Download or read book The American Dream Is Not Dead written by Michael R. Strain and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Populists on both sides of the political aisle routinely announce that the American Dream is dead. According to them, the game has been rigged by elites, workers can’t get ahead, wages have been stagnant for decades, and the middle class is dying. Michael R. Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, disputes this rhetoric as wrong and dangerous. In this succinctly argued volume, he shows that, on measures of economic opportunity and quality of life, there has never been a better time to be alive in America. He backs his argument with overwhelming—and underreported—data to show how the facts favor realistic optimism. He warns, however, that the false prophets of populism pose a serious danger to our current and future prosperity. Their policies would leave workers worse off. And their erroneous claim that the American Dream is dead could discourage people from taking advantage of real opportunities to better their lives. If enough people start to believe the Dream is dead, they could, in effect, kill it. To prevent this self-fulfilling prophecy, Strain’s book is urgent reading for anyone feeling the pull of the populists. E. J. Dionne and Henry Olsen provide spirited responses to Strain’s argument.
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 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 The American Dream Deferred written by Cory Booker and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) shares the story of his father's journey from poverty to middle-class prosperity, but says the bargain that helped his father and other workers achieve the American Dream is now broken. Sen. Booker reflects on the trends and practices contributing to stagnant wages in the United States, including a corporate culture that favors shareholder payouts over investments in workers; barriers to worker mobility, like non-compete clauses; and the “fissuring” of the workforce, as companies today are more likely to contract out labor to low-cost vendors rather than employ directly. Senator Booker calls for policies that will address these and related challenges, expand opportunity for all Americans, and restore the bargain for all who seek it.
Download or read book There Will Be No Miracles Here written by Casey Gerald and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR AND THE NEW YORK TIMES A PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB PICK "Somehow Casey Gerald has pulled off the most urgently political, most deeply personal, and most engagingly spiritual statement of our time by just looking outside his window and inside himself. Extraordinary." —Marlon James "Staccato prose and peripatetic storytelling combine the cadences of the Bible with an urgency reminiscent of James Baldwin in this powerfully emotional memoir." —BookPage The testament of a boy and a generation who came of age as the world came apart—a generation searching for a new way to live. Casey Gerald comes to our fractured times as a uniquely visionary witness whose life has spanned seemingly unbridgeable divides. His story begins at the end of the world: Dallas, New Year's Eve 1999, when he gathers with the congregation of his grandfather's black evangelical church to see which of them will be carried off. His beautiful, fragile mother disappears frequently and mysteriously; for a brief idyll, he and his sister live like Boxcar Children on her disability checks. When Casey--following in the footsteps of his father, a gridiron legend who literally broke his back for the team--is recruited to play football at Yale, he enters a world he's never dreamed of, the anteroom to secret societies and success on Wall Street, in Washington, and beyond. But even as he attains the inner sanctums of power, Casey sees how the world crushes those who live at its margins. He sees how the elite perpetuate the salvation stories that keep others from rising. And he sees, most painfully, how his own ascension is part of the scheme. There Will Be No Miracles Here has the arc of a classic rags-to-riches tale, but it stands the American Dream narrative on its head. If to live as we are is destroying us, it asks, what would it mean to truly live? Intense, incantatory, shot through with sly humor and quiet fury, There Will Be No Miracles Hereinspires us to question--even shatter--and reimagine our most cherished myths.
Download or read book Real Leaders Don t Follow written by Steve Tobak and published by Entrepreneur Press. This book was released on 2015-10-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leaders Lead. Followers Follow. You Can't Do Both. Acknowledging the great irony that most of today's inspiring entrepreneurs are following the crowd instead of doing what innovative leaders like Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk did to become successful, Silicon Valley management consultant Steve Tobak delivers some truth: Nobody ever made it big by doing what everyone else is doing. Drawing upon decades of personal experience with hundreds of accomplished entrepreneurs, CEOs, and venture capitalists, Tobak provides a unique perspective on today's technology revolution, exposes popular myths that masquerade as common wisdom and shows you what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur and an exceptional business leaders in today's highly competitive world.
Download or read book Dream Hoarders written by Richard V. Reeves and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dream Hoarders sparked a national conversation on the dangerous separation between the upper middle class and everyone else. Now in paperback and newly updated for the age of Trump, Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Reeves is continuing to challenge the class system in America. In America, everyone knows that the top 1 percent are the villains. The rest of us, the 99 percent—we are the good guys. Not so, argues Reeves. The real class divide is not between the upper class and the upper middle class: it is between the upper middle class and everyone else. The separation of the upper middle class from everyone else is both economic and social, and the practice of “opportunity hoarding”—gaining exclusive access to scarce resources—is especially prevalent among parents who want to perpetuate privilege to the benefit of their children. While many families believe this is just good parenting, it is actually hurting others by reducing their chances of securing these opportunities. There is a glass floor created for each affluent child helped by his or her wealthy, stable family. That glass floor is a glass ceiling for another child. Throughout Dream Hoarders, Reeves explores the creation and perpetuation of opportunity hoarding, and what should be done to stop it, including controversial solutions such as ending legacy admissions to school. He offers specific steps toward reducing inequality and asks the upper middle class to pay for it. Convinced of their merit, members of the upper middle class believes they are entitled to those tax breaks and hoarded opportunities. After all, they aren't the 1 percent. The national obsession with the super rich allows the upper middle class to convince themselves that they are just like the rest of America. In Dream Hoarders, Reeves argues that in many ways, they are worse, and that changes in policy and social conscience are the only way to fix the broken system.
