Notable Names Database

URL	nndb.com
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Online biographical database
Registration	no
Available language(s)	English
Owner	Soylent Communications
Launched	August 7, 2002
Current status	Active

The Notable Names Database (NNDB) is an online database of biographical details of over 37,000 people of note. NNDB describes itself as an "intelligence aggregator" of those it determines to be noteworthy, but mostly to identify connections between people.^[1]

Entries[link]

Each person has an executive summary giving a brief description of NNDB's opinion of his or her notability.^[2] All have summaries of their vital statistics, such as name, pseudonyms, place of birth, place of death, cause of death, location of their remains, religious beliefs, gender, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, family members, partners, boyfriends or girlfriends or one-night stands and nationality. Some of the entries have a brief biography (usually trivia), while others have no extra biographical information at all. Entries may contain summaries of the organisations they belong to, illnesses, phobia, addictions, drug use, criminal records and other data. In the case of authors, actors and film directors, the article lists the person's work in chronological order. NNDB also has articles on films and music groups.^[2] Readers may suggest additions, corrections, URLs, emails or images through a form on the website; they are later vetted by an NNDB staff member.^[3] A former feature was the "Level of Fame" assigned by NNDB from "Niche" to "Icon."^[4]

NNDB Mapper[link]

The NNDB Mapper, a visual tool for exploring connections between people, is also available, which requires Flash 7 and JavaScript.^[5] The interface allows the user to map how various individuals and institutions are connected.

References[link]

External links[link]

• NNDB - Notable Names Database
• NNDB Mapper
• Soylent Communications

George Soros
George Soros at the Munich Security Conference in 2011
Born	(1930-08-12) August 12, 1930 (age 81) Budapest, Hungary
Citizenship	United States[1]
Alma mater	London School of Economics
Occupation	Chairman of Soros Fund Management Chairman of the Open Society Institute Founder and adviser of the Quantum Fund
Employer	Soros Fund Management Open Society Institute
Net worth	US$20 billion (March 2012)[1]
Spouse	Twice divorced (Annaliese Witschak and Susan Weber Soros)
Children	Robert, Andrea, Jonathan, Alexander, Gregory
Website
georgesoros.com

George Soros ( /ˈsɔroʊs/ or /ˈsɔrəs/;^[2] Hungarian: Soros György; Hungarian: [ˈʃoroʃ]; born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz György) is a Hungarian-American business magnate,^[3][4] investor, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. Soros supports progressive-liberal causes.^[5] He is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his US$1 billion in investment profits during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis.^[6][7][8]

Between 1979 and 2011, Soros gave away over $8 billion to human rights, public health, and education causes. He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in Hungary (1984–89),^[7] and provided Europe's largest higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest.^[9] Soros is also the chairman of the Open Society Institute.

Early life[link]

Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary to a well-to-do, nonobservant Jewish family. His mother Elizabeth (also known as Erzebet), whom Tivadar married in 1924, came from a family that owned a thriving silk shop. His father Tivadar (also known as Teodoro) was a lawyer^[10] and had been a prisoner of war during and after World War I until he escaped from Russia and rejoined his family in Budapest.^[11][12] Tivadar was an Esperantist writer and taught George to speak Esperanto from birth.^[13] Soros later said that he grew up in a Jewish home and that his parents were cautious with their religious roots.^[14] Soros was thirteen years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary.^[15] Soros took a job with the Jewish Council, which had been established during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis:

The Jewish Council asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices. I was told to go to the Jewish Council. And there I was given these small slips of paper ... It said report to the rabbi seminary at 9 am ... And I was given this list of names. I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, "You deliver the slips of paper and tell the people that if they report they will be deported."^[16]

Later that year, at age 14, Soros lived with and posed as the godson of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture. The official was at one point ordered to inventory the remaining contents of the estate of a wealthy Jewish family that had fled the country; rather than leave the young Soros alone in the city, the official brought him along.^[17] The next year, 1945, Soros survived the Battle of Budapest, in which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city.

Soros emigrated to England in 1947 and, as an impoverished student, lived with his uncle, an Orthodox Jew. His uncle paid his living expenses while he attended the London School of Economics, where he received a Bachelor of Science in 1952.^[18] While a student of the philosopher Karl Popper, Soros worked as a railway porter and as a waiter. A university tutor requested aid for Soros, and he received GB£40 from a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) charity.^[19] In a discussion at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in 2006, Alvin Shuster, former foreign editor of the Los Angeles Times, asked Soros, "How does one go from an immigrant to a financier? ... When did you realize that you knew how to make money?" Soros replied, "Well, I had a variety of jobs and I ended up selling fancy goods on the sea side, souvenir shops, and I thought, that's really not what I was cut out to do. So, I wrote to every managing director in every merchant bank in London, got just one or two replies, and eventually that's how I got a job in a merchant bank."^[20] That job was an entry-level position in Singer & Friedlander.

Career[link]

In 1956 Soros moved to New York City working as an arbitrage trader for F. M. Mayer (1956–59) and as an analyst for Wertheim & Co. (1959–63). During this period, Soros developed the theory of reflexivity based on the ideas of Karl Popper. Reflexivity posited that the valuation of any market produces a procyclical "virtuous or vicious" circle that further affects the market.^[21]

Soros' experience from 1963 to 1973 as a vice-president at Arnhold and S. Bleichroderl resulted in little enthusiasm for the job and a desire to assert himself as an investor to make reflexivity profitable. In 1967, First Eagle Funds created an opportunity for Soros to run an offshore investment fund as well as the Double Eagle hedge fund in 1969.^[21] In 1973, due to regulatory restrictions limiting his ability to run the funds, Soros resigned from his First Eagle funds. He then established the Quantum Fund, a private investment firm, hoping to earn $500,000 after five years to support his ambitions as a writer and philosopher.^[21]

In 1970, Soros founded Soros Fund Management and became its chairman, with the firm's day-to-day operations being managed by Soros' two elder sons and the firm's chief investment officer, Keith Anderson.^[22][23][24] In August 2010, Soros bought a 4 per cent stake in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for about $35 million.^[25]

In July 2011, Soros announced that he had returned funds from outside investors' money (valued at $1 billion) and instead invested funds from his $24.5 billion family fortune due to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules.^[26]

Currency speculation[link]

On September 16, 1992, Black Wednesday, Soros' fund sold short more than $10 billion in pounds,^[22] profiting from the UK government's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency.

Finally, the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound, earning Soros an estimated $1.1 billion. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England".^[27] In 1997, the UK Treasury estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.4 billion.

On Monday, October 26, 1992, The Times quoted Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell."

Stanley Druckenmiller, who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound. "Soros' contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position."^[28][29]

In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for welcoming Myanmar as a member. Following on a history of antisemitic remarks, Mahathir made specific reference to Soros' Jewish background ("It is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge"^[30]) and implied Soros was orchestrating the crash as part of a larger Jewish conspiracy. Nine years later, in 2006, Mahathir met with Soros and afterwards stated that he accepted that Soros had not been responsible for the crisis.^[31] In 1998's The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered Soros explained his role in the crisis as follows:

The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in 1997 was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity.... By the beginning of 1997, it was clear to Soros Fund Management that the discrepancy between the trade account and the capital account was becoming untenable. We sold short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit early in 1997 with maturities ranging from six months to a year. (That is, we entered into contracts to deliver at future dates Thai Baht and Malaysian ringgit that we did not currently hold.) Subsequently Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused me of causing the crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation. We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the crisis; on the contrary, we were buyers when the currencies began to decline – we were purchasing ringgits to realize the profits on our earlier speculation. (Much too soon, as it turned out. We left most of the potential gain on the table because we were afraid that Mahathir would impose capital controls. He did so, but much later.)^[32]

The nominal U.S. dollar GDP of the ASEAN fell by $9.2 billion in 1997 and $218.2 billion (31.7%) in 1998.

Economist Paul Krugman is critical of Soros' effect on financial markets.

"[N]obody who has read a business magazine in the last few years can be unaware that these days there really are investors who not only move money in anticipation of a currency crisis, but actually do their best to trigger that crisis for fun and profit. These new actors on the scene do not yet have a standard name; my proposed term is 'Soroi'."^[33]

Public predictions[link]

Soros' book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (May 2008), described a "superbubble" that had built up over the past 25 years and was ready to collapse. This was the third in a series of books he has written that have predicted disaster. As he states:

I have a record of crying wolf... I did it first in The Alchemy of Finance (in 1987), then in The Crisis of Global Capitalism (in 1998) and now in this book. So it's three books predicting disaster. (After) the boy cried wolf three times... the wolf really came.^[34]

He ascribes his own success to being able to recognize when his predictions are wrong.

I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong... I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes. I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. Whenever you are wrong you have to fight or [take] flight. When [I] make the decision, the backache goes away.^[34]

In February 2009, Soros said the world financial system had effectively disintegrated, adding that there was no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.^[35] "We witnessed the collapse of the financial system[...]It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."

Insider trading conviction[link]

In 1988 Soros was interested in purchasing shares in French companies. The Socialist party had lost its majority of seats in the Assembly, and the new government under Chirac had instituted an aggressive privatization program. Many people considered shares in the newly privatized companies undervalued. During this period, a French financier named Georges Pébereau contacted one of Soros' advisors in an effort to assemble a group of investors to purchase a large amount of shares in Société Générale, a leading French bank that was part of the program.

