Heroes

By Dom Nozzi

Heroes are exemplified for such things as being courageous, for having accomplished outstanding achievements, for being notably admirable, for being a significant inspiration, and for setting in motion a great many enduring, self-perpetuating forms of societal or educational knowledge.

The following is a list of the most heroic people in my life.

Albert and Sara Nozzi (my parents).

Andres Duany (a leading founder of “New Urbanism,” walkable and traditional community and transportation reform movement)

Victor Dover (a leading professional practitioner who has prepared new urbanist designs worldwide)

Walter Kulash (a leader in reform of transportation design)

Ian Lockwood (a leader in reform of transportation design)

Camille Paglia (American feminist and social critic)

Marvin Harris (an American anthropologist who founded “cultural materialism”)

Hugh Hefner (a pioneer in human and female sexual and other forms of liberation)

Noam Chomsky (linguist and leading political philosopher)

Robert Ingersoll (leading American agnostic and public speaker)

Hans Monderman (a leader in reform of transportation design)

Enrique Penalosa (former mayor of Bogota Columbia)

Joseph Riley (former mayor of Charleston South Carolina)

Andrew Bacevich (historian and former army colonel)

George Orwell (British author)

George Carlin (American comedian)

Chapman Cohen (atheist author)

Nina Teicholz (American journalist and leading reformer of nutrition)

Clarence Darrow (American attorney)

Jonathan Haidt (American sociologist)

John Stuart Mill (civil liberties author)

Richard Florida (American author)

Stanley Milgram (social psychologist)

Thomas Paine (American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary)

Garrett Hardin (American biologist)

Sam Harris (American author, philosopher, and neuroscientist)

Aldous Huxley (American author)

Jane Jacobs (American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics)

James Howard Kunstler (American author, social critic, and public speaker)

Marty Klein (American sex therapist, speaker, author)

Thomas Kuhn (science historian)

Bjorn Lomborg (author, visiting professor, think tank director)

Charles Marohn (a leader in reform of transportation design)

Mearsheimer and S. Walt (authors)

Charles Murray (author)

Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy (authors)

Peter Norton (author)

Ray Oldenburg (author)

Dmitry Orlov (author)

David Owen (author)

David Perlmutter (author, neurologist)

Steven Pinker (author)

Ayn Rand (author)

James Randi (magician, author)

Jonathan Rauch (author)

Charles Derber (author)

Wilhelm Reich (Austrian doctor of medicine and psychoanalyst)

Bertrand Russell (British polymath, philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate)

BF Skinner (American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher)

Thomas Szasz (Hungarian-American academic, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst)

Robert Taber (author)

Gary Taubes (author, nutritionist)

Dalton Trumbo (author)

AD White (author)

Ambrose Bierce (American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran)

Charles Darwin (biologist)

Albert Einstein (physicist)

Galileo Galilee (physicist)

Martin Luther King (civil rights leader)

Eugene Debs (labor leader)

Mahatma Gandhi (Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist)

George Bernard Shaw (author)

Henry David Thoreau (author)

Rick Cole (former city manager of Ventura and Santa Monica CA)

Anthony Downs (economist)

Donald Shoup (economist)

Christopher B. Leinberger (author)

Steve Mouzon (architect)

Janette Sadik-Kahn (former director of New York City’s DOT)

My heartfelt thanks to each of the above people for bringing so much light, happiness, progress, and knowledge to my life and to the world.