Download or read book World War II and the American Dream written by Margaret Crawford and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: with essays by Peter S. Reed, Robert Friedel, Margaret Crawford, Greg Hise, Joel Davidson, and Michael Sorkin Among the legacies of World War II was a massive building program on a scale that America had not seen before and has not seen since. The war effort created thousands of factories, homes, even entire cities throughout the country. Many of these structures still stand, the physical evidence of an unprecedented ability to harness the power and resources of a people. The complex legacy of this most notable period in our nation's history is discussed from a different perspective by each contributor. Peter S. Reed, Associate Curator of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, details the rise of modern architecture during the war -- housing designs that used the latest ideas in prefabricated construction methods, lightweight materials, innovative technologies, and a corporate and institutional aesthetic that helped popularize modernism as the appropriate image of American industrial might and corporate success. Robert Friedel, Professor of History at the University of Maryland, documents the development of new materials, especially plastics, and discusses techniques for employing traditional materials in novel ways. Margaret Crawford, Chair of the History and Theory of Architecture Program at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, explores the struggle of women and blacks for public housing. Greg Hise, Assistant Professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Southern California, considers how the construction of large-scale residential communities near defense plants prefigured postwar suburbia. Joel Davidson, historian of the "World War II and the American Dream" exhibition, analyzes the impact of the war's building program on the postwar military-industrial complex. Finally, Michael Sorkin, architect and writer, explores the migration of certain values and aesthetics from the necessities of war to the choices of peace. Among these are images of speed, camouflage, ruin, totalization, and flight. Copublished with The National Building Museum, Washington, D.C.
Download or read book Seeking the American Dream written by Robert C. Hauhart and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-11 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historically, the United States has been viewed by generations of immigrants as the land of opportunity, where through hard work one can prosper and make a better life. The American Dream is perhaps the United States’ most common export. For many Americans, though, questions remain about whether the American Dream can be achieved in the twenty-first century. Americans, faced with global competition and increased social complexity, wonder whether their dwindling natural resources, polarized national and local politics, and often unregulated capitalism can support the American Dream today. This book examines the ideas and experiences that have formed the American Dream, assesses its meaning for Americans, and evaluates its prospects for the future.
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 379 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 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 Over Here written by Edward Humes and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here are the stories of some of the men and women returning from World War II, and how their lives changed because of the G.I. Bill of Rights, and how this country changed because of them. The effects were immediate and enduring--the suburbs, the middle class, America's ever-increasing number of college graduates, the lunar landing--all are tied to the G.I. Bill.
Download or read book Expanding the American Dream written by Barbara M. Kelly and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1993-02-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been written about the housing policies of the Depression and the Postwar period. Much less has been written of the houses built as a result of these policies, or the lives of the families who lived in them. Using the houses of Levittown, Long Island, as cultural artifacts, this book examines the relationship between the government-sponsored, mass-produced housing built after World War II, the families who lived in it, and the society that fostered it. Beginning with the basic