Download or read book The Great American Dream Goes Nightmare written by Rosemary Schmidt and published by . This book was released on 1987-01-01 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Underwater written by Ryan Dezember and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Bruss Real Estate Book Award His assignment was to write about a real-estate frenzy lighting up the Redneck Riviera. So Ryan Dezember settled in and bought a home nearby himself. Then the market crashed, and he became one of the millions of Americans who suddenly owed more on their homes than they were worth. A flood of foreclosures made it impossible to sell. It didn't help that his quaint neighborhood fell into disrepair and drug-induced despair. He had no choice but to become a reluctant and wildly unprofitable landlord to move on. Meanwhile, his reporting showed how the speculative mania that caused the crash opened the U.S. housing market to a much larger breed of investors. In this deeply personal story, Dezember shows how decisions on Wall Street and in Washington played out on his street in a corner of the Sunbelt that was convulsed by the foreclosure crisis. Readers will witness the housing market collapse from Dezember’s perch as a newspaper reporter. First he’s in the boom-to-bust South where a hot-air balloonist named Bob Shallow becomes one of the world’s top selling real-estate agents arranging condo flips, developers flop in spectacular fashion and the law catches up with a beach-town mayor on the take. Later he’s in New York, among financiers like Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman who are building rental empires out of foreclosures, staking claim to the bastion of middle-class wealth: the single-family home. Through it all, Dezember is an underwater homeowner caught up in the mess. A cautionary tale of Wall Street's push to turn homes into assets, Underwater is a powerful, incisive story that chronicles the crash and its aftermath from a fresh perspective—the forgotten, middle-class homeowner.
Download or read book American Dream Or Nightmare written by and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac written by Oonagh McDonald and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book demonstrates how politicians and federal agencies dominated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and took just thirteen years to wreck the American dream of home ownership.
Download or read book Martin Malcolm America written by James H. Cone and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 1992 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reexamines the ideology of the two most prominent leaders of the civil rights movement of the 1960s
Download or read book American Dream American Nightmare written by Kathryn Hume and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2022-08-15 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this celebration of contemporary American fiction, Kathryn Hume explores how estrangement from America has shaped the fiction of a literary generation, which she calls the Generation of the Lost Dream. In breaking down the divisions among standard categories of race, religion, ethnicity, and gender, Hume identifies shared core concerns, values, and techniques among seemingly disparate and unconnected writers including T. Coraghessan Boyle, Ralph Ellison, Russell Banks, Gloria Naylor, Tim O'Brien, Maxine Hong Kingston, Walker Percy, N. Scott Momaday, John Updike, Toni Morrison, William Kennedy, Julia Alvarez, Thomas Pynchon, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Don DeLillo. Hume explores fictional treatments of the slippage in the immigrant experience between America's promise and its reality. She exposes the political link between contemporary stories of lost innocence and liberalism's inadequacies. She also invites us to look at the literary challenge to scientific materialism in various searches for a spiritual dimension in life. The expansive future promised by the American Dream has been replaced, Hume finds, by a sense of tarnished morality and a melancholy loss of faith in America's exceptionalism. American Dream, American Nightmare examines the differing critiques of America embedded in nearly a hundred novels and points to the source for recovery that appeals to many of the authors.
Download or read book The American Dream and the American Nightmare written by Peter Freese and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nightmare Alley written by Mark Osteen and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2013-01-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classic film noir offers more than pesky private eyes and beautiful bad girls—it explores the quest for the not-so-attainable American dream. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Desperate young lovers on the lam (They Live by Night), a cynical con man making a fortune as a mentalist (Nightmare Alley), a penniless pregnant girl mistaken for a wealthy heiress (No Man of Her Own), a wounded veteran who has forgotten his own name (Somewhere in the Night)—this gallery of film noir characters challenges the stereotypes of the wise-cracking detective and the alluring femme fatale. Despite their differences, they all have something in common: a belief in self-reinvention. Nightmare Alley is a thorough examination of how film noir disputes this notion at the heart of the American Dream. Central to many of these films, Mark Osteen argues, is the story of an individual trying, by dint of hard work or, more often, illicit enterprises, to overcome his or her origins and achieve material success. In the wake of World War II, the noir genre tested the dream of upward mobility and the ideas of individualism, liberty, equality, and free enterprise that accompany it. Employing an impressive array of theoretical perspectives (including psychoanalysis, art history, feminism, and music theory) and combining close reading with original primary source research, Nightmare Alley proves both the diversity of classic noir and its potency. This provocative and wide-ranging study revises and refreshes our understanding of noir's characters, themes, and cultural significance.
