The Great Society

By Stephen Koepp, Deputy Managing Editor

Lisa Beyer, our Society editor, knows something about the tricky business of squeezing people into categories. She has successfully defied being put into a pigeonhole herself, having worked as a muckraking journalist in Singapore, later as our Jerusalem bureau chief and more recently as an editor of TIME cover stories ranging from human cloning to the life of Jesus. A native of Louisiana and graduate of the University of Texas, she has tried other walks of life, including delivering pizza and running a computer magazine. Lisa's breadth of interests--and standard of excellence--came in handy for editing this week's chapter of America's Best, the third in our series on people at the top of their fields.

In making choices for this installment, on Society and Culture, Lisa and assistant managing editor Priscilla Painton enlisted dozens of staff members with whom they led "unending debates that began months ago," says Beyer. First they chose the categories, including such traditional roles as athlete and teacher, but they also strived to explore some professions for which there are rarely any academic degrees or award programs, such as best advice columnist and best feminist. Then came the process of naming names. "In our staff meetings I had to actually limit the time we'd devote to America's Best because otherwise we wouldn't get any other business done," says Beyer. "It was too much fun talking and arguing about great people. Listening, you learn something about what people care about and know about most. Sports, food and humor: that's where the most passionate exchanges took place. Of course, there's a lot of subjectivity in these choices."

That's where some homework was called for. To choose America's best preacher, religion writer David Van Biema consulted experts in many denominations and spent hours watching tapes, searching for the most electrifying proclaimer of the Gospel. "Many were terrific, but the [T.D.] Jakes tape affected me profoundly," he recalls. "When I got down to the Superdome to hear him preach in person, I found him amazing. It was the mastery and the beauty of the thing."

Indeed, while our previous chapter of America's Best focused on the steely intellectualism of science, our journalists found that this one had a powerful emotional component. When writer-reporter Josh Tyrangiel interviewed Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski about influences on his life, he spoke tearfully about his mom, showing a rarely seen side of the indomitable Coach K. "I've watched his Duke teams physically and psychologically destroy my beloved Maryland Terrapins for years now," says Tyrangiel. "During the interview, I felt like I should be the one crying." Observes Beyer: "The thing that struck me as the most common element running through this group was a kind of fundamental humanity. Take our best humorist, David Sedaris. He sends up his family members in shocking ways, but still you can tell, reading him, that his loved ones are really loved."

In coming installments, we will bring you our choices for America's Best in Business and Technology, and Politics and Community. We hope you'll find them as categorically fascinating as we do.

Stephen Koepp, Deputy Managing Editor