The advisor reported to Soros that Pébereau's plan was ambiguous and included an implausible takeover plan (it would indeed fail). On that advice, and without ever meeting the financier, Soros decided against participating.^[36] He did, however, move forward with his strategy of accumulating shares in four French companies: Société Générale, as well as Suez, Paribas and the Compagnie Générale d'Électricité.

In 1989, the Commission des Opérations de Bourse (the French stock exchange regulatory authority) conducted an investigation of whether Soros' transaction in Société Générale should be considered insider trading. Soros had received no information from the Société Générale, and had no insider knowledge of the business, but he did possess knowledge that a group of investors was planning a takeover attempt. The COB concluded that the statutes, regulations and case law relating to insider trading did not clearly establish that a crime had occurred, and that no charges should be brought against Soros.^[37]

Several years later, a Paris-based prosecutor reopened the case against Soros and two other French businessmen, disregarding the COB's findings. This resulted in Soros' 2005 conviction for insider trading by the Court of Appeals (he was the only one of the three to receive a conviction). The French Supreme Court confirmed the conviction on June 14, 2006, but reduced the penalty to the minimum.^[38]

Punitive damages were not sought because of the delay in bringing the case to trial. Soros denied any wrongdoing, saying news of the takeover was public knowledge^[39] and it was documented that his intent to acquire shares of the company predated his own awareness of the takeover.^[38]

His insider trading conviction was upheld by the highest court in France on June 14, 2006.^[38] In December 2006, he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights on various grounds including that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing.^[40] On the basis of Article 7 of the European convention on human rights, stating that no person may be punished for an act that was not a criminal offense at the time that it was committed, the Court agreed to hear the appeal.^[41] In October 2011, the court rejected his appeal in a 4–3 decision, saying that Soros has been aware of the risk of breaking insider trading laws.^[42]

Sports[link]

In 2005, Soros was a minority partner in a group that tried to buy the Washington Nationals, a Major League baseball team. Some Republican lawmakers suggested that they might move to revoke baseball's antitrust exemption if Soros bought the team.^[43] In 2008, Soros' name was associated with AS Roma, an Italian association football team, but the club was not sold. Soros was also a financial backer of Washington Soccer L.P., the group that owned the operating rights to Major League Soccer club D.C. United when the league was founded in 1995, but the group lost these rights in 2000.^[44]

Philanthropy[link]

George Soros (left) and James H. Billington.

Soros has been active as a philanthropist since the 1970s, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa,^[45] and began funding dissident movements behind the iron curtain.

Soros' philanthropic funding includes efforts to promote non-violent democratization in the post-Soviet states. These efforts, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe, occur primarily through the Open Society Institute (OSI) and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names (such as the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland). As of 2003, PBS estimated that he had given away a total of $4 billion.^[39] The OSI says it has spent about $500 million annually in recent years.

In 2003, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote in the foreword of Soros' book The Alchemy of Finance:

George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become "open societies", open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but – more important – tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.^[46]

Time magazine in 2007 cited two specific projects – $100 million toward Internet infrastructure for regional Russian universities, and $50 million for the Millennium Promise to eradicate extreme poverty in Africa – while noting that Soros had given $742 million to projects in the U.S., and given away a total of more than $7 billion.^[47]

Other notable projects have included aid to scientists and universities throughout Central and Eastern Europe, help to civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, and Transparency International. Soros also pledged an endowment of €420 million to the Central European University (CEU). The Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and his microfinance bank Grameen Bank received support from the OSI.

According to National Review^[48] the Open Society Institute gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Defense Committee of Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who has defended alleged terrorists in court and was sentenced to 2⅓ years in prison for "providing material support for a terrorist conspiracy" via a press conference for a client. An OSI spokeswoman said "it appeared to us at that time that there was a right-to-counsel issue worthy of our support."

In September 2006 Soros pledged $50 million to the Millennium Promise, led by economist Jeffrey Sachs to provide educational, agricultural, and medical aid to help villages in Africa enduring poverty. The New York Times termed this endeavor a "departure" for Soros whose philanthropic focus had been on fostering democracy and good government, but Soros noted that most poverty resulted from bad governance.^[49]

He received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research (New York), the University of Oxford in 1980, the Corvinus University of Budapest, and Yale University in 1991. Soros also received the Yale International Center for Finance Award from the Yale School of Management in 2000 as well as the Laurea Honoris Causa, the highest honor of the University of Bologna in 1995.

Soros played a role in the peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in Hungary (1984–89)^[7] and provided Europe's largest-ever higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest.^[50] Later, the Open Society Institute's programs in Georgia were considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial in the success of the Rose Revolution.

In the United States, he donated large sums of money in an effort to defeat President George W. Bush's bid for re-election in 2004. In 2010, he donated $1 million in support of Proposition 19, which would have legalized marijuana in the state of California. He was an initial donor to the Center for American Progress, and he continues to support the organization through the Open Society Foundations. The Open Society Institute has active programs in more than 60 countries around the world with total expenditures currently averaging approximately $600 million a year.^[51] Between 1979 and 2011, Soros gave away over $8 billion to human rights, public health, and education causes.^[1]

Political donations and activism[link]

United States[link]

In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death". He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, "if someone guaranteed it".^[52] Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $2.5 million to MoveOn.org, and $20 million^[53] to America Coming Together. These groups worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election. On September 28, 2004 he dedicated more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multi-state tour with a speech: Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush^[54] delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The online transcript to this speech received many hits after Dick Cheney accidentally referred to FactCheck.org as "factcheck.com" in the Vice Presidential debate, causing the owner of that domain to redirect all traffic to Soros' site.^[55] Asked in 2006 about his statement in The Age of Fallibility that "the main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States", Soros responded that "it happens to coincide with the prevailing opinion in the world. And I think that's rather shocking for Americans to hear. The United States sets the agenda for the world. And the rest of the world has to respond to that agenda. By declaring a 'war on terror' after September 11, we set the wrong agenda for the world. [...] when you wage war, you inevitably create innocent victims."^[56]

Soros was not a large donor to US political causes until the 2004 presidential election, but according to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the 2003–2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating President Bush. A 527 group is a type of American tax-exempt organization named after a section of the United States tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 527.

After Bush's re-election, Soros and other donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance, which supports progressive causes and the formation of a stronger progressive infrastructure in America.^[57]

In August 2009, Soros donated $35 million to the state of New York to be ear-marked for under-privileged children and given to parents who had benefit cards at the rate of $200 per child aged 3 through 17, with no limit as to the number of children that qualified. An additional $140 million was put into the fund by the state of New York from money they had received from the 2009 federal recovery act.^[19]

On October 26, 2010, Soros donated $1 million, the largest donation in the campaign, to the Drug Policy Alliance to fund Proposition 19, that would have legalized marijuana in the state of California if it had passed in the November 2, 2010 elections.^[58]

In October 2011 a Reuters story titled "Soros: not a funder of Wall Street protests" was published after several commentators pointed out errors in an earlier Reuters story headlined "Who's behind the Wall St. protests?"with a lede stating that the Occupy Wall Street movement "may have benefited indirectly from the largesse of one of the world's richest men [Soros]". Reuters' follow-up article also reported a Soros spokesperson and Adbusters' co-founder Kalle Lasn both saying that Adbusters – which was the catalyst for the first Occupy Wall Street protests – had never received any contributions from Soros, contrary to Reuters' earlier story which reported that "indirect financial links" existed between the two as late as 2010.^[59][60]

Central and Eastern Europe[link]

According to Waldemar A. Nielsen, an authority on American philanthropy,^[61] "[Soros] has undertaken ... nothing less than to open up the once-closed Communist societies of Eastern Europe to a free flow of ideas and scientific knowledge from the ouside world".^[62] From 1979, as an advocate of 'open societies', Soros financially supported dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union.^[45] In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary with a budget of $3 million.^[63] Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Soros' funding has continued to play an important role in the former Soviet sphere. His funding of pro-democratic programs in Georgia was considered by Russian and Western observers to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution, although Soros has said that his role has been "greatly exaggerated".^[64] Alexander Lomaia, Secretary of the Georgian Security Council and former Minister of Education and Science, is a former Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2,500,000.^[65]

Former Georgian Foreign Minister Salomé Zourabichvili wrote that institutions like the Soros Foundation were the cradle of democratisation and that all the NGOs which gravitated around the Soros Foundation undeniably carried the revolution. She opines that after the revolution the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power.^[66]

Some Soros-backed pro-democracy initiatives have been banned in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.^[67] Ercis Kurtulus, head of the Social Transparency Movement Association (TSHD) in Turkey, said in an interview that "Soros carried out his will in Ukraine and Georgia by using these NGOs...Last year Russia passed a special law prohibiting NGOs from taking money from foreigners. I think this should be banned in Turkey as well."^[68] In 1997, Soros had to close his foundation in Belarus after it was fined $3 million by the government for "tax and currency violations". According to The New York Times, the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has been widely criticized in the West and in Russia for his efforts to control the Belarus Soros Foundation and other independent NGOs and to suppress civil and human rights. Soros called the fines part of a campaign to "destroy independent society".^[69]

In June 2009, Soros donated $100m to Central Europe and Eastern Europe to counter the impact of the economic crisis on the poor, voluntary groups and non-government organisations.^[70]

Africa[link]

The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa is a Soros-affiliated organization.^[71] Its director for Zimbabwe is Godfrey Kanyenze, who also directs the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which was the main force behind the founding of the Movement for Democratic Change, the principal indigenous organization promoting regime change in Zimbabwe.