Download or read book The Myth of the American Dream Dream or Nightmare written by Kristina von Kölln and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academic Paper from the year 2019 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,9, Technical University of Braunschweig, language: English, abstract: This essay will focus on the origin of the American Dream and its key elements on the one hand, and try to prove its veracity on the other hand. Even though the term ‘The American Dream’ became a well-known saying describing an assumed very specific phenomenon, its meaning is as vague as it is ambivalent. It is, nevertheless, a crucial part of the American national identity and a symbol of a nation’s self-conception. One could argue that Thomas Jefferson already lay the foundation of the most famous myth of all time by declaring “these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent,” and are thus entitled to “preservation of life, & liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (Jefferson 243). More than a century later, James Truslow Adams rewrote Jefferson’s words in his novel The Epic of America by saying, “The American dream, the dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement." (Adams 404). While Adams focused on the hope for a better and happier future for everyone, regardless of their social, ethnical or religious decent, Richard Nixon stressed the material aspect in his First Inaugural Address in 1969, by defining "full employment, better housing, excellence in education; in rebuilding our cities and improving our rural areas; in protecting our environment and enhancing the quality of life" (Lawler and Schaefer 84) as key elements of the American Dream. Martin Luther King dreamed of freedom and equality for all American citizens and that they ”will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” (King qtd. in Kirck 82) and two decades later, during his First Inaugural Address in 1981, Ronald Reagan reminded his people of their uniqueness as "too great a nation to limit (them)selves to small dreams." (Reagan qtd. in Grafton 109) Although often merely political calculation during election campaigns, those previously mentioned variations of the most famous dreams of all times illustrate two things; On the one hand that each generation interprets the American Dream in its very own way, and on the other hand, it’s fundamental value for the American society.
Download or read book The American Dream written by John Mikaelian and published by . This book was released on 2014-07-26 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The American Dream and the American Nightmare in Literature by William D Howells and Henry James written by Carolina Hein and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-06 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Constance, 4 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This term paper deals with the origin of the American Dream, with the American Nightmare and with the two novels "The Rise of Silas Lapham" written by William D. Howell (1885) and "The American" by Henry James (1877). The term paper mainly concentrates on the main characters and their social life and shows that the protagonists, who live the way that the term "American Dream" implies, experience the seamy side of the American Dream. The American Dream has a long history which goes back several hundred years. For some people the American Dream might stand for property, for others it might be the image of freedom and equality. By all means, the American Dream promises a more comfortable life and the realization of the deepest dreams. But reality can turn the American Dream into the American Nightmare. Searching for a well paid job to raise their standards of living, people acknowledge that it is difficult to move up the economic ladder. Longing for equal opportunity, people face discrimination due to their race or social class. This term paper deals with the origin of the American Dream and two novels The Rise of Silas Lapham written by William D. Howell, originally published in 1885, and The American by Henry James published in 1877. The term paper mainly concentrates on the main characters and their social life and shows that the protagonists, who live the way that the term "American Dream" implies, experience the seamy side of the American Dream. Before Europeans had moved to the new continent, the first immigrants living in America were Asians (Jordan, Winthrop D./Leon F. Litwack. The United States, Conquering a Continent Volume 1. California: North West, 2003: 1). In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered an unknown continent which was named "America" after the explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Re
Download or read book Here We are written by Aarti Namdev Shahani and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Aarti Shahani’s memoir Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares covers a lot of ground. It traces her family’s journey to a New York City tenement in 1981, travels to elite private schools and suburban neighborhoods, and lands in the criminal justice system. It’s the story of successes, failures, and how unwittingly selling electronics to a Colombian drug cartel shaped the lives of everyone in the Shahani family." -- Publisher
Download or read book American Dream Global Nightmare written by Ziauddin Sardar and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Propelled by its mythology, America pursues its dream relentlessly. Here, the authors expose the dark side of that fantasy: death, suffering, perpetual fear, an increasing divide between rich and poor, a squandering of the human future, and the relentless building of more and more pretexts for future wars.
