonnets from the Portuguese
Edmund Burke1729–1797 · Parliamentarian and writer

C

Julius Caesar100–44 BCE · General and dictator of Rome
Albert Camus1913–1960 · Novelist of the absurd, and of summer
Miguel de Cervantes1547–1616 · Author of Don Quixote
Geoffrey Chaucerc. 1343–1400 · Poet of the Canterbury Tales
Anton Chekhov1860–1904 · Physician and playwright
Shirley Chisholm1924–2005 · First Black woman in Congress
Winston Churchill1874–1965 · Prime minister in 1940
Cicero106–43 BCE · Orator and statesman
Confucius551–479 BCE · Teacher, recorded in the Analects
Marie Curie1867–1934 · Physicist of radium

D

Dante Alighieri1265–1321 · Poet of the Comedy
Charles Darwin1809–1882 · Naturalist of the Origin
René Descartes1596–1650 · Philosopher of the cogito
The Dhammapadacompiled c. 3rd century BCE · Verses of the Buddhist canon
Charles Dickens1812–1870 · Novelist of the serial
Emily Dickinson1830–1886 · Poet of the dashes
Joan Didion1934–2021 · Essayist of the story we tell
John Donne1572–1631 · Poet, then dean of St Paul’s
Fyodor Dostoevsky1821–1881 · Novelist of The Brothers Karamazov
Frederick Douglassc. 1818–1895 · Orator who escaped slavery
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930 · Physician who invented Holmes
W. E. B. Du Bois1868–1963 · Sociologist of The Souls of Black Folk

E

Ecclesiastesc. 3rd century BCE · The Preacher, in the Hebrew Bible
Albert Einstein1879–1955 · Physicist who wrote to Max Born
Dwight D. Eisenhower1890–1969 · Commander of the Normandy landing
George Eliot1819–1880 · Novelist, born Mary Ann Evans
T. S. Eliot1888–1965 · Poet of The Waste Land
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882 · Essayist of self-reliance
Epictetusc. 50–c. 135 · Stoic teacher, formerly enslaved
Epicurus341–270 BCE · Philosopher of the Garden

F

William Faulkner1897–1962 · Novelist of Yoknapatawpha
Richard Feynman1918–1988 · Physicist who would not fool himself
F. Scott Fitzgerald1896–1940 · Novelist of The Great Gatsby
Anne Frank1929–1945 · Diarist of the secret annex
Viktor Frankl1905–1997 · Psychiatrist of logotherapy
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790 · Printer, then founder
Sigmund Freud1856–1939 · Interpreter of dreams
Robert Frost1874–1963 · Poet of the road not taken

G

Galileo Galilei1564–1642 · Astronomer at odds with a verdict
Mohandas K. Gandhi1869–1948 · Lawyer of nonviolence
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832 · Poet of Faust

H

Nathan Hale1755–1776 · Captain, hanged as a spy
Ernest Hemingway1899–1961 · Novelist of the broken places
Patrick Henry1736–1799 · Orator of the Virginia Convention
Heraclitusc. 535–c. 475 BCE · Philosopher of Ephesus
Hillelc. 110 BCE–10 CE · Sage of the early rabbis
Homertraditionally 8th century BCE · Poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey
Horace65–8 BCE · Poet of the Odes
Langston Hughes1902–1967 · Poet of the Harlem Renaissance
Victor Hugo1802–1885 · Novelist of Les Misérables
David Hume1711–1776 · Skeptic of Edinburgh
Zora Neale Hurston1891–1960 · Novelist and folklorist

J

Thomas Jefferson1743–1826 · Drafter of the Declaration
Samuel Johnson1709–1784 · Lexicographer, as Boswell heard him
Chief Joseph1840–1904 · Hinmatóowyalahtq̓it of the Nez Perce
James Joyce1882–1941 · Novelist of a single Dublin day
Julian of Norwichc. 1343–after 1416 · Anchorite and visionary
Carl Jung1875–1961 · Analyst of the shadow

K

Immanuel Kant1724–1804 · Philosopher of the Enlightenment motto
John Keats1795–1821 · Poet of the odes
Helen Keller1880–1968 · Writer who was not only a miracle
John F. Kennedy1917–1963 · President of the inaugural and the moon
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968 · Minister at the march and the jail

L

Laozitraditionally 6th century BCE · Traditional author of the Daodejing
Le Corbusier1887–1965 · Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, architect
Ursula K. Le Guin1929–2018 · Novelist of other arrangements
Leonardo da Vinci1452–1519 · Painter, and keeper of notebooks
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865 · Sixteenth president
The Gospel of Lukelate 1st century · A gospel, and the angels at Bethlehem
Martin Luther1483–1546 · Reformer at Worms