Drug policy reform[link]

Soros has funded worldwide efforts to promote drug policy reform. In 2008, Soros donated $400,000 to help fund a successful ballot measure in Massachusetts known as the Massachusetts Sensible Marijuana Policy Initiative which decriminalized possession of less than 1 oz (28g) of marijuana in the state. Soros has also funded similar measures in California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada and Maine.^[72] Among the drug decriminalization groups that have received funding from Soros are the Lindesmith Center and Drug Policy Foundation.^[73] Soros donated $1.4 million to publicity efforts to support California's Proposition 5 in 2008, a failed ballot measure that would have expanded drug rehabilitation programs as alternatives to prison for persons convicted of non-violent drug-related offenses.^[74]

In October 2010, Soros donated $1 million to support California's Proposition 19.^[75]

According to remarks in an interview in October 2009, it is Soros' opinion that marijuana is less addictive but not appropriate for use by children and students. He himself has not used marijuana for years.^[76]

Death and dying[link]

The Project on Death in America, active from 2001 to 2003, was one of the Open Society Institute's projects, which sought to "understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement".^[77] In 1994, Soros delivered a speech in which he reported that he had offered to help his mother, a member of the Hemlock Society, commit suicide.^[78] In the same speech, he also endorsed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act,^[79] the campaign which he helped fund.^[80]

Philosophy[link]

Education and beliefs[link]

His philosophical outlook is influenced by Karl Popper, under whom he studied at the London School of Economics (LSE). His Open Society Institute is named after Popper's two volume work, The Open Society and Its Enemies, and Soros' ongoing philosophical commitment to the principle of fallibilism (that anything he believes may in fact be wrong, and is therefore to be questioned and improved) stems from Popper's philosophy.

Reflexivity, financial markets, and economic theory[link]

Soros' writings focus heavily on the concept of reflexivity, where the biases of individuals enter into market transactions, potentially changing the perception of fundamentals of the economy. Soros argues that different principles apply in markets depending on whether they are in a "near to equilibrium" or a "far from equilibrium" state. He argues that, when markets are rising or falling rapidly, they are typically marked by disequilibrium rather than equilibrium, and that the conventional economic theory of the market (the 'efficient market hypothesis') does not apply in these situations. Soros has popularized the concepts of dynamic disequilibrium, static disequilibrium, and near-equilibrium conditions.^[21]

He has stated that his own financial success has been attributable to the edge accorded by his understanding of the action of the reflexive effect.

Reflexivity is based on three main ideas:^[21]

1. Reflexivity is best observed under special conditions where investor bias grows and spreads throughout the investment arena. Examples of factors that may give rise to this bias include (a) equity leveraging or (b) the trend-following habits of speculators.
2. Reflexivity appears intermittently since it is most likely to be revealed under certain conditions; i.e., the character of the equilibrium process is best considered in terms of probabilities.
3. Investors' observation of and participation in the capital markets may at times influence valuations and fundamental conditions or outcomes.

A current example of reflexivity in modern financial markets is that of the debt and equity of housing markets. Lenders began to make more money available to more people in the 1990s to buy houses. More people bought houses with this larger amount of money, thus increasing the prices of these houses. Lenders looked at their balance sheets which not only showed that they had made more loans, but that their equity backing the loans – the value of the houses, had gone up (because more money was chasing the same amount of housing, relatively). Thus they lent out more money because their balance sheets looked good, they were guaranteed by the Federal Government, and prices went up more.

This was further amplified by public policy. Many governments see home ownership as a positive outcome and so first home owners grant and other financial subsidies – or influences to buy a home such as the exemption of a primary residence from capital gains taxation – mean that house purchases were seen as a good thing. Prices increased rapidly, and lending standards were relaxed. The salient issue regarding reflexivity is that it explains why markets gyrate over time, and do not just stick to equilibrium – they tend to overshoot or undershoot.^[21]

View of potential problems in the free market system[link]

Despite working as an investor and currency trader, he argues that the current system of financial speculation undermines healthy economic development in many underdeveloped countries. Soros blames many of the world's problems on the failures inherent in what he characterizes as market fundamentalism. His opposition to many aspects of globalization has made him a controversial figure.

Victor Niederhoffer said of Soros: "Most of all, George believed even then in a mixed economy, one with a strong central international government to correct for the excesses of self-interest."

Soros claims to draw a distinction between being a participant in the market and working to change the rules that market participants must follow. According to Mahathir bin Mohamed, Prime Minister of Malaysia from July 1981 to October 2003, Soros – as the hedge fund chief of Quantum – may have been partially responsible for the economic crash in 1997 of East Asian markets when the Thai currency relinquished its peg to the US dollar. According to Mahathir, in the three years leading to the crash, Soros invested in short-term speculative investment in East Asian stock markets and real estate, then divested with "indecent haste" at the first signs of currency devaluation.^[81] Soros replied, saying that Mahathir was using him "as a scapegoat for his own mistakes", that Mahathir's promises to ban currency trading (which Malaysian finance officials hastily retracted) were "a recipe for disaster" and that Mahathir "is a menace to his own country".^[82]

In an interview regarding the late-2000s recession, Soros referred to it as the most serious crisis since the 1930s. According to Soros, market fundamentalism with its assumption that markets will correct themselves with no need for government intervention in financial affairs has been "some kind of an ideological excess". In Soros' view, the markets' moods – a "mood" of the markets being a prevailing bias or optimism/pessimism with which the markets look at reality – "actually can reinforce themselves so that there are these initially self-reinforcing but eventually unsustainable and self-defeating boom/bust sequences or bubbles".^[83]

In reaction to the late-2000s recession, he founded the Institute for New Economic Thinking in October 2009. This is a think tank composed of international economic, business and financial experts, mandated to investigate radical new approaches to organising the international economic and financial system.

Views on antisemitism[link]

At a Jewish forum in New York City, November 5, 2003, Soros partially attributed a recent resurgence of antisemitism to the policies of Israel and the United States, and the role of wealthy and influential individuals:

There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that. It's not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well. I'm critical of those policies... If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish. I can't see how one could confront it directly... I'm also very concerned about my own role because the new anti-Semitism holds that the Jews rule the world... As an unintended consequence of my actions... I also contribute to that image.^[84]

In a subsequent article for The New York Review of Books, Soros emphasized that

I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views.^[85]

Views on Europe[link]

In October 2011, Soros drafted an open letter entitled "As concerned Europeans we urge Eurozone leaders to unite"^[86] whereby he calls for a stronger economic government for Europe using federal means (Common EU treasury, common fiscal supervision, ...) and warns against the danger of nationalistic solutions to the economic crisis. The letter was co-signed by prominent europeans such as Javier Solana, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Andrew Duff, Emma Bonino, Massimo d'Alema, Vaira Vike-Freiberga.

Views on China[link]

Soros has expressed concern about the growth of Chinese economic and political power. "China has risen very rapidly by looking out for its own interests ... They have now got to accept responsibility for world order and the interests of other people as well." Regarding the political gridlock in America, he said, "Today China has not only a more vigorous economy, but actually a better functioning government than the United States".^[87]

Wealth[link]

As of March 12, 2012 Forbes listed Soros, at 81, as the 22nd richest person in the world, the world's richest hedge-fund manager, and number 7 on its list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, with a net worth estimated at $20 billion.^[88] Soros has given away $8 billion to various causes since 1979.^[89]

Relation to Hungarian politics[link]

In the 1980s Viktor Orbán, a future Chairman of Fidesz (1994–2000, 2000–) and Hungarian Prime Minister (1998–2002, 2010–), along with László Kövér, a future Chairman of Fidesz (2000), Secret Service Minister (1998–2002) and Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary (2010–), were Soros scholarship recipients. Deputy Prime Minister István Stumpf – now a member of the Constitutional Court – was a member of Soros Foundation's Board of Trustees between 1994 and 2002.

Personal life[link]

Soros' family changed their name from Schwartz to Soros in 1936, in response to growing anti-semitism with the rise of fascism. Tivadar liked the new name because it is a palindrome and because of its meaning. Although the specific meaning is left unstated in Kaufman's biography, in Hungarian, soros means "next in line", or "designated successor"; and, in Esperanto, it means "will soar".^[90]

Soros has been married and divorced twice:

In 1960, Soros married Annaliese Witschak. Annaliese was a ethnic German immigrant from Germany who had been orphaned during the war. Although she was not Jewish, she was well liked by Soros' parents as she had also experienced the deprivations and dislocation brought about by World War II.^[91] They divorced in 1983. They had three children:

• Robert Daniel Soros (b. 1963) - He is the founder of the Central European University in Prague, as well as a network of foundations in Eastern Europe. In 1992, he married Marlene S. Schiff at the Temple Emanu-El in New York City. The Rabbi Dr. David Posner officiated the ceremony.^[92]
• Andrea Soros Colombel (b. 1965) - She is the founder and president of Trace Foundation, established in 1993 to promote the cultural continuity and sustainable development of Tibetan communities within China. She is also a founding partner and member of the board of directors of the Acumen Fund, a global venture fund that employs an entrepreneurial approach in addressing the problems of global poverty^[93] She is married to Eric Colombel.
• Jonathan Tivadar Soros (b. 1970) - In 1997, married Jennifer Ann Allan at the Siasconset Union Chapel in Nantucket, Massachusetts. The Rev. Edward B. Anderson, a Unitarian minister, officiated the ceremony.^[94]

In 1983 he married Susan Weber Soros, twenty five years his junior. They divorced in 2005. They have two children:

