Download or read book Behold America written by Sarah Churchwell and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2018 The unknown history of two ideas crucial to the struggle over what America stands for In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of twentieth-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases--the "American dream" and "America First"--that once embodied opposing visions for America. Starting as a Republican motto before becoming a hugely influential isolationist slogan during World War I, America First was always closely linked with authoritarianism and white supremacy. The American dream, meanwhile, initially represented a broad vision of democratic and economic equality. Churchwell traces these notions through the 1920s boom, the Depression, and the rise of fascism at home and abroad, laying bare the persistent appeal of demagoguery in America and showing us how it was resisted. At a time when many ask what America's future holds, Behold, America is a revelatory, unvarnished portrait of where we have been.
Download or read book American Dream written by Edward Albee and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 1997-10-01 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For use in schools and libraries only. American Dream and Zoo story: two plays
Download or read book The Negro written by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The American Dream written by Time-Life Books and published by Time Life Medical. This book was released on 1998 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the politics, suburbia, automobiles, art and entertainment, cold war, television, and sports of the 1950s.
Download or read book Who Stole the American Dream written by Hedrick Smith and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize winner Hedrick Smith’s new book is an extraordinary achievement, an eye-opening account of how, over the past four decades, the American Dream has been dismantled and we became two Americas. In his bestselling The Russians, Smith took millions of readers inside the Soviet Union. In The Power Game, he took us inside Washington’s corridors of power. Now Smith takes us across America to show how seismic changes, sparked by a sequence of landmark political and economic decisions, have transformed America. As only a veteran reporter can, Smith fits the puzzle together, starting with Lewis Powell’s provocative memo that triggered a political rebellion that dramatically altered the landscape of power from then until today. This is a book full of surprises and revelations—the accidental beginnings of the 401(k) plan, with disastrous economic consequences for many; the major policy changes that began under Jimmy Carter; how the New Economy disrupted America’s engine of shared prosperity, the “virtuous circle” of growth, and how America lost the title of “Land of Opportunity.” Smith documents the transfer of $6 trillion in middle-class wealth from homeowners to banks even before the housing boom went bust, and how the U.S. policy tilt favoring the rich is stunting America’s economic growth. This book is essential reading for all of us who want to understand America today, or why average Americans are struggling to keep afloat. Smith reveals how pivotal laws and policies were altered while the public wasn’t looking, how Congress often ignores public opinion, why moderate politicians got shoved to the sidelines, and how Wall Street often wins politically by hiring over 1,400 former government officials as lobbyists. Smith talks to a wide range of people, telling the stories of Americans high and low. From political leaders such as Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and Martin Luther King, Jr., to CEOs such as Al Dunlap, Bob Galvin, and Andy Grove, to heartland Middle Americans such as airline mechanic Pat O’Neill, software systems manager Kristine Serrano, small businessman John Terboss, and subcontractor Eliseo Guardado, Smith puts a human face on how middle-class America and the American Dream have been undermined. This magnificent work of history and reportage is filled with the penetrating insights, provocative discoveries, and the great empathy of a master journalist. Finally, Smith offers ideas for restoring America’s great promise and reclaiming the American Dream. Praise for Who Stole the American Dream? “[A] sweeping, authoritative examination of the last four decades of the American economic experience.”—The Huffington Post “Some fine work has been done in explaining the mess we’re in. . . . But no book goes to the headwaters with the precision, detail and accessibility of Smith.”—The Seattle Times “Sweeping in scope . . . [Smith] posits some steps that could alleviate the problems of the United States.”—USA Today “Brilliant . . . [a] remarkably comprehensive and coherent analysis of and prescriptions for America’s contemporary economic malaise.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Smith enlivens his narrative with portraits of the people caught up in events, humanizing complex subjects often rendered sterile in economic analysis. . . . The human face of the story is inseparable from the history.”—Reuters
Download or read book Oscar s American Dream written by Barry Wittenstein and published by Schwartz & Wade. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you want to see 20th century American history unfold before your eyes, stand on a city street corner and watch it change! It all starts when an immigrant named Oscar opens a barber shop... When Oscar lands on Ellis Island, he has only a suitcase and a down payment in his hands. And he has a dream-- to own his own barbershop. After it opens on the corner of Front St. and Second Ave, Oscar's barbershop becomes a beloved local fixture... until the day Oscar decides to move on and become a subway conductor. Over the years, this barbershop will change hands to become a lady's clothing store, then a soup kitchen. A coffee shop follows, then the space becomes an army recruitment center, then a candy shop. As the years pass and the world changes, the proud corner store stands tall, watching American history unfold around it. Barry Wittenstein and debut husband-and-wife illustration team Kristen and Kevin Howdeshell tell the rich, fascinating story of key moments in American history, as reflected through the eyes--and the patrons--of the corner store.
Download or read book 100 Years of Hollywood written by Time-Life Books and published by Time Life Medical. This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gives history of movies, stars, and Hollywood.