Download or read book American Dream or American Nightmare About F Scott Fitzgerald s The Great Gatsby written by Emilie Platt and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 2,3, University of Constance, language: English, abstract: The "Great Gatsby" seems to tell a story about a typified American Dream, a young man who was able to escape poverty and living a high-class lifestyle. But after all it cannot be easily determined if it is a story that represents the American Dream or if the Dream he had changed into a Nightmare. In the following, a short outlook about the American Dream in general will be given, the definition and the meaning of the American Dream. Secondly, the topic of the American Dream regarding the "Great Gatsby", the achievements and Gatsby's desire for a better life, will be analyzed. Thirdly the contrariety of the American Dream, the American Nightmare in the novel will be presented with specific symbols that play an important role, his failure and the price he had to pay for his dream.
Download or read book Why We Hate Us written by Dick Meyer and published by Crown. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans are as safe, well fed, securely sheltered, long-lived, free, and healthy as any human beings who have ever lived on the planet. But we are down on America. So why do we hate us? According to Dick Meyer, the following items on this (much abbreviated) list are some of the contributors to our deep disenchantment with our own culture: Cell-phone talkers broadcasting the intimate details of their lives in public spaces Worship of self-awareness, self-realization, and self-fulfillment T-shirts that read, “Eat Me” Facebook, MySpace, and kids being taught to market themselves High-level cheating in business and sports Reality television and the cosmetic surgery boom Multinational corporations that claim, “We care about you.” The decline of organic communities A line of cosmetics called “S.L.U.T.” The phony red state–blue state divide The penetration of OmniMarketing into OmniMedia and the insinuation of both into every facet of our lives You undoubtedly could add to the list with hardly a moment’s thought. In Why We Hate Us, Meyer absolutely nails America’s early-twenty-first-century mood disorder. He points out the most widespread carriers of the why-we-hate-us germs, including the belligerence of partisan politics that perverts our democracy, the decline of once common manners, the vulgarity of Hollywood entertainment, the superficiality and untrustworthiness of the news media, the cult of celebrity, and the disappearance of authentic neighborhoods and voluntary organizations (the kind that have actual meetings where one can hobnob instead of just clicking in an online contribution). Meyer argues—with biting wit and observations that make you want to shout, “Yes! I hate that too!”—that when the social, spiritual, and political turmoil that followed the sixties collided with the technological and media revolution at the turn of the century, something inside us hit overload. American culture no longer reflects our own values. As a result, we are now morally and existentially tired, disoriented, anchorless, and defensive. We hate us and we wonder why. Why We Hate Us reveals why we do and also offers a thoughtful and uplifting prescription for breaking out of our current morass and learning how to hate us less. It is a penetrating but always accessible Culture of Narcissism for a new generation, and it carries forward ideas that resounded with readers in bestsellers such as On Bullshit and Bowling Alone.
Download or read book American Dream American Nightmare written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Rainy Season written by Amy Wilentz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-07-24 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered the best book ever written about Haiti, now updated with a New Introduction, “After the Earthquake,” features first hand-reporting from Haiti weeks after the 2010 earthquake. Through a series of personal journeys, each interwoven with scenes from Haiti’s extraordinary past, Amy Wilentz brings to life this turbulent and fascinating country. Opening with her arrival just days before the fall of Haiti’s President-for-Life, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, Wilentz captures a country electric with the expectation of change: markets that bustle by day explode with gunfire at night; outlaws control country roads; farmers struggle to survive in a barren land; and belief in voodoo and the spirits of the ancestors remains as strong as ever. The Rainy Season demystifies Haiti—a country and a people in cruel and capricious times. From the rebel priest Father Aristide and the street boys under his protection to the military strongmen who pass through the revolving door of power into the gleaming white presidential palace—and the buzzing international press corps members who jet in for a coup and leave the minute it’s over—Wilentz’s Haiti haunts the imagination.