• Alexander Soros (b. 1985) - Alexander is also gaining prominence for his donations to social and political causes, focusing his philanthropic efforts on "progressive causes that might not have widespread support".^[95] Alexander serves on the boards of Jewish Funds for Justice and Global Witness, and led the list of student political donors in the 2010 election cycle.^[96]
• Gregory Soros (b. 1989)

Soros has one elder brother, Paul Soros, who is a private investor and philanthropist. He is also an an engineer who headed Soros Associates and established the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for Young Americans.^[97][98] He is married to Daisy (nee Schlenger), who like her husband, was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant.^[99] They have two sons Peter and Jeffrey.^[100] Peter Soros was married to the former Flora Fraser – a daughter of Lady Antonia Fraser and the late Sir Hugh Fraser and a stepdaughter of the late 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. Fraser and Soros separated in 2009.^[101]

See also[link]

• George Soros conspiracy theories

Books[link]

Authored or co-authored[link]

• Financial Turmoil in Europe and the United States: Essays (PublicAffairs,2012). ISBN 1-61039-161-0
• The Soros Lectures at the Central European University (PublicAffairs, 2010) ISBN 1-58648-885-7
• The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means (PublicAffairs, 2008). ISBN 1-58648-683-7
• The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror (PublicAffairs, 2006) ISBN 1-58648-359-5
• The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power (PublicAffairs, 2003) ISBN 1-58648-217-3 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1-58648-292-0)
• George Soros on Globalization (PublicAffairs, 2002) ISBN 1-58648-125-8 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2005; ISBN 1-5264-8278-5)
• Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (PublicAffairs, 2001) ISBN 1-58648-039-7
• With Mark Amadeus Notturno, Science and the Open Society: The Future of Karl Popper's Philosophy (Central European University Press, 2000) ISBN 963-9116-69-6 (paperback: Central European University Press, 2000; ISBN 94-391-1670-X)
• The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (PublicAffairs, 1998) ISBN 1-891220-27-4
• Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (John Wiley, 1995) ISBN 0-471-12014-6 (paperback; Wiley, 1995; ISBN 0-371-11977-6)
• Underwriting Democracy: Encouraging Free Enterprise and Democratic Reform Among the Soviets and in Eastern Europe (Free Press, 1991) ISBN 0-02-930285-4 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1-58948-227-0)
• Opening the Soviet System (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990) ISBN 0-297-82155-9 (paperback: Perseus Books, 1996; ISBN 0-8133-1205-1)
• The Alchemy of Finance (Simon & Schuster, 1988) ISBN 0-671-66338-4 (paperback: Wiley, 2003; ISBN 0-471-44549-5)

Biographies[link]

• Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire by Michael T. Kaufman (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) ISBN 0-375-40585-2
• Soros: The World's Most Influential Investor by Robert Slater (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2009) ISBN 978-0-07-160844-2

Journalism[link]

Authored[link]

• George Soros, "Why I support legal marijuana", The Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2010.
• George Soros, "The Crisis and the Euro", The New York Review of Books, August 19, 2010.
• George Soros, "On Israel, America and AIPAC", The New York Review of Books, April 12, 2007.
• George Soros, "The Bubble of American Supremacy", The Atlantic, December 2003.
• George Soros, The Bubble of American Supremacy, audio recording of The Atlantic article via Assistive Media, read by Grover Gardner, 18 minutes.
• George Soros, "Soros on Brazil", Financial Times, August 13, 2002.
• George Soros, "Bitter Thoughts with Faith in Russia", Moskovskiye Novosti (Moscow News), translated from the Russian by Olga Kryazheva, February 27, 2000.
• George Soros, "The Capitalist Threat", The Atlantic Monthly, February 1997.
• George Soros, "Paulson Cannot be Allowed a Blank Cheque", Financial Times, September 24, 2008

About[link]

• John Authors, "A successful prophet of the markets", Financial Times, May 19, 2008.
• Laura Blumenfeld, "Billionaire Soros Takes On Bush", The Washington Post, November 11, 2003
• Connie Bruck, Abstract of New Yorker profile of Soros "The World According to Soros", The New Yorker, January 23, 1995
• Malcolm Gladwell, gladwell.com "Blowing Up", The New Yorker, April 22 & 29, 2002.
• Matt Welch, Open Season on 'Open Society': Why an anti-communist "Holocaust survivor is being demonized as a Socialist, Self-hating Jew". Reason, December 8, 2003
• "Time's 25 Most Influential Americans", Time, April 21, 1997. Retrieved May 21, 2007.
• "The Time 100: The Power Givers: George Soros", Time, May 14, 2007, Retrieved May 21, 2007.

Scholarly perspectives[link]

• Bryant, C. G. A. (2002). "George Soros's theory of reflexivity: a comparison with the theories of Giddens and Beck and a consideration of its practical value". Economy and Society 31 (1): 112–131. DOI:10.1080/03085140120109277. 
• Cross, R.; Strachan, D. (1997). "On George Soros and economic analysis". Kyklos 50 (4): 561–574. DOI:10.1111/1467-6435.00030. 
• Kwong, C.P. (2008). "Mathematical analysis of Soros's theory of reflexivity". arXiv:0901.4447 [q-fin.GN]. 
• Nielsen, Waldemar A. (1996). Inside American Philanthropy: The Dramas of Donorship. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 77–82. ISBN 978-0-8061-2802-3. 
• Pettis, Michael (2001). The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economies and the Threat of Financial Collapse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514330-2. 
• Stone, Diane (2007). "Market Principles, Philanthropic Ideals and Public Service Values: The Public Policy Program at the Central European University". PS: Political Science and Politics: 545–551. 
• Diane Stone, Transnational Philanthropy or Policy Transfer? The Transnational Norms of the Open Society Institute, Policy and Politics, 38(2), 2010: 269-87.

Speeches[link]

• Testimony of George Soros to a congressional sub-committee, Sept. 15, 1998
• The Theory of Reflexivity Delivered April 26, 1994 to the MIT Department of Economics World Economy
• "The Differences Between Natural and Social Science: Implications of Fallibility" at IISc Bangalore, January 5, 2007
• George Soros introduced by Lajos Bokros (November 11, 2008). George Soros Lecture on the Global Financial Crisis On November 11, 1 hour 16 minutes. Budapest, Hungary: CEU Business School. http://www.ceubusiness.org/index.php?page=news&l=1&newsid=25&from=0. 
• Testimony before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Oversight Hearing on FTC Advanced Rulemaking and Oil Market Manipulation^[102]

Interviews[link]

• Fareed Zakaria discussing economic crisis with George Soros on GPS, aired October 12, 2008
• The Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC) – Audio Archive: "George Soros on Freedom"
• "Frontline: The Crash: Interviews: George Soros", 1999
• Wall $treet Week with Fortune. PBS, September 20, 2002
• Challenge: The international financial crisis – International ...
• NOW with Bill Moyers. Transcript. David Brancaccio interviews ...
• Booknotes interview with Soros on The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power, February 29, 2004.
• Rocketboom: The Age of Fallibility (Video, 2006)
• Google Video: Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google interviews George Soros (Video, 2006)
• Interview with George Soros, September 5, 2000

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: George Soros

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: George Soros

• Official website
• Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network
• Institute for New Economic Thinking
• Column archives at Project Syndicate
• Column archives at The New York Review of Books
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• George Soros on Charlie Rose
• George Soros collected news and commentary at The Guardian
• George Soros collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Works by or about George Soros in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• George Soros at the Internet Movie Database
• Soros Fund Management 13F filing and Portfolio Activities
• List of articles and speeches by and about George Soros
• George Soros' Political Campaign Contributions
• Forbes.com: Forbes 400 Richest in America
• George Soros in SEC Filings
• The Money Man – New Yorker
• In depth review of The New Paradigm
• Why Does Soros Bite Hand That Feeds Him? in Investor's Business Daily

William Jennings Bryan
41st United States Secretary of State
In office March 5, 1913 – June 9, 1915
President	Woodrow Wilson
Deputy	Huntington Wilson (1913) John E. Osborne (1913–1915)
Preceded by	Philander C. Knox
Succeeded by	Robert Lansing
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Nebraska's 1st district
In office March 4, 1891 – March 3, 1895
Preceded by	William James Connell
Succeeded by	Jesse Burr Strode
Personal details
Born	(1860-03-19)March 19, 1860 Salem, Illinois[1]
Died	July 26, 1925(1925-07-26) (aged 65) Dayton, Tennessee
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Mary Baird Bryan
Children	Ruth Bryan Owen, William Jennings Bryan Jr., Grace Bryan
Alma mater	Illinois College, Union College of Law
Profession	Politician, Lawyer
Religion	Presbyterian
Signature

William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was a leading American politician from the 1890s until his death. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States (1896, 1900 and 1908). He served in Congress briefly as a Representative from Nebraska and was the 41st United States Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson, 1913–1915, taking a pacifist position on the World War. Bryan was a devout Presbyterian, a supporter of popular democracy, and an enemy of the Gold Standard as well as banks and railroads. He was a leader of the silverite movement in the 1890s, a peace advocate, a prohibitionist, and an opponent of Darwinism on religious grounds. With his deep, commanding voice and wide travels, he was one of the best known orators and lecturers of the era. Because of his faith in the wisdom of the common people, he was called "The Great Commoner."

