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Introduction
It doesn't matter what your passion is. It might be sports, music, books, art, movies, TV, video games or any of a thousand other pursuits. During your lifetime, you will certainly encounter someone else who shares that same intense interest. And when you do, you'll probably begin to compare notes and talk about why that particular subject has captured you. Other voices will undoubtedly join in the conversation. Soon, a singular question will arise about that subject—who is the greatest of all time? The G.O.A.T., if you will.
That's when the spirited debate will start. Is Michael Jordan or LeBron James the greatest basketball player of all time? Is Star Wars or Star Trek the greatest sci-fi franchise? Are the Beatles or the Rolling Stones the greatest band? Is Nas or Jay Z the greatest Hip-hop artist? Is Voldermort or the Joker the greatest villain? Of course, there are other worthy subjects too. Such as who is the greatest scientist of all time: Albert Einstein or Marie Curie? Who is the greatest orator (public speaker): Martin Luther King Jr. or Sir Winston Churchill? Who is the greatest philosopher, chess player, writer, inventor or electric guitar player?
You may have come to this book to focus on a few subject areas in which you already have a strong interest. But while you're here, be sure to read several of the other categories as well. In doing so, you'll open new doors of knowledge. You'll learn things that will impress your friends, family, teachers, and most importantly, yourself.
Along the way, we will introduce you to some basic debating techniques. Those techniques will not only help strengthen your arguments as to who is the G.O.A.T. in each category, but they will improve your ability to voice your opinion on any subject. You will also encounter some fun lightning debates — tongue-in-cheek, mini-arguments meant to make you think and smile. So let The Great G.O.A.T. Debates begin. It's time to form your own conclusions as to who is the greatest of all time.
PS
We understand that the pair of participants we've picked to debate about in each category may not be the entries that you would have chosen. Here's the truth: we're not any smarter than you. So if you believe that you have a better entry, one that you think is more deserving, then speak up. Tell everyone you know. Formulate an argument and perhaps write a new entry to rival ours. We're absolutely interested in your opinions.
SAMPLE CHAPTER ONE
Athlete (all around)
Who is the greatest athlete of all time? That's an incredibly interesting debate. Why? Training methods, nutrition and dozens of other important factors have vastly improved throughout the years, making comparisons of athletes from different eras a rather difficult argument. So we've chosen a pair of deserving and super-versatile athletes—a male and female—from roughly similar time periods. The debate floor is yours.
Mildred "Babe" Zaharias (1911-1956)
"The formula for success is simple: practice and concentration, then more practice and more concentration." —M. B.Z.
She was given the name "Babe" after hitting five homeruns in a childhood baseball game, by friends who compared her to baseball great Babe Ruth. Not an outrageous comparison considering Mildred "Babe" Zaharias would grow up to become perhaps the most talented woman athlete to ever compete in sports.
Born in Port Arthur, Texas, Babe Zaharias excelled at track and field, basketball, baseball and golf. "All of my life I have always had the urge to do things better than anybody else," said Zaharias. "Before I was ever in my teens, I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. My goal was to be the greatest athlete that ever lived."
Coming out of high school in the late 1920's, an era when there were no college athletic scholarships for females, Texas-based employers were more than eager to hire Babe. Not because she was an expert seamstress, but so that she could play on their company athletic teams. It was a form of local advertising back then—for a company to own a championship squad in a particular sport, with their company name splashed across the jersey.
Babe, though, aspired to higher competition. At the National AAU (Amateur Athletics Union) Track and Field Championships, Zaharias finished first in six separate events. That earned her a spot on the US Olympic Team and a trip to the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, setting the stage for this Texas athletic legend to become an international hero.
Zaharias broke four world records during the games—two in the 80 meter hurdles, and one each in the javelin and high-jump. She won a pair of gold medals and a silver medal, becoming the only woman to ever win medals in running, throwing and jumping events.
At the age of 24, Babe began to play golf. Though she came to the sport late in life, Zaharias excelled at an exceedingly high level. She competed against men in a sanctioned pro event. Only four other women have ever attempted that. "Golf is a game of coordination, rhythm, and grace; women have these to a high degree," noted Zaharias.
