And the Decade Goes To ...

Anyone can pick a Person of the Year. It takes a great historian to define the decade. Joel Stein picks Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page for Persons of the Decade 2009

Illustration: John Ueland for TIME; Brin, Page: Paul Sakuma / AP

I never thought I would be a famous historian. This is largely because I'm not an academic or a biographer or particularly interested in history. I am, however, very interested in being famous. So when TIME didn't pick a Person of the Decade this year, I decided to do it myself.

Not wanting to read a bunch of old newspapers, I sought advice from former TIME editor Henry Muller, who picked Mikhail Gorbachev as the 1980s Person of the Decade. "The process is pretty simple. Pretend to consult a lot of people, and then make the decision yourself,"...

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