TIME 25

Compiling a list of the most influential people in America, besides being a provocative parlor game, provides a chance to mull over the ideas and visions, tastes and beliefs that affect our lives. Being influential is the reward of successful salesmanship, the validation of personal passion, the visible sign of individual merit. It is power without coercion, celebrity with substance.

It can take the form of mass impact. Martha Stewart's inexhaustible brand of domesticity claims a sizable audience. So do Jerry Seinfeld's small-bore irony and Oprah Winfrey's irresistible empathy. There is influence within a creative field. Hence the architect Frank Gehry and the female-rocker-as-open-wound-feminist Courtney Love. And there is proximity to power, at least when it is enjoyed by people with ideas and issues they know how to push. It's largely by this means that Al Gore, who is supposed to be in a no-influence job, isn't. (Sorry, Bill--you're merely powerful.)

Because influence is not the same as power (see page 80), most of official Washington is not on this list. Nor is this a list of heroes. Colin Powell, a legitimate hero, has been influential in the past and has the potential to be so again, but for now he's taking time off. Meanwhile, Louis Farrakhan, who to most people is no hero, is busily influencing people. It is also not a list celebrating celebrity. Dennis Rodman is famous, but we'll have to wait for a lot more killer-tomato dye jobs to show up in the N.B.A. before he ranks as an influence. (Stay tuned.) And because influence isn't always, alas, the same thing as talent and virtue, a lot of gifted and good people don't make the cut.

After much consultation, argument and people wandering in saying, "Yeah, but what about so-and-so?," the editors and staff of TIME have chosen 25 men and women as the most influential people in America. To those who think other candidates deserved a place, feel free to nominate them for the next time around.