After winning female championship events in both the US and England as an amateur, Zaharias turned pro in 1947 and dominated the women's circuit, becoming the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LGPA) leading money-winner in 1950 and 1951.
Babe Zaharias planned on playing golf until she was into her 90's, even if that meant hitting a golf ball from a rocking chair. Sadly, she passed away at 56, her life taken by colon cancer. During her final years, Babe became an advocate for the American Cancer Society, using her fame to raise funds for future research.
Jim Thorpe (1887-1953)
He could simply do it all, seemingly without effort. Having never high-jumped before, a teenage Jim Thorpe watched the track and field team practicing at his Carlisle, Pennsylvania school. He walked up to the bar and easily out-jumped everyone there while wearing his street clothes.
Thorpe WAS born in the Indian Territories of the West (now Oklahoma). He was a Native-American, a member of the Sac and Fox Nation. With his parents deceased, he relocated East where athletics became his passion. At the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, Thorpe won gold medals in both the pentathlon (comprised of five events) and decathlon (comprised of ten events). He was the first Native-American to win gold for the US.
"I was never content unless I was trying my skill...or testing my endurance," said Thorpe. "(But) I am no more proud of my career as an athlete than I am of the fact that I am a direct descendant of that noble warrior (Chief Black Hawk).
Six months after his Olympic triumphs, a newspaper story appeared stating that Thorpe had played minor league baseball one summer, receiving approximately $2 per day for expenses. Unlike many other athletes who also participated in pro or semi-pro sports to support themselves, Thorpe hadn't played under an assumed name.
The AAU, perhaps in prejudicial opposition to Thorpe's Native heritage, stripped him of his Olympic medals.
In a letter to the AAU, Thorpe wrote, "I hope I will be partly excused by the fact that I was simply an Indian schoolboy and did not know about such things. In fact, I did not know that I was doing wrong, because I was doing what I knew several other college men had done, except that they did not use their own names."
His honesty only helped to seal his fate.
John "Chief" Myers, Thorpe's baseball roommate and fellow Native-American, recalled, "Jim was very proud of the great things he'd done. A very proud man...Very late one night Jim came in and woke me up...He was crying, and tears were rolling down his cheeks. ‘You know, Chief,' he said, ‘the King of Sweden gave me those trophies, he gave them to me. But they took them away from me. They're mine, Chief; I won them fair and square.' It broke his heart and he never really recovered."
With his loss of amateur status, Thorpe went on to play professional baseball for six seasons. He then played pro football, winning three NFL Championships before there was ever a Super Bowl. Finally, this incredible athlete began a career in basketball, barnstorming around the country with a team comprised completely of Native-Americans.
During the later stages of his life, Thorpe struggled with severe alcoholism. In poverty, he died of heart failure at the age of 65.
In 1982, the International Olympic Committee agreed to posthumously return Jim Thorpe's medals to his surviving family members. The town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania is named in his honor.
Time to Debate:
Perhaps you can approach your physical education teacher or coach and ask, "Who's the greatest athlete of all time?" When you receive an answer, make sure they explain their reasoning behind it. That's an essential part of any debate, presenting clear and concise reasons for your opinion.
Debater #1 – "Babe Zaharias was an individual champion at several sports."
Debater #2 – "Jim Thorpe won team championships in different sports, making the other athletes around him better."
Here's a quartet of incredible all-around athletes that might get you thinking about furthering this debate:
Jackie Joyner-Kersee: A three-time Olympic gold Medal winner. She twice succeeded in the long-jump and once in the heptathlon (seven separate events).
Carl Lewis: Winner of nine Olympic gold medals for running, long jumping and relays.
Jim Brown: All-time great at both football and lacrosse.
Bo Jackson: All-Star baseball and football player. His commercial tagline is "Bo Knows Sports."