In the intensely fought 1896 and 1900 elections, he was defeated by William McKinley but retained control of the Democratic Party. With over 500 speeches in 1896, Bryan invented the national stumping tour, in an era when other presidential candidates stayed home. In his three presidential bids, he promoted Free Silver in 1896, anti-imperialism in 1900, and trust-busting in 1908, calling on Democrats to fight the trusts (big corporations) and big banks, and embrace anti-elitist ideals of republicanism. President Wilson appointed him Secretary of State in 1913, but Wilson's strong demands on Germany after the Lusitania was torpedoed in 1915 caused Bryan to resign in protest. After 1920 he was a strong supporter of Prohibition and energetically attacked Darwinism and evolution, most famously at the Scopes Trial in 1925. Five days after the end of the case, he died in his sleep.^[2]

Background and early career: 1860–1896[link]

William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois on March 19, 1860, to Silas Lillard Bryan and Mariah Elizabeth (Jennings) Bryan.^[1]

Bryan's mother was of English heritage. Mary Bryan joined the Salem Baptists in 1872, so Bryan attended Methodist services on Sunday morning, and in the afternoon, Baptist services. At this point, William began spending his Sunday afternoons at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. At age 14, Bryan attended a revival, was baptized, and joined the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In later life, Bryan said the day of his baptism was the most important day in his life, but at the time it caused little change in his daily routine. He left the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and joined the larger Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

His father Silas, of Scots-Irish and English descent,^[3] was an avid Jacksonian Democrat. Silas won election to the Illinois State Senate, but was defeated for re-election in 1860. He did win election as a state circuit judge, and moved to a 520-acre (210.4 ha) farm north of Salem in 1866,^[4], living in a ten-room house that was the envy of Marion County.^[5]

Until age ten, Bryan was home-schooled, finding in the Bible and McGuffey Readers support for his views that gambling and liquor were evil and sinful. To attend Whipple Academy, which was attached to Illinois College, Bryan was sent to Jacksonville, Illinois in 1874.

A young Bryan

Following high school, he entered Illinois College, graduating as valedictorian in 1881. During his time at Illinois College, Bryan was a member of the Sigma Pi literary society. He studied law at Union Law College in Chicago (which later became Northwestern University School of Law). While preparing for the bar exam, he taught high school and met Mary Elizabeth Baird,^[6] a cousin of William Sherman Jennings. He married her on October 1, 1884,^[7] and they settled in Salem, which at the time had a population of two thousand.

Mary became a lawyer and collaborated with him on all his speeches and writings. He practiced law in Jacksonville from 1883 to 1887, then moved to the boom city of Lincoln, Nebraska. In Lincoln, Bryan met James Dahlman and they became life-long friends. As chairman of the Nebraska Democratic Party, Dahlman would help carry Nebraska for Bryan in two presidential campaigns. Even when Dahlman became closely associated with Omaha's vice elements, including the breweries as the city's eight-term mayor, he and Bryan maintained a collegial relationship.^[8]

In the Democratic landslide of 1890, Bryan was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, from Nebraska's First Congressional District. The growing prohibitionist movement entered the election of 1890 with its own slate of candidates. In the three-way race in the First Congressional District, Bryan received 6,713 more votes than his nearest opponent. This was a plurality of the vote and was 8,000 votes short of a majority of the vote. Nonetheless, Bryan was elected and was only the second Democrat to be elected to congress in the history of Nebraska.^[9] However in his re-election race in 1892, Bryan was re-elected by a 140-vote majority in a two person race. He ran for the Senate in 1894, but a Republican landslide led to the state Legislature's choice of a Republican for the Senate seat.

First campaign for the White House: 1896[link]

A Republican satire on Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech

Bryan had an innate talent at oratory. He gave speeches, organized meetings, and adopted resounding resolutions that eventually culminated in the founding of the American Bimetallic League, which then evolved into the National Bimetallic Union, and finally the National Silver Committee.^[10] At the time many farmer's groups believed that by increasing the amount of currency in circulation, commodities would receive higher prices. They were opposed by banks and bond holders who feared inflation. The ultimate goal of the league was to garner support on a national level for the reinstatement of the coinage of silver.^[11] With others, he made certain that the Democratic platform reflected the now strengthening spirit of Midwestern populism. With his support, Charles H. Jones of the St Louis Post-Dispatch, was put on the platform committee and Bryan's plank for free silver was adopted sixteen to one and silently added to the Chicago Democratic Platform, in order to avoid controversy.^[12] As a minority member of the resolutions committee, Bryan was able to push the Democratic Party from its laissez-faire and small-government roots towards its modern, liberal character. Through these measures, the public and influential democrats became convinced of his capacity to lead and bring change, resulting in his being mentioned as a possible chairman for the Chicago convention.^[13]

In 1893, the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act resulted in the collapse of the silver market. Bryan delivered speeches across the country for free silver from 1894 to 1896, building a grass-roots reputation as a powerful champion of the cause.

At the 1896 Democratic National Convention, Bryan lambasted Eastern moneyed classes for supporting the gold standard at the expense of the average worker. His "Cross of Gold" speech made him the sensational new face in the Democratic party. That same year he became the first presidential candidate to campaign in a car (a donated Mueller) in Decatur, Illinois.^[14]

Bryan/Sewall campaign poster

The Bourbon Democrats who supported incumbent conservative President Grover Cleveland were defeated, and the party's agrarian and silver factions voted for Bryan, giving him the nomination of the Democratic Party. At the age of 36, Bryan became (and still remains) the youngest presidential nominee of a major party in American history.

Disappointed with the direction of their party, Gold Democrats invited Cleveland to run as a third-party candidate, but he declined. Cleveland did, however, support John M. Palmer, nominee of the Gold Democrats, rather than Bryan.^[15]

Bryan also formally received the nominations of the Populist Party and the Silver Republican Party. With the three nominations, voters from any party could vote for Bryan without crossing party lines.^[16] In 1896, the Populists rejected Bryan's Democratic running mate, Maine banker Arthur Sewall, and named as his running mate Georgia Populist Thomas E. Watson. People could vote for Bryan and Sewall (on the Democratic or Silver Republican lines), or for Bryan and Watson (on the People's Party line).

Bryan campaigning for President, October 1896.

Bryan depicted as a Populist snake swallowing the Democratic Party; 1896 cartoon from the pro-GOP magazine Judge.

The Republicans nominated William McKinley on a platform calling for prosperity for everyone through industrial growth, high tariffs, and "sound money" (gold). Republicans ridiculed Bryan as a Populist. However, "Bryan's reform program was not based on the Populists--for example, the Populists Free Silver took Free Silver from Bryan's Democrats, not vice versa--but he used the same crusading rhetoric against railroads, banks, insurance companies and businesses that has often been mistaken for Populism. Bryan remained a staunch Democrat throughout his career.^[17]

Bryan demanded Bimetallism and "Free Silver" at a ratio of 16:1. Most leading Democratic newspapers rejected his candidacy. Despite this rejection by the newspapers, Bryan won the Democratic vote.

Republicans discovered in August that Bryan was solidly ahead in the South and West, but far behind in the Northeast. He appeared to be ahead in the Midwest, so the Republicans concentrated their efforts there. They said Bryan was a madman, a religious fanatic surrounded by anarchists, who would wreck the economy.^[18] By late September, the Republicans felt they were ahead in the decisive Midwest and began emphasizing that McKinley would bring prosperity to all Americans. McKinley scored solid gains among the middle classes, factory and railroad workers, prosperous farmers, and the German Americans who rejected free silver. Bryan gave 500 speeches in 27 states. McKinley won by a margin of 271 to 176 in the electoral college, but the popular vote was much closer and in some key states, McKinley's margin of victory was narrow.

War and peace: 1898–1900[link]

Bryan strongly supported the Spanish-American War in 1898. According to historian William Leuchtenburg, "few political figures exceeded the enthusiasm of William Jennings Bryan for the Spanish war."^[19] Bryan argued that "universal peace cannot come until justice is enthroned throughout the world. Until the right has triumphed in every land and love reigns in every heart, government must, as a last resort, appeal to force." He volunteered for duty and became colonel of a Nebraska militia regiment. He contracted typhoid fever in Florida and stayed there to recuperate, never seeing combat. After the war, Bryan opposed the annexation of the Philippines (though he did support the Treaty of Paris that ended the war). Bryan gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1900 called "The Paralyzing Influence of Imperialism." In this speech he discusses his views against the annexation of the Philippines, questioning the United States's right to overpower people of another country just for a military base. He mentions, at the beginning of the speech, that the United States should not try to emulate the imperialism of Great Britain and other European countries.

Presidential election of 1900[link]

Conservatives in 1900 ridiculed Bryan's eclectic platform

He ran as an anti-imperialist in 1900, finding himself in alliance with Andrew Carnegie and other millionaires. Republicans mocked Bryan as indecisive, or a coward, a point which L. Frank Baum satirized viciously in the Bryan-like Cowardly Lion in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in the spring of 1900.^[20]

Bryan combined anti-imperialism with free silver, saying:

The nation is of age and it can do what it pleases; it can spurn the traditions of the past; it can repudiate the principles upon which the nation rests; it can employ force instead of reason; it can substitute might for right; it can conquer weaker people; it can exploit their lands, appropriate their property and kill their people; but it cannot repeal the moral law or escape the punishment decreed for the violation of human rights.^[21]

In a typical day he gave four hour-long speeches and shorter talks that added up to six hours of speaking. At an average rate of 175 words a minute, he turned out 63,000 words, enough to fill 52 columns of a newspaper. In Wisconsin, he once made 12 speeches in 15 hours.^[22] He held his base in the South, but lost part of the West as McKinley retained the Northeast and Midwest and rolled up a comfortable margin of victory. McKinley won the electoral college with a count of 292 votes compared to Bryan's 155. Bryan lost more states than he had in 1896.

