Celebrate Independence Day with These American Top Fours… of July

The Fourth of July represents an opportunity for Americans to enjoy all the best of what America has to offer. But that presents us with a difficult question: how do we know we’re enjoying the best of what America has to offer? What if we accidentally find ourselves enjoying something that’s only the 5th best thing that America has to offer, or even worse, the sixth best thing? Is there some provider of crowdsourced lists that might help us definitively decide which city has the best pizza in the country?

Most Patriotic Movies of All Time

1. Forrest Gump
2. Saving Private Ryan
3. The Patriot
4. Apollo 13

You’d think The Patriot would lead this category by virtue of its name alone, but it turns out that the 1994 Best Picture-winning Forrest Gump is America’s most patriotic movie. What does it say that voters feel a slow-witted man who accidentally started the jogging craze of the 1980s better represents the spirit of patriotism than an actual combatant in the Revolutionary War? It’s hard to say. Judging from the other movies on this list, we’re guessing it has something to do with Tom Hanks.

---

Greatest American Rock Band

1. Fleetwood Mac
2. Creedence Clearwater Revival
3. Aerosmith
4. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

It’s hard to imagine a greater lineup than Fleetwood Mac, CCR, the guys who wrote “Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” for the official Armageddon (1998) soundtrack, and Tom Petty.

---

Best American Food

1. French Fries
2. Cheeseburgers
3. Fried Chicken
4. Chocolate Chip Cookies

A little ironic that the top American food has another country’s name in its title, but who could deny that these heavily salted, deep-fried potatoes don’t have a quintessentially American character? Eating each of these Top Four foods in one sitting would instantly give you some kind of heart disease, thereby making you an honorary American.

---

Best American Beers

1. Samuel Adams Boston Lager
2. Fat Tire
3. Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA
4. Arrogant B*stard Ale

A fittingly patriotic pick for this category, voters on this list went with the American lager named after Sam Adams, the Bostonian Founding Father. Save for Fat Tire, an amber ale, all of the Top Four beers here are hoppy and bitter, because if there’s one thing Americans can agree on, it’s that beer should not be easy or enjoyable to drink.

---

---

Cities with the Best Pizza in America

1. Chicago, IL
2. New York City, NY
3. Detroit, MI
4. New Haven, CT

Ranker voters have settled one of the most heated culinary debates in American history, putting the classic, unbeatable New York slice at second place under Chicago deep-dish “pizza.” It’s a very close race, but it seems that a majority of voters prefer the sloshy, mouth-burning glop that Chicago is famous for over the simple delight of thin-crust, New York-style pizza. As impartial judges, our job is to simply to count the votes, not weigh in with our own opinions. That’s why we won’t challenge the results of this poll by pointing out that anything you have to eat with a fork and knife shouldn’t even qualify as pizza.

---

---

Best American Novel

1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
3. The Great Gatsby
4. The Grapes of Wrath

This category is a who’s-who of books your high school English teacher made you read, though later on down the list there are some more controversial books like Slaughterhouse-Five and Fahrenheit 451. Also, as many as 467 people as of this writing are pretending to have both actually read and enjoyed reading The Sound and the Fury, enough to push it up to #17 on the list.

---

Best Tourist Attractions in America

1. Grand Canyon
2. Yellowstone National Park
3. Niagara Falls
4. Statue of Liberty

This Top Four demonstrates just how much Americans value the natural beauty of their native land — three of these four tourist attractions are natural landmarks. The Statue of Liberty is the only item on the Top Four that is human-made, and even that depends on whether or not you consider French people to be human.

---

Best Thing About America

1. Freedom
2. Freedom of Religion
3. The Military
4. You’re Free to Speak Your Mind

Not a huge surprise that three of the top four entries on this list are small variations on the “freedom” theme. Freedom is just one of those things that are inseparable from American culture, along with being home to 22% of the world’s prison population.

---

These stories are crafted using Ranker Insights, which takes over one billion votes cast on Ranker.com and converts them into actionable psychographics about pop culture fans across the world. To learn more about how our Ranker Insights can be customized to serve your business needs, visit insights.ranker.com.