The Genuine Article:
Recently, a pair of professional sports teams has undergone name changes. Football's Washington Redskins and baseball's Cleveland Indians both finally agreed to rename their franchises. Native-Americans had long complained that those team nicknames marginalized Natives, reducing them to mere mascots in the eyes of the public. But during the 1922 and 1923 pro football seasons, Jim Thorpe was the player/coach for a team completely comprised of Native-Americans. They were called the Oorang Indians and played their home games in Marion, Ohio. Their roster included players named Arrowhead, Big Bear, Black Bear, Dear Slayer, Joe Little Twig, Red Foot, Red Fox and Wrinkle Meat.
SAMPLE CHAPTER TWO
Architect
Maybe you like to build and design things. You're into Legos. You glue toothpicks or Popsicle sticks together. Perhaps you're a student of the game Jenga or have a passion for erecting a multi-level house of cards. Well, that's basically what an architect does, only on a much bigger scale. They imagine, design and then plan structures such as bridges, monuments, homes, office buildings, skyscrapers and even stadiums—with their initial visions going from paper or a computer screen to real life.
Cities such as New York, Chicago, Toronto, Seattle, Paris, Hong Kong and Sydney all have distinctive skylines. You may even know the names of some of the famous structures in those cities, and have their striking silhouttes comitted to memory. But do you know the names of the people who designed them? Probably not. So we'll provide you two celebrated names in the field to begin the potential debate: Who's the greatest architect of all time?
Zaha Hadid (1950-2014)
In an occupation dominated by men, Zaha Hadid broke the glass-ceiling, just figuratively mind you. Her gravity-defying designs and use of geometric shapes to create eye-catching structures earned her a reputation as the "Queen of Curves." Hadid, who was born in Bagdad and trained in London, also has a passion for painting. That greatly influenced her architecture. "The whole idea of lightness, floating, structure and how it lands gently on the ground: It all comes from (my study of painters)," said Hadid, who is known for her ability to bend concrete and glass into natural-looking forms.
For the 2012 Summer Olympics held in London, Hadid designed the Aquatics Center, which hosted all of the swimming events. Moved by the natural shape of water in motion, Hadid was inspired to create a roof for the structure that rises up like an ocean wave. Nature was also Hadid's inspiration for creating the highway bridge that connects Abu Dhabi Island (in the United Arab Emirates) to the southern Gulf shore. The bridge's roadway, which stretches a half-mile, gently rises and falls mirroring the region's many sand dunes.
"There are 360 degrees. So why stick to one?" said Hadid of her designs. "Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space...On one hand, it's about shelter, but it's also about pleasure."
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)
Widely recognized as the greatest architect in American history, Frank Lloyd Wright designed over 1,000 structures and had a career that spanned more than 70 years. He is especially known for his organic style of architecture, using natural elements like stone and wood. Among his most famous structures is a rural Pennsylvania home called Fallingwater, which is built over a waterfall. The multi-level house has a pair of terraces that blend into the natural rock formations and appear to float over the downward streaming water. Wright didn't want the family living there to simply look out over the fall. "(I wanted them) to live with the waterfall...as an integral part of their lives," said Wright.
Perhaps Wright's most famous structure is New York City's Guggenheim Museum. Its seashell-like interior and circular design took Wright 16 years and over 200 sketches to go from inception to completion. Visitors are encouraged to take an elevator to the top and view the museum's artwork as they slowly descend a sweeping spiral ramp. Its organic design changed the way society envisioned museums, making them seem less stuffy and formal. Unfortunately, Wright died six months before his masterpiece of design opened to the public.
"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you," said Wright of his organic sense of structure. "Buildings too are children of Earth and Sun."
Time to Debate:
Who do you think is the G.O.A.T. when it comes to architecture—Zaha Hadid or Frank Lloyd Wright?
Most of us have a lot of experience at arguing a particuliar side. Whether we're asking our parents for a larger spending allowance or a later curfew. Or perhaps lobbying our teachers for a higher grade on an exam or assignment. So don't be intimidated by the word "debate." Most good arguments are like well-written essays. They have a clear thesis statement or singular, well-focused point to present. See our examples below:
Debater #1: – "I think Zaha Hadid is the G.O.A.T. because of her ability to bend glass and concrete as if they were natural elements."