Chautauqua circuit[link]

Before Bryan held any political office there remained a need for income; public speaking would not become any less of a passion as it also became a source of income for Bryan and his family. Bryan was a regular on what was informally called the "Chautauqua circuit," in which celebrities traveled from town to town, over and over, giving paid speeches.

Bryan owned land in Nebraska and a 240-acre (0.97 km²) ranch in Texas; both were paid for with earnings from speeches and his own weekly newspaper, The Commoner.^[23] Bryan usually charged $500 per speech in addition to a percentage of the profits.

Presidential election of 1908[link]

Bryan giving a speech during his 1908 run for the presidency

The 1908 election was Bryan’s third attempt at gaining the presidency. The Democrats nominated Bryan by a wide margin at the Democratic convention held in Denver and decided on John Kern, a politician from Indiana, as his running mate. Bryan ran against the Republicans, and Theodore Roosevelt’s hand-picked nominee William Howard Taft.

Bryan launched a special message to Congress, suggesting income and inheritance taxes, publicity on campaign contribution and opposing the use of the navy for the collection of private debts.^[24] Taking a modern conservative viewpoint, in contemporary times, that the government that governs least, and intrudes the least, and lets the private sector, and individual merit and ability to run the nation he inserted in a speech he had no desire, nor did he think it was beneficial for the government ownership upon the nation, and he would be powerless to force government ownership upon the country against the will of the people.^[25] He further elucidated his point by launching campaign of attacks against corporation domination, which he asserted had no altruism. Going on to urge that all corporation contributions be made public before the election day, and that failure to cooperate be made a penal offense.^[26]

The GOP ran its campaign on the benefits of the Roosevelt administration, creation of a postal service, continuation of "Sound Currency", citizenship for Puerto Rico inhabitants, regulation on big business, and tariff revision in protectionist mode.^[27]

Bryan and the Democrats’ platform denounced the wrongs done by the Republican party: Congress spent too much money; Roosevelt hand picked Taft in undemocratic fashion; Republicans wanted centralization; Republicans favored monopolies. In response, Bryan unleashed the slogan, "Shall the People Rule?" In a time of peace and prosperity, and Republican trust-busting, Bryan fared poorly among the voters. He lost the electoral college 321 to 162, his worst defeat yet, and did not carry any of the states in the Northeast.

Chautauqua circuit: 1900–1912[link]

For the next 25 years, Bryan was the most popular Chautauqua speaker, delivering thousands of paid speeches in towns across the land, even while serving as secretary of state. He mostly spoke about religion, but covered a wide variety of topics.^[28] His most popular lecture (and his personal favorite) was a lecture entitled "The Prince of Peace", which stressed that religion was the solid foundation of morality, and individual and group morality was the foundation for peace and equality. Another famous lecture from this period, "The Value of an Ideal", was a stirring call to public service. During this time William Jennings Bryan was initiated as a brother into the Delta Chi Fraternity - Georgetown Chapter [2].

In a 1905 speech, Bryan warned that "the Darwinian theory represents man reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate, the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak. If this is the law of our development then, if there is any logic that can bind the human mind, we shall turn backward to the beast in proportion as we substitute the law of love. I choose to believe that love rather than hatred is the law of development."

Bryan threw himself into the work of the Social Gospel. Bryan served on organizations containing a large number of theological liberals—he sat on the temperance committee of the Federal Council of Churches and on the general committee of the short-lived Inter-church World Movement.

Bryan in 1908

In 1899 Bryan founded a weekly magazine, The Commoner, calling on Democrats to dissolve the trusts, regulate the railroads more tightly, and support the Progressive Movement.^[29] He regarded prohibition as a "local" issue and did not endorse it until 1910. In London in 1906, he presented a plan to the Inter-Parliamentary Peace Conference for arbitration of disputes that he hoped would avert warfare. He tentatively called for nationalization of the railroads, then backtracked and called only for more regulation. His party nominated Bourbon Democrat Alton B. Parker in 1904, who lost to Roosevelt. For two years following this defeat, Bryan would pursue his public speaking ventures on an international stage. From 1904 to 1906, Bryan traveled globally, preaching, sightseeing with his wife Mary, lecturing, and all while escaping the political upheaval in Washington. Bryan crusaded as well for the initiative and referendum, making a whistle-stop campaign tour of Arkansas in 1910.^[30] Bryan's speech to the students of Washington and Lee University began the Washington and Lee Mock Convention.

Secretary of State: 1913–1915[link]

For supporting Woodrow Wilson for the presidency in 1912, Bryan was appointed as Secretary of State. However, Wilson only nominally consulted him and made all the major foreign policy decisions himself. Bryan negotiated 28 treaties that promised arbitration of disputes before war broke out between the signatory countries and the United States. He had made several attempts to negotiate a treaty with Germany, but ultimately was never able to succeed. In the civil war in Mexico in 1914, Bryan supported American military intervention.

In September 1914 he wrote President Wilson urging mediation in the First World War:

Bryan tried to choke the American credit to the Entente, saying "money is the worst of all contrabands because it commands everything else" but eventually yielded. He also pointed out that by traveling on British vessels "an American citizen can, by putting his own business above his regard for this country, assume for his own advantage unnecessary risks and thus involve his country in international complications" ^[32]

Wilson's demands for "strict accountability for any infringement of [American] rights, intentional or incidental" after the sinking of the Lusitania troubled Bryan, leading to his resignation in June 1915.

Prohibition battles: 1916–1925[link]

Despite their differences, Bryan campaigned as a private citizen for Wilson's reelection in 1916. When war was declared in April 1917, Bryan wrote Wilson, "Believing it to be the duty of the citizen to bear his part of the burden of war and his share of the peril, I hereby tender my services to the Government. Please enroll me as a private whenever I am needed and assign me to any work that I can do."^[33] Wilson, however, did not allow the 57-year-old Bryan to rejoin the military, and did not offer him any wartime role.

Bryan campaigned for the Constitutional amendments on prohibition and women's suffrage. Partly to avoid Nebraska ethnics such as the German-Americans who were "wet" and opposed to prohibition,^[34] Bryan moved to Coconut Grove in Miami, Florida in 1913. He called his home on Brickell Avenue Villa Serena. Later, in 1925, he moved to a new home further south in Coconut Grove on Main Highway called Marymont.^[35][36] Bryan filled lucrative speaking engagements, including playing the part of spokesman for George E. Merrick's new planned community Coral Gables, addressing large crowds across a Venetian pool for an annual salary of over $100,000.^[37] He was also extremely active in Christian organizations. Bryan refused to support the party's presidential nominee James M. Cox in 1920, because he deemed Cox not dry enough. As one biographer explains,

William Jennings Bryan and wife, Mary, in New York City, June 19, 1915

Bryan's national campaigning helped Congress pass the 18th Amendment in 1918, which shut down all saloons as of 1920. But while prohibition was in effect, Bryan did not work to secure better enforcement. He opposed a highly controversial resolution at the 1924 convention condemning the Ku Klux Klan, expecting it would soon fold. Bryan disliked the KKK but never publicly attacked it.^[39] For the nomination in 1924, he opposed the wet Al Smith; Bryan's brother, Nebraska Governor Charles W. Bryan, was put on the ticket with John W. Davis as candidate for vice president to keep the Bryanites in line. Bryan was very close to his younger brother Charles and endorsed him for the vice presidency.

Bryan was the chief proponent of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, the precursor to our modern War on Drugs. However, he argued for the act's passage more as an international obligation than on moral grounds.^[40]

Fighting the theory of evolution: 1918–1925[link]

Before World War I, Bryan believed moral progress could achieve equality at home and, in the international field, peace between all the world's nations.

Bryan opposed the theory of evolution for two reasons. First, he believed that what he considered a materialistic account of the descent of man through evolution undermined the Bible. Second, he saw Social Darwinism as a great evil force in the world promoting hatred and conflicts, especially the World War.^[41]

In his famous Chautauqua lecture, "The Prince of Peace," Bryan warned the theory of evolution could undermine the foundations of morality. However, he concluded, "While I do not accept the Darwinian theory I shall not quarrel with you about it."

Charles W. and William J. Bryan

One book Bryan read at this time convinced him that social Darwinism (emphasizing the struggle of the races) had undermined morality in Germany.^[42] Bryan was heavily influenced by Vernon Kellogg's 1917 book, Headquarters Nights: A Record of Conversations and Experiences at the Headquarters of the German Army in Belgium and France, which asserted (on the basis of a conversation with a reserve officer named Professor von Flussen) that German intellectuals were social Darwinists totally committed to might-makes-right.^[43]

Bryan also read The Science of Power (1918) by British social theorist Benjamin Kidd, which credited the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche with German nationalism, materialism, and militarism, which in turn was the outworking of the social Darwinian hypothesis.^[44]

In 1920, Bryan told the World Brotherhood Congress the theory of evolution was "the most paralyzing influence with which civilization has had to deal in the last century" and that Nietzsche, in carrying the theory of evolution to its logical conclusion, "promulgated a philosophy that condemned democracy,... denounced Christianity,... denied the existence of God, overturned all concepts of morality,... and endeavored to substitute the worship of the superhuman for the worship of Jehovah."^[45]

By 1921, Bryan saw Darwinism as a major internal threat to the US. The major study which seemed to convince Bryan of this was James H. Leuba's The Belief in God and Immortality, a Psychological, Anthropological and Statistical Study (1916). In this study, Leuba shows that during four years of college a considerable number of college students lost their faith. Bryan was horrified that the next generation of American leaders might have the degraded sense of morality which he believed had prevailed in Germany and caused the Great War. Bryan then launched an anti-evolution campaign.^[46]

Ever Hopeful
A November 1924 cartoon depicts Bryan with his brother, Charles, sitting on a log marked "Almost the Solid South" looking at the sun marked "1928" where more hope might come for them. Charles was the losing Democratic nominee for vice president in 1924.

