It's that time again - no, not Christmas.  It's time for summing up the year!  I can't help but read everybody's "ten best movies of 2009" or "the year's ten stupidest PR mistakes by celebrities" or "twenty five most awesome police chases" lists, even though I know they just put them out there to stir up discussion, knowing that nobody's going to agree with anybody else's list.  This year you get to sum up the whole decade, too (I did vote in Vogue's "Best Dressed of the Decade" poll, even as I complained bitterly about their choices.  I told you, I can't help it!)  Probably the biggest "year in review" story, though, is the announcement of Time's Person of the Year.

A lot of people think of "Person of the Year" as an award, although Time strenuously claims that it goes to the most notable and influential person and points to its choices of Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin (twice!) and the Ayatollah Khomeini as evidence.  However, the choices have tended to shy away from such controversial figures in recent years, and the 2001 Person of the Year was Rudy Guiliani, not Osama bin Ladin.

The "award" began as "Man of the Year" in 1927.  It was a slow news week, and there had been some controversy over Time's decision not to put Charles Lindbergh on the cover on the occaision of his trans-Atlantic flight.  The editors killed two birds with one stone by announcing Lindbergh as Man of the Year and have continued to publish the special issue during the traditionally slow news week at the end of the year.  

Since 1999, the title has been "Person of the Year".  Interestingly, no woman has won except as a part of a group ("The Whistleblowers" in 2002 and Melinda Gates with her husband and Bono as "The Good Samaritans" in 2005) since the award has been renamed.  When it was still "Man of the Year", several individual woman were named: Wallis Simpson, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Queen Elizabeth and Corazon Aquino.  (Their covers were titled "Woman of the Year", so it seems a little silly to rename the title, but I guess nobody asked me.)

Since 1927, every sitting President of the United States has been chosen except for Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Gerald Ford.  Franklin Roosevelt was the only person to be named three times.

Because groups are frequently named, somebody you know may have been Person of the Year more than once!  A non-famous person may have been named as many as seven times if they are an American female middle class Baby Boomer scientist who has been a whistleblower and served in the armed forces.  (That would be 1960, 1966, 1969, 1975, 2002, 2003, and 2006 if you're playing along at home.)  She would have had to be a very young scientist, though.  I myself have only been Person of the Year in 2006, when we all won - I'm just a little too young to also have been the American Woman in 1975. 

So, who was named this year?  Our hometown boy, Ben Bernanke!  The Federal Reserve Chairman was born in Augusta, true, but he grew up in Dillon, South Carolina.  He went to public South Carolina schools and waited tables at South of the Border (weather forecast: chili today, hot tamale) during his summer breaks from Harvard.  He taught economics at Stanford, NYU, and Princeton before moving into a government career through the Federal Reserve.  He has written extensively on the political and economic causes of the Great Depression.  If you ask me, it's too early to tell, but many including Time are praising Bernanke's use of theories about the Great Depression to alleviate the current recession through the Federal Reserve.  Whether you agree with his fiscal policy or not, there's no doubting that Bernanke is a seriously smart guy and a credit to the state.  

Want to read more about the Person of the Year?  You can go to Time's website and read all the cover stories back to 1927.  You can also come here to the Periodicals Department, where we of course have the current issue but can also offer you microfilm back to 1923 and many bound issues.  I prefer to see the magazines on microfilm or in bound copies rather than read a transcription online, because the magazines themselves are much more than the words in the story - advertisements, typography, and other features of the print copy put the story in context.  Come take a look!