Debater #2: – "The G.O.A.T. of architects is absolutely Frank Lloyd Wright because his nature-inspired designs are admired worldwide."
Of course, there are other great architects who could also vie for this title. Here are five names and structures they've designed. Perhaps you'll research them a bit and then present your own argument in their favor.
Jeanne Gang – Conceived the design of Chicago's 82-story Aqua Tower.
Santiago Calatrava – Designed the Olympic Sports Complex of Athens.
Stephen Sauvestre – The main architect of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
John Graham – Imagined Seattle's flying saucer-shaped Space Needle.
Ustad Ahma – This seventeenth-century architect is credited with designing both the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort at Delhi.
Piling On:
If you're a budding architect, we have a parlor game especially for you. Jenga is a building game designed by Leslie Scott. Players take turns removing one block at a time from a tower consisting of 54 blocks. The removed blocks are then placed on top of the tower, creating a progressively taller and more unstable structure. The name Jenga comes from a Swahili (a language of the African Great Lakes region) word meaning "to build." Since making its debut in 1982, Jenga has sold over 80 million games. Perhaps the game's G.O.A.T. is Robert Grebler of California, who in 1985 built the tallest known tower consisting of 40 2/3 levels. Will you outdo him one day?
SAMPLE CHAPTER THREE
Science Fiction Franchise
Science fiction has really evolved over time. Novels like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1918), Jules Verne's' Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869), and H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898) paved the way to wide acceptance of the genre. The Flash Gordon TV series (1954) helped introduce rockets and space travel. The long-running British TV series Dr. Who (1963-present) emphasized traveling in time. These creations are the foundation upon which modern science fiction is built and owes a debt of gratitude. With so many different venues for entertainment today, choosing the G.O.A.T. in this category means examining franchises with multiple assortments of characters, often living in varying eras or even centuries, and having different story lines for TV, movies and other types of media. The two heavyweights here are obviously Star Trek and Star Wars, each with their own passionate allegiance of fans. So rev your engines to either warp-speed or hyper-drive and let the debate begin!
Star Trek
Star Trek, the original TV series, debuted in September of 1966 and ran for three seasons on NBC. That's right, just three seasons. It didn't matter that crew of the starship USS Enterprise, commanded by Captain James Tiberius Kirk (actor William Shatner), was on a "5-year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." The series was cancelled because of less than stellar ratings and high production costs. But as soon as it went into reruns, both in the US and abroad, it built a cult-like following around the world. The fans who loved the series and its futuristic storylines and gadgets called themselves "Trekkies." The original series, set in the mid-twenty-second century, not only pushed the limits of time and space, but also of social boundaries too. The series was one of the first to ever have an inter-racial, on-screen kiss. Forced to do so by an alien's power of telekinesis (moving things with your mind), Captain Kirk kisses his communications officer Lt. Uhura, a Black woman portrayed by actress Nichelle Nichols. Kirk's essential crew was multi-racial and included Mr. Sulu, who was Asian, and Mr. Spock, a logic-driven alien with pointed ears from the planet Vulcan.
"Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms," said its creator Gene Roddenberry. "If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there."
Observing the success of Star Wars, Paramount Pictures produced 13 Star Trek films, the first six based on the original series. The Star Trek franchise proved that it wasn't bound by its original characters. How do you rival an incredible lead character like Captain Kirk? Create one who is seemingly just the opposite. That's what Star Trek: The Next Generation, set in the twenty-fourth century, did in giving fans Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Portrayed by English actor Patrick Stewart, the bald-headed Piccard was older than Kirk, far less physical and more cerebral in his approach to the part. Yet Trekkies still embraced him. Of course, there are several other successful incarnations of the franchise as well. Among them are Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery and Picard. Some of the most memorable of the franchise's characters also include Scotty, Dr. "Bones" McCoy, Data, Worf, Geordi La Forge, Quark, Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine.
He's a Fan:
Actress Nichelle Nichols wanted to leave her role as Lt. Uhura on Star Trek to pursue a career on the Broadway stage. What changed her mind? She was told that a fan wanted to meet her. It turned out to be Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights leader praised her as being one of the few TV role models for African-Americans, in a time period when they mostly played subservient parts. He also told her that Star Trek was one of the few shows he'd let his children watch, because of the part she played. That meeting with King convinced Nichols to remain.