The campaign kicked off in October 1921, when the Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia invited Bryan to deliver the James Sprunt Lectures. At its heart was a lecture entitled "The Origin of Man", in which Bryan asked, "what is the role of man in the universe and what is the purpose of man?" For Bryan, the Bible was absolutely central to answering this question, and moral responsibility and the spirit of brotherhood could only rest on belief in God.

The Sprunt lectures were published as In His Image, and sold over 100,000 copies, while "The Origin of Man" was published separately as The Menace of the theory of evolution and also sold very well.^[47]

Bryan was worried that the theory of evolution was making grounds not only in the universities, but also within the church itself. Many colleges were still church-affiliated at this point. The developments of 19th century liberal theology, and higher criticism in particular, had left the door open to the point where many clergymen were willing to embrace the theory of evolution and claimed that it was not contradictory with their being Christians. Determined to put an end to this, Bryan, who had long served as a Presbyterian elder, decided to run for the position of Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, which was at the time embroiled in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy (Under Presbyterian church governance, clergy and laymen are equally represented in the General Assembly, and the post of Moderator is open to any member of General Assembly). Bryan's main competition in the race was the Rev. Charles F. Wishart, president of the College of Wooster, who had loudly endorsed the teaching of the theory of evolution in the college. Bryan lost to Wishart by a vote of 451-427. Bryan then failed in a proposal to cut off funds to schools where the theory of evolution was taught. Instead, the General Assembly announced disapproval of materialistic (as opposed to theistic) evolution.

In his efforts to bring some publicity to his cause, Bryan joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1924 and attended the annual meeting.^[48] A featured session at the meeting was a debate on biological evolution between Bryan and Edward Loranus Rice, a developmental biologist from the Methodist-associated Ohio Wesleyan University.

According to author Ronald L. Numbers, Bryan was not nearly as much of a fundamentalist as many modern-day creationists, and is more accurately described as a "day-age creationist": "William Jennings Bryan, the much misunderstood leader of the post–World War I antievolution crusade, not only read the Mosaic "days" as geological "ages" but allowed for the possibility of organic evolution—so long as it did not impinge on the supernatural origin of Adam and Eve."^[49]

Scopes trial: 1925[link]

Congresswoman Ruth Bryan Owen, Bryan's daughter

In addition to his unsuccessful advocacy of banning the teaching of evolution in church-run universities, Bryan also actively lobbied for state laws banning public schools from teaching evolution. The legislatures of several Southern states proved more receptive to his anti-evolution message than the Presbyterian Church had, and passed laws banning the teaching of evolution in public schools after Bryan addressed them. A prominent example was the Butler Act of 1925, making it unlawful in Tennessee to teach that mankind evolved from lower life forms.^[50]

Bryan's participation in the highly publicized 1925 Scopes Trial served as a capstone to his career. He was asked by William Bell Riley to represent the World Christian Fundamentals Association as counsel at the trial. During the trial, Bryan took the stand and was questioned by defense lawyer Clarence Darrow about his views on the Bible. "Asked when the Flood occurred, Bryan consulted Usher's Bible Concordance,and gave the date as 2348 B.C., or 4273 years ago. Did not Bryan know, asked Darrow, that Chinese civilization had been traced back at least 7000 years?" Bryan conceded that he did not. He was also asked if the records of any other religion contain any mention of a flood at the time he cited? And Bryan replied: "The Christian religion has always been good enough for me--I never found it necessary to study any competing religion." ^[51]

The national media reported the trial in great detail, with H. L. Mencken using Bryan as a symbol of Southern ignorance (despite his not being from the South) and anti-intellectualism. In a more humorous vein, satirist Richard Armour stated in It All Started With Columbus that Darrow had "made a monkey out of" Bryan due to Bryan's ignorance of the Bible.

After the judge retroactively expunged all of Bryan's answers to Darrow's questions, both sides closed without summation. The jury quickly returned a guilty verdict with the defense's encouragement, and Bryan won the case. However, the state supreme court reversed the verdict on a technicality and Scopes went free.

Biologist Stephen Jay Gould has speculated that Bryan's anti-evolution views were a result of his Populist idealism and suggests that Bryan's fight was really against eugenics. However, the biographers, especially Michael Kazin, reject that conclusion, based on Bryan's failure during the trial or at any other time to attack eugenics; Kazin notes that there is a section on eugenics in Civic Biology, which was the biology textbook Scopes was in trouble for using.^[52]

Death[link]

Immediately after the trial, Bryan continued to edit and deliver speeches, traveling hundreds of miles that week. On Sunday, July 26, 1925, he drove from Chattanooga to Dayton, Tennessee to attend a church service, ate a meal, and died (the result of diabetes and fatigue) in his sleep that afternoon—just five days after the Scopes trial ended. School Superintendent Walter White proposed that Dayton should create a Christian college as a lasting memorial to Bryan; fund raising was successful and Bryan College opened in 1930. Bryan is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His tombstone reads "He kept the Faith." He was survived by among others, a daughter, Congresswoman Ruth Bryan Owen and her son (by artist William Homer Leavitt) John Bryan Leavitt and daughter Ruth Leavitt, as well as two children by her second husband, British Royal Engineers officer Reginald A. Owen.^[53][54]

Popular image[link]

Inherit the Wind, a 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, is a fictionalized account of the Scopes Trial written in response to McCarthyism. A populist thrice-defeated Presidential candidate from Nebraska named Matthew Harrison Brady comes to a small town named Hillsboro in the Deep South to help prosecute a young teacher for teaching evolution to his schoolchildren. He is opposed by a famous trial lawyer, Henry Drummond, and chastised by a cynical newspaperman as the trial assumes a national profile. Critics of the play^[who?] charge that it mischaracterizes Bryan and the trial.

Bryan also appears as a character in Douglas Moore's 1956 opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe and is briefly mentioned in John Steinbeck's East of Eden. In addition, he is a (very) minor character in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel. His death is referred to in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. In Robert A. Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice, Bryan's unsuccessful or successful runs for the presidency are seen as the "splitting off" events of the alternate histories through which the protagonists travel.

He also has a biographical part in The 42nd Parallel in Dos Passos' USA Trilogy ^[55]

In political cartoons[link]

The sheer volume of political propaganda cartoons featuring Bryan is a testament to the amusement and fear he caused among conservatives.^{[citation needed]} Bryan campaigned tirelessly, championing the ideas of the farmers and workers, using his skills as a famed orator to ultimately reshape the Democratic Party into a more progressive one. These political cartoons attacked just about every facet of Bryan’s character and policy. They mocked his religious fervor, his campaign slogans, and even his ability to unify parties for a common cause. As Keen puts it, "The art of propaganda is to create a portrait that incarnates the idea of what we wish to destroy so we will react rather than think, and automatically focus our free-floating hostility, indistinct frustrations, and unnamed fears".^[56] Bryan embodied these fears of the Republican Party of the time, which is clearly evident in the lengths they went to deface his character in these cartoons.

The most notable cartoons are of Bryan illustrated as a snake, representing Populism, swallowing a donkey, symbolizing the Democratic Party. Another notable Bryan cartoon is one where he is standing atop a Bible, marketing the sales of a "crown of thorns" and a "cross of gold" both referencing "The Cross of Gold" his most popular speech. Other cartoons can analyze overall judgments of Bryan’s continuous failure to win the Presidential Election and Bryan can be seen as some sort of puppet or smaller figure in comparison to other presidential elect opponents.

Nicknames[link]

Bryan had an unusually high number of nicknames given to him in his lifetime; most of these were given by his loyal admirers in the Democratic Party. In addition to his best-known nickname, "The Great Commoner", he was also called "The Silver Knight of the West" (due to his support of the free silver issue) and the "Boy Orator of the Platte" (a reference to his oratorical skills and his home near the Platte River in Nebraska). A derisive nickname given by journalist H.L. Mencken, a prominent Bryan critic, was "The Fundamentalist Pope", a reference to Bryan's devout religious views. He is called "Adam-and-Eve" Bryan in "O Russet Witch!, Tales of the Jazz Age" by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Legacy[link]

This section has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality. Discussion of this nomination can be found on the talk page. (April 2011)

Statue of Bryan on the lawn of the Rhea County, Tennessee courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee.

Michael Kazin considers Bryan the first of the 20th century "celebrity politicians", better known for their personalities and communications skills than their political views. Shannon Jones, on a Socialist website, claims that Bryan never took a principled stand against white supremacy in the Southern United States. Alan Wolfe has concluded that Bryan's "legacy remains complicated". Form and content mix uneasily in Bryan's politics. The content of his speeches leads in a direct line to the progressive reforms adopted by 20th century Democrats. But the form his actions took was a romantic invocation of the American past, a populist insistence on the wisdom of ordinary folk, and a faith-based insistence on sincerity and character.^[57]

In They Also Ran, Irving Stone criticized Bryan as a person who was egocentric and never admitted wrong. Stone mentioned how Bryan lived a sheltered life and therefore, could not feel the suffering of the common man. He speculated that Bryan merely acted as a champion of common men in order to get their votes. Stone mentioned that none of Bryan's ideas were original and that he did not have the brains to be an effective president. Stone personally believed Bryan to be one of the nation's worst Secretaries of State. He also feared that Bryan would have supported many radical religious blue laws. Stone felt that Bryan had one of the most undisciplined minds of the 19th century and that McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft all made better presidents.

