This volume is a guide to the people who matter. It contains the stories of 1000 women and men whose lives have influenced the course of history. Learn about the famous and the infamous - leaders from Genghis Khan to Bill Clinton; scientists and thinkers from Aristotle to Stephen Hawking; personalities from Rasputin to Michael Jordan. The text is organized alphabetically for easy reference, but there are also chronological and thematic directories linking people in time and by area of achievement. In this new edition for the millennium the entries have been updated, and there are biographies of such figures as Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Tom Cruise and Diana, Princess of Wales.