Star Wars
How iconic is the Star Wars film franchise? The first several seconds of the opening installment, Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope (1977), changed the face of film forever with the words, "In a galaxy far, far, away," slowly scrolling up the screen. Heroic characters such as Luke Skywalker, spiral-haired Princess Leia, Han Solo and the wooly Chewbacca captured the imagination of audiences worldwide. C3PO and R2D2 connected to people on a very human level, despite both of them being droids. "The Force," an integral part of a new universe, found its way into the lexicon with the phrase, May the force be with you. There were light sabers, rebel forces, storm troopers and a Jedi Knight named Obi-Wan Kenobi. And just when an audience couldn't be anymore involved, there came the ominous presence of the mechanical-breathing Darth Vader, lord of the Dark Side. That's all from a single film, one generating a tsunami of science fiction creations that washed over our culture.
The very next episode, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), kept the franchise's momentum going. That film gave us Yoda, controlled and voiced by muppeteer Frank Oz. Size truly didn't matter for the diminutive green Jedi master of an unknown species who is virtually at one with the Force. Yoda even had his own style of speech that many tried to emulate. Speak like me, you try. Then came the iconic line from the helmeted Darth Vader (voiced by actor James Earl Jones) uttered to Luke Skywalker at the climax of a light saber duel. "I am your father."
Star Wars was created and directed by filmmaker George Lucas.
The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film—whether it's history, psychology, economics, or architecture—so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn't going to help you unless you have something to say," noted Lucas. "When I was making Star Wars, I wasn't restrained by any kind of science. I simply said, ‘I'm going to create a world that's fun and interesting, makes sense, and seems to have a reality to it.'"
After the release of the third installment, Return of the Jedi (1983), moviegoers learned about "prequels," as Lucas went back to before the beginning of his universe. The very first installment had been subtly labeled IV, giving Lucas license to provide audiences the opening prequel trilogy—The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Return of the Sith. After that, Lucas rendered the remaining episodes—The Force Awakens VII, The Last Jedi VIII and The Rise of Skywalker IX. They were a collection of nine films that changed the way we relate to science fiction. "I'll never turn to the Dark Side," Luke Skywalker assures us. And we absolutely believe him.
Time to Debate
Which would you choose as the G.O.A.T. of sci-fi franchises, Star Trek or Star Wars? Possibly you have a different franchise or even a single series in mind. Remember, yesterday's science fiction can easily become tomorrow's reality. Maybe you'll influence the future world in some way too, either by what you think or something you create, much like Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas. To that end, for a debate topic such as sci-fi franchises, don't be afraid to use your imagination to further your position. Since it is already fiction, you could easily insert yourself or the listener into the argument for emphasis. That would be one way to highlight your point of view.
Debater #1: I would definitely be more excited to fight alongside Luke Skywalker with a lightsaber than Captain Kirk with a phaser. Wouldn't you?
Debater #2: Being the future captain of the USS Enterprise and giving the command to travel at warp-speed has long been a dream of mine. Maybe you've had that same ambition.
Lightning Debate
Which alien do you think your parents would be more comfortable hosting for dinner, Star Trek's Mr. Spock with his Vulcan logic or Star Wars' diminutive Force-wielding Yoda? We can't wait to hear your reasoning.
From Sci-fi to Reality:
Plenty of science fiction writers have correctly foreseen the future. 3D-printers or "replicators" are discussed in an episode of Star Trek, almost two decades before the first working version of one was manufactured. Though current models of hoverboards don't actually fly (but instead self-balance), they were initially conceived of by author M.K. Joseph in his 1967 novel The Hole in the Zero. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953), author Ray Bradbury envisions cities of people walking around with earbud-like devices, each listening to their own music. Douglas Adams' The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy (1978) features Babel Fish, which work as universal translators, much like today's audio-translation apps, allowing those speaking different languages to instantly be understood.
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