A number of prominent personalities, however, have also defended Bryan and his legacy. In 1962, the journalist Merle Miller interviewed former President Harry Truman. When asked about Bryan, Truman replied that he [Bryan] "was a great one—one of the greatest". Truman also claimed that, in his opinion, "if it wasn't for old Bill Bryan there wouldn't be any liberalism at all in the country now. Bryan kept liberalism alive, he kept it going." In 1900, Truman, then aged 16, had served as a page to the Democratic National Convention in Kansas City. There he had heard Bryan give a speech to the convention's delegates and was deeply impressed. In his biography of Truman, the historian David McCullough wrote that in 1900 Truman and his father "declared themselves thorough 'Bryan men'... Bryan remained an idol for Harry, as the voice of the common man". Tom L. Johnson, the famed progressive mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, referred to Bryan's campaign in 1896 as "the first great struggle of the masses in our country against the privileged classes". In a 1934 speech dedicating a memorial to Bryan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said "I think that we would choose the word 'sincerity' as fitting him [Bryan] most of all...it was that sincerity that served him so well in his life-long fight against sham and privilege and wrong. It was that sincerity which made him a force for good in his own generation and kept alive many of the ancient faiths on which we are building today. We...can well agree that he fought the good fight; that he finished the course; and that he kept the faith."

Bryan was one of the best known speakers of his time, and he became a fixture of the Democratic party and a hero to the common man. Starting with his Cross of Gold speech, Bryan brought the populist party into the Democratic, and with his common man message he would inevitably draw the African-American and feminist vote into the party. Bryan became the bridge that brought different factions into the party, and paved the way for liberal democrats like Franklin D. Roosevelt with his New Deal legislation. As noted by Bryan's biographer Michael Kazin,

“Bryan was the first leader of a major party to argue for permanently expanding the power of the federal government to serve the welfare of ordinary Americans from the working and middle classes....he did more than any other man-between the fall of Grover Cleveland and the election of Woodrow Wilson-to transform his party from a bulwark of laissez-faire to the citadel of liberalism we identify with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his ideological descendants.”^[58]

Honors[link]

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Bryan County, Oklahoma is named after him.^[59]

Bryan Memorial Hospital (now BryanLGH Medical Center) of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Bryan College located in Dayton, Tennessee, are also named for William Jennings Bryan. The William Jennings Bryan House in Nebraska was named a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1963. A $4,000 scholarship for Creighton University students participating in Speech and Debate at the university is named after William Jennings Bryan. The Bryan Home Museum is a by-appointment only museum at his birthplace in Salem, Illinois. Salem is also home to Bryan Park and a large statue of Bryan. Omaha Bryan High School and Bryan Middle School in Bellevue, Nebraska are named for him. He is also honored by having an elementary school in Mission, Texas named after him, Bryan Elementary School on a street named after him, Bryan Street.

He has been honored by the United States Postal Service with a $2.00 Great Americans series postage stamp.

See also[link]

• History of creationism
• Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy
• Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• History of the United States Democratic Party
• Mildred Seydell
• Progressive Movement
• U.S. presidential elections of 1896, 1900 and 1908.
• William Jennings Bryan House

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

Biographies[link]

• Cherny, Robert W. A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (1994).
• Coletta; Paolo E. William Jennings Bryan 3 vols. (1964), the most detailed biography. online vol 1; online vol 2; online vol 3
• Glad, Paul W. The Trumpet Soundeth: William Jennings Bryan and His Democracy 1896–1912 (1966).
• Hibben; Paxton. The Peerless Leader, William Jennings Bryan (1929).
• Kazin, Michael. A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (2006).
• Koenig, Louis W. Bryan: A Political Biography of William Jennings Bryan (1971).
• Leinwand, Gerald. William Jennings Bryan: An Uncertain Trumpet (Lanham (MD), Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
• Levine, Lawrence W. Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan, The Last Decade, 1915–1925 (1965).
• Werner; M. R. Bryan (1929).

Specialized studies[link]

• Barnes, James A. (1947). "Myths of the Bryan Campaign". Mississippi Valley Historical Review (Organization of American Historians) 34 (3): 367–404. DOI:10.2307/1898096. JSTOR 1898096.  on 1896
• Bensel, Richard Franklin. Passion and Preferences: William Jennings Bryan and the 1896 Democratic Convention (2008)
• Cherny, Robert W. (1996). "William Jennings Bryan and the Historians". Nebraska History 77 (3–4): 184–193. ISSN 00281859.  Analysis of the historiography.
• Edwards, Mark (2000). "Rethinking the Failure of Fundamentalist Political Antievolutionism after 1925". Fides et Historia 32 (2): 89–106. ISSN 08845379. PMID 17120377.  Argues that fundamentalists thought they had won Scopes trial but death of Bryan shook their confidence.
• Glad, Paul W. (1964). McKinley, Bryan and the People. Philadelphia: Lippincott. 
• Hohenstein, Kurt (2000). "William Jennings Bryan and the Income Tax: Economic Statism and Judicial Usurpation in the Election of 1896". Journal of Law & Politics 16 (1): 163–192. ISSN 07492227. 
• Jeansonne, Glen (1988). "Goldbugs, Silverites, and Satirists: Caricature and Humor in the Presidential Election of 1896". Journal of American Culture 11 (2): 1–8. DOI:10.1111/j.1542-734X.1988.1102_1.x. ISSN 01911813. 
• Taylor, Michael (2008). "The Bicycle Boom and the Bicycle Bloc: Cycling and Politics in the 1890s". Indiana Magazine of History 104 (3): 213–240. 
• Larson, Edward (1997). Summer for the Gods: The Scopes trial and America's continuing debate over science and religion. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-07509-6. 
• Longfield, Bradley J. (2000). "For Church and Country: the Fundamentalist-modernist Conflict in the Presbyterian Church". Journal of Presbyterian History 78 (1): 34–50. ISSN 00223883.  Puts Scopes in larger religious context.
• Mahan, Russell L. (2003). "William Jennings Bryan and the Presidential Campaign of 1896". White House Studies 3 (2): 215–227. ISSN 15354768. 
• Murphy, Troy A. (2002). "William Jennings Bryan: Boy Orator, Broken Man, and the 'Evolution' of America's Public Philosophy". Great Plains Quarterly 22 (2): 83–98. ISSN 02757664. 
• Smith, Willard H. (1966). "William Jennings Bryan and the Social Gospel". Journal of American History (Organization of American Historians) 53 (1): 41–60. DOI:10.2307/1893929. JSTOR 1893929. 
• Taylor, Jeff (2006). Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 0-8262-1659-5.  On Bryan's place in Democratic Party history and ideology.
• Wood, L. Maren (2002). "The Monkey Trial Myth: Popular Culture Representations of the Scopes Trial". Canadian Review of American Studies 32 (2): 147–164. DOI:10.3138/CRAS-s032-02-01. ISSN 00077720. 

Primary sources[link]

• Bryan, William Jennings. William Jennings Bryan: selections ed. by Ray Ginger (1967) 259 pages
• Bryan, William Jennings. The first battle: a story of the campaign of 1896 (1897), 693pp; campaign speeches online edition
• The Commoner Condensed, annual compilation of The Commoner magazine; full text online for 1901, 1902, 1903, 1907, 1907, 1908
• Bryan, William Jennings. The old world and its ways (1907) 560 pages full text online
• Bryan, William Jennings. Speeches of William Jennings Bryan edited by Mary Baird Bryan (1909) full text online
• Bryan, William Jennings. In His image (1922) 226pp full text online
• Bryan, William Jennings. The Memoirs: of William Jennings Bryan, by himself and his wife (1925) 560pp; online edition

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: William Jennings Bryan

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: William Jennings Bryan

Wikisource has original works written by or about: William Jennings Bryan

• William Jennings Bryan at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Harper's Weekly "He Made It All By Himself" Political Cartoon, on 1900 presidential campaign
• American Memory: Today in History: March 19
• Works by William Jennings Bryan at Project Gutenberg
• The Duel In the Shade – Darrow's examination of Bryan at the Scopes Trial^{[dead link]}
• "William Jennings Bryan" at The American Experience: Woodrow Wilson on PBS
• "William Jennings Bryan" at The American Experience: The Monkey Trial on PBS
• Text of Vachel Lindsay's famous poem honoring Bryan.
• William Jennings Bryan cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
• Michael Kazin: "A Godly Hero" interview about Jennings on The Diane Rehm Show
• "The Deity of Christ" – paper by Bryan on the subject
• Information on Bryan's thought and influence, including quotations from his speeches and writings.
• William Jennings Bryan at the Internet Movie Database
• William Jennings Bryan: The Ideal Republic (listen online)
• William Jennings Bryan papers at Nebraska State Historical Society
• "William Jennings Bryan". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=141. Retrieved 2008-02-11. 
• Photo of William Jennings Bryan with his great-granddaughter, Ruth Meeken
• "William Jennings Bryan, Presidential Contender" from C-SPAN's The Contenders