Download or read book Death of a Salesman written by Arthur Miller and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1998-05-01 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of a salesman’s deferred American dream Ever since it was first performed in 1949, Death of a Salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity—and a play that compresses epic extremes of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of an American living room. "By common consent, this is one of the finest dramas in the whole range of the American theater." —Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times "So simple, central, and terrible that the run of playwrights would neither care nor dare to attempt it." —Time
Download or read book The Epic of America written by James Truslow Adams and published by Simon Publications. This book was released on 2001-10-01 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautifully written story of America's historical heritage, by one of the country's greatest historians.
Download or read book Cuz written by Danielle Allen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-11-09 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Unbearably moving' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The story of a young man's coming of age, a tender tribute to a life lost, and a devastating analysis of a broken system. Aged 15 and living in LA, Michael Allen was arrested for a botched carjacking. He was tried as an adult and sentenced to thirteen years behind bars. After growing up in prison Michael was then released aged 26, only to be murdered three years later. In this deeply personal yet clear-eyed memoir, Danielle Allen reconstructs her cousin's life to try and understand how this tragedy came to pass. We get to know Michael himself through the eyes of a devoted relative, moving from his first steps to his first love through to the day of his arrest, his coming of age in prison, and his attempts to make up for lost time after his release. We learn what it's like to grow up in a city carved up by invisible gang borders; and we learn how a generation has been lost. With honesty and insight, Cuz circles around its subject, exposing it from all angles to reveal the shocking reality of a broken system. The result is a devastatingly powerful yet reasoned tribute to a life lost too soon. 'The book pleads with us to find the moral imagination to break the American pattern of racial abuse. Allen's ambitious, breathtaking book challenges the moral composition of the world it inhabits by telling all who listen: I loved my cousin and he loved me, and I know he'd be alive if you loved him, too' Kiese Laymon
Download or read book The American Dream written by Dan Rather and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2002-05-07 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when we are once again talking and thinking about the meaning of America, bestselling author and award-winning journalist Dan Rather provides a powerful look at Americans who struggle to achieve their desires and ambitions. With the stories of ordinary men and women accomplishing the extraordinary, Rather demonstrates how the American dream brings us together and guides us, as it has for more than 200 years. For some, the American dream is simply to own a home or rise out of poverty. Some wish to serve God, country, or community. There are those who want to learn to read or run their own business. Still others simply wish to exercise fundamental American rights: to openly practice their religion and to speak what is in their minds and hearts. Stirring and provocative, The American Dream illustrates that the basic American desire for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is alive and well. It also confirms what our founding fathers always believed: that we are a country of visionaries, in ways big and small.
Download or read book The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complete edition of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Written in and describing the decadent period of 1920's America, Fitzgerald's lyrical verse is a tragically simple love story that is strangely profound. This is a haunting classic that stays with the reader.
Download or read book Stakes Is High written by Mychal Denzel Smith and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brave, clear-eyed, and passionate, Stakes Is High is the book we need to guide us past crisis mode and through an uncertain future. The events of the past decade have forced us to reckon with who we are and who we want to be. We have been invested in a set of beliefs about our American identity: our exceptionalism, the inevitable rightness of our path, the promise that hard work and determination will carry us to freedom. But in Stakes Is High, Mychal Denzel Smith confronts the shortcomings of these stories -- and with the American Dream itself -- and calls on us to live up to the principles we profess but fail to realize. In a series of incisive essays, Smith exposes the stark contradictions at the heart of American life, holding all of us, individually and as a nation, to account. We've gotten used to looking away, but the fissures and casual violence of institutional oppression are ever-present. There is a future that is not as grim as our past. In this profound work, Smith helps us envision it with care, honesty, and imagination.
Download or read book Is the American Dream a Myth written by Kate Burns and published by Greenhaven Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the concept of the American dream from different perspectives using both primary and secondary sources.
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 Jason Rosenthal and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When people are asked what they think the American dream is, they will often say it's mainly about economic opportunity. However, there is way more behind the American dream. The fact that one of the world's most powerful countries is founded upon this idea, which originated centuries ago, shows its importance for the United States. Whether its Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" or Barack Obama's "Yes, we can", the American dream has been used by many national figures in America and is so profound for the American life. This paper tries to analyse three essential questions concerning the American dream and its future presence in the United States. The first question is about the individuality of the American dream, which creates questions like: "Who is responsible for the American dream?" or "Who benefits from the American dream?" The second question is about the mortality of the American dream. The paper' intent is not to find out whether the American dream is dead, but rather questions whether the idea is immortal. The last question is about a connection between the confidence of Americans in the idea and adverse changes in the situations of the American dream.
Download or read book The American Dream It s Not Forgotten written by Dalis Freixa and published by . This book was released on 2009-12-04 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