Download or read book Chasing the American Dream written by Mark Robert Rank PhD and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States has been epitomized as a land of opportunity, where hard work and skill can bring personal success and economic well-being. The American Dream has captured the imagination of people from all walks of life, and to many, it represents the heart and soul of the country. But there is another, darker side to the bargain that America strikes with its people -- it is the price we pay for our individual pursuit of the American Dream. That price can be found in the economic hardship present in the lives of millions of Americans. In Chasing the American Dream, leading social scientists Mark Robert Rank, Thomas A. Hirschl, and Kirk A. Foster provide a new and innovative look into a curious dynamic -- the tension between the promise of economic opportunities and rewards and the amount of turmoil that Americans encounter in their quest for those rewards. The authors explore questions such as: -What percentage of Americans achieve affluence, and how much income mobility do we actually have? -Are most Americans able to own a home, and at what age? -How is it that nearly 80 percent of us will experience significant economic insecurity at some point between ages 25 and 60? -How can access to the American Dream be increased? Combining personal interviews with dozens of Americans and a longitudinal study covering 40 years of income data, the authors tell the story of the American Dream and reveal a number of surprises. The risk of economic vulnerability has increased substantially over the past four decades, and the American Dream is becoming harder to reach and harder to keep. Yet for most Americans, the Dream lies not in wealth, but in economic security, pursuing one's passions, and looking toward the future. Chasing the American Dream provides us with a new understanding into the dynamics that shape our fortunes and a deeper insight into the importance of the American Dream for the future of the country.
Download or read book The American Dream written by Cal Jillson and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2016-11-18 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: these words have long represented the promise of America, a “shimmering vision of a fruitful country open to all who come, learn, work, save, invest, and play by the rules.” In 2004, Cal Jillson took stock of this vision and showed how the nation’s politicians deployed the American Dream, both in campaigns and governance, to hold the American people to their program. “Full of startling ideas that make sense,” NPR's senior correspondent Juan Williams remarked, Jillson's book offered the fullest exploration yet of the origins and evolution of the ideal that serves as the foundation of our national ethos and collective self-image. Nonetheless, in the dozen years since Pursuing the American Dream was published, the American Dream has fared poorly. The decline of social mobility and the rise of income inequality—to say nothing of the extraordinary social, political, and economic developments of the Bush and Obama presidencies—have convinced many that the American Dream is no more. This is the concern that Jillson addresses in his new book, The American Dream: In History, Politics, and Fiction, which juxtaposes the claims of political, social, and economic elite against the view of American life consistently offered in our national literature. Our great novelists, from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville to John Updike, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, and beyond highlight the limits and challenges of life—the difficulty if not impossibility of the dream—especially for racial, ethnic, and religious minorities as well as women. His book takes us through the changing meaning and reality of the American Dream, from the seventeenth century to the present day, revealing a distinct, sustained separation between literary and political elite. The American Dream, Jillson suggests, took shape early in our national experience and defined the nation throughout its growth and development, yet it has always been challenged, even rejected, in our most celebrated literature. This is no different in our day, when what we believe about the American Dream reveals as much about its limits as its possibilities.
Download or read book Financing the American Dream written by Lendol Calder and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once there was a golden age of American thrift, when citizens lived sensibly within their means and worked hard to stay out of debt. The growing availability of credit in this century, however, has brought those days to an end--undermining traditional moral virtues such as prudence, diligence, and the delay of gratification while encouraging reckless consumerism. Or so we commonly believe. In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Lendol Calder shows that this conception of the past is in fact a myth. Calder presents the first book-length social and cultural history of the rise of consumer credit in America. He focuses on the years between 1890 and 1940, when the legal, institutional, and moral bases of today's consumer credit were established, and in an epilogue takes the story up to the present. He draws on a wide variety of sources--including personal diaries and letters, government and business records, newspapers, advertisements, movies, and the words of such figures as Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, and P. T. Barnum--to show that debt has always been with us. He vigorously challenges the idea that consumer credit has eroded traditional values. Instead, he argues, monthly payments have imposed strict, externally reinforced disciplines on consumers, making the culture of consumption less a playground for hedonists than an extension of what Max Weber called the "iron cage" of disciplined rationality and hard work. Throughout, Calder keeps in clear view the human face of credit relations. He re-creates the Dickensian world of nineteenth-century pawnbrokers, takes us into the dingy backstairs offices of loan sharks, into small-town shops and New York department stores, and explains who resorted to which types of credit and why. He also traces the evolving moral status of consumer credit, showing how it changed from a widespread but morally dubious practice into an almost universal and generally accepted practice by World War II. Combining clear, rigorous arguments with a colorful, narrative style, Financing the American Dream will attract a wide range of academic and general readers and change how we understand one of the most important and overlooked aspects of American social and economic life.
Download or read book Our Kids written by Robert D. Putnam and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The bestselling author of Bowling Alone offers [an] ... examination of the American Dream in crisis--how and why opportunities for upward mobility are diminishing, jeopardizing the prospects of an ever larger segment of Americans"--
Download or read book Restoring the American Dream written by Robert Ringer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Completely updated edition of one of the classic works of conservative literature Long before the advent of conservative talk radio and Fox News, Robert Ringer was an outspoken advocate for the cause of freedom and free enterprise. In this classic work–updated for the 21st century–Ringer’s basic premise is that liberty must be given a higher priority than all other objectives. The economic and political calamity that he warned about in the late seventies is now upon us, and his new edition of Restoring the American Dream is sure to resonate with the feelings of today’s angry voters. In his book, Ringer explains that: • The American Dream is not about increased government benefits and government-created “rights,” but, rather, about individualism, self responsibility, and freedom–including the freedom to succeed or fail on one’s own • The barbarians are not at the gates; they are already inside • Ordinary citizens no longer tell their elected officials what to do. Rather, government tells them what to do–and backs it up with force • The desire of people to band together to bring about quick, short term solutions to their problems through government intervention has perpetuated a cycle that has nearly destroyed the American Dream With Washington continuing to expand government power and spending at a record pace, Restoring the American Dream is a voice of sanity in a world gone mad.
Download or read book American Dream written by Jason DeParle and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-08-30 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this definitive work, two-time Pulitzer finalist Jason DeParle, author of A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves, cuts between the mean streets of Milwaukee and the corridors of Washington to produce a masterpiece of literary journalism. At the heart of the story are three cousins whose different lives follow similar trajectories. Leaving welfare, Angie puts her heart in her work. Jewell bets on an imprisoned man. Opal guards a tragic secret that threatens her kids and her life. DeParle traces their family history back six generations to slavery and weaves poor people, politicians, reformers, and rogues into a spellbinding epic. With a vivid sense of humanity, DeParle demonstrates that although we live in a country where anyone can make it, generation after generation some families don’t. To read American Dream is to understand why.
Download or read book Am rica s Dream written by Esmeralda Santiago and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: América Gonzalez is a hotel housekeeper on an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, cleaning up after wealthy foreigners who don't look her In the eye. Her alcoholic mother resents her; her married boyfriend, Correa, beats her; and their fourteen-year-old daughter thinks life would be better anywhere but with América. So when América is offered the chance to work as alive-in housekeeper and nanny for a family in Westchester County, New York, she takes it as a sign that a door to escape has been opened. Yet even as América revels in the comparative luxury of her new life, daring to care about a man other than Correa, she is faced with dramatic proof that no matter what she does, she can't get away from her past.
Download or read book I Was Their American Dream written by Malaka Gharib and published by Clarkson Potter. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A portrait of growing up in America, and a portrait of family, that pulls off the feat of being both intimately specific and deeply universal at the same time. I adored this book.”—Jonny Sun “[A] high-spirited graphical memoir . . . Gharib’s wisdom about the power and limits of racial identity is evident in the way she draws.”—NPR WINNER OF THE ARAB AMERICAN BOOK AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews I Was Their American Dream is at once a coming-of-age story and a reminder of the thousands of immigrants who come to America in search for a better life for themselves and their children. The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigated her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid. Malaka Gharib's triumphant graphic memoir brings to life her teenage antics and illuminates earnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised. Malaka's story is a heartfelt tribute to the American immigrants who have invested their future in the promise of the American dream. Praise for I Was Their American Dream “In this time when immigration is such a hot topic, Malaka Gharib puts an engaging human face on the issue. . . . The push and pull first-generation kids feel is portrayed with humor and love, especially humor. . . . Gharib pokes fun at all of the cultures she lives in, able to see each of them with an outsider’s wry eye, while appreciating them with an insider’s close experience. . . . The question of ‘What are you?’ has never been answered with so much charm.”—Marissa Moss, New York Journal of Books “Forthright and funny, Gharib fiercely claims her own American dream.”—Booklist “Thoughtful and relatable, this touching account should be shared across generations.”– Library Journal “This charming graphic memoir riffs on the joys and challenges of developing a unique ethnic identity.”– Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The American Dream Revisited written by Gary Sirak and published by Morgan James Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-06 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True stories that reveal why hard work and determination still count—and how the promise of America is still very much alive. The book is a collection of compelling stories from people that overcame a variety of adversities to achieve their American Dream. Featuring accounts of people facing a wide variety of challenges and coming from a wide variety of backgrounds, this book will turn skeptics into believers by way of everyday life examples. It instills inspiration and hope—reminding us that no matter the obstacles, this is still the land of opportunity.
Download or read book 100 Years of the American Dream written by Michael Kearney and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-09-26 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection offers examinations of the concept of the American Dream across a broad and diverse range of works. The analytical methods utilized by the authors, who are all clearly extremely knowledgeable experts in their fields, are as unique as the content they examine is varied. Each chapter offers innovative insights, which, while founded on literary critique, transcend the field of literature and touch upon issues related to economics, education, gender, immigration, psychology, race, and religion, to name but a few.
