Remembering the `American century'

• Inthis article, I consider a series of Time special issues, published in 1998 and 1999, that tried to estimate the `people' and `person' of the 20th century. Reading the series politically, I argue that Time engaged in a process of historical summary and cultural remembrance that serviced Henry Luce's prophecy of an American century, but that also aestheticized a national value system claiming primacy within the current, and prospective, climate of contemporary globalization. The article makes two related arguments. First, it situates the series in the context of Time magazine's own, rather destabilized, position as a news source and shaper of public opinion. Second, it considers how the series develops a particular `common sense' about the meaning and memory of the century, measuring individuals according to their relative advancement of, or impediment to, Time's cardinal values of `free minds, free markets, free speech and free choice'. •