M

Niccolò Machiavelli1469–1527 · Florentine, author of The Prince
John Gillespie Magee Jr.1922–1941 · Pilot who wrote High Flight
Malcolm X1925–1965 · Minister who renamed himself
Nelson Mandela1918–2013 · Prisoner, then president
Karl Marx1818–1883 · Critic of political economy
The Gospel of Matthewlate 1st century · A gospel in the Greek scriptures
Herman Melville1819–1891 · Author of Moby-Dick
Micah8th century BCE · Prophet in the Hebrew Bible
Michelangelo1475–1564 · Sculptor of the unfinished
John Stuart Mill1806–1873 · Author of On Liberty
Michel de Montaigne1533–1592 · Inventor of the essay
Toni Morrison1931–2019 · Novelist and editor
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart1756–1791 · Composer, mostly in letters

N

Pablo Neruda1904–1973 · Poet of the odes and the heights
Isaac Newton1643–1727 · Natural philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900 · Philosopher of the aphorism
Florence Nightingale1820–1910 · Reformer with a lamp and a chart

O

George Orwell1903–1950 · Eric Blair, on language and the state
Ovid43 BCE–17 CE · Poet of the Metamorphoses

P

Thomas Paine1737–1809 · Author of Common Sense and The Crisis
Dorothy Parker1893–1967 · Algonquin wit, in verse
Theodore Parker1810–1860 · Minister of the moral universe
Rosa Parks1913–2005 · Seamstress who did not stand
Blaise Pascal1623–1662 · Mathematician of the Pensées
Paul the Apostlec. 5–c. 64 · Letter-writer of the early church
Octavio Paz1914–1998 · Poet of The Labyrinth of Solitude
Sylvia Plath1932–1963 · Poet of Ariel

Q

The Qur’an610–632 · Recitation revealed to Muhammad

R

Rainer Maria Rilke1875–1926 · Poet of the Duino Elegies
Eleanor Roosevelt1884–1962 · Delegate, columnist, first lady
Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945 · President of the first inaugural
Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778 · Author of the Social Contract
Jalal al-Din Rumi1207–1273 · Poet of the Masnavi

S

Carl Sagan1934–1996 · Astronomer of Cosmos
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry1900–1944 · Pilot who wrote The Little Prince
Sapphoc. 630–c. 570 BCE · Poet of Lesbos
Jean-Paul Sartre1905–1980 · Playwright of No Exit
Senecac. 4 BCE–65 CE · Stoic, and Nero’s tutor
William Shakespeare1564–1616 · Playwright and poet
Mary Shelley1797–1851 · Author of Frankenstein
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822 · Poet of the west wind
Socrates469–399 BCE · Athenian philosopher
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn1918–2008 · Novelist of the Gulag
Susan Sontag1933–2004 · Critic against interpretation
Elizabeth Cady Stanton1815–1902 · Author of the Seneca Falls declaration
John Steinbeck1902–1968 · Novelist of The Grapes of Wrath
Sun Tzutraditionally 6th century BCE · Traditional author of The Art of War

T

Rabindranath Tagore1861–1941 · Poet of Gitanjali, and of Fireflies
Nikola Tesla1856–1943 · Inventor of the alternating current
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862 · Of Walden and civil disobedience
Thucydidesc. 460–c. 400 BCE · Historian of the Peloponnesian War
Leo Tolstoy1828–1910 · Novelist of Anna Karenina
Sojourner Truthc. 1797–1883 · Preacher and abolitionist
Harriet Tubmanc. 1822–1913 · Conductor of the Underground Railroad
Mark Twain1835–1910 · Samuel Clemens, in print
William Tyndalec. 1494–1536 · Translator of the English Bible

V

Virgil70–19 BCE · Poet of the Aeneid
Voltaire1694–1778 · Philosophe, born François-Marie Arouet

W

Booker T. Washington1856–1915 · Founder of Tuskegee
George Washington1732–1799 · Commander, then first president
Ida B. Wells1862–1931 · Journalist against lynching
Walt Whitman1819–1892 · Poet of Leaves of Grass
Elie Wiesel1928–2016 · Witness of Night
Oscar Wilde1854–1900 · Playwright of the epigram
Mary Wollstonecraft1759–1797 · Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Virginia Woolf1882–1941 · Novelist and essayist of the room
William Wordsworth1770–1850 · Poet of the Prelude

Y

W. B. Yeats1865–1939 · Poet of the cloths and the widening gyre

Z

Émile Zola1840–1902 · Novelist who accused a state

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