The worst movies of the year. The best hot dogs in Chicago. The worst natural disasters of all time. The greatest American League baseball players by position. Ten books you must read to be well-read.
Lists also illuminate our morals and our aspirations.
We love identifying winners and losers, too. You don't find that kind of information on European televison. That's American stuff. Nowhere is the fascination more intense than rankings of the wealthy. Perhaps our compulsion to read such things is an echo of our Puritan heritage, which held that those predestined for salvation would reap temporal rewards as a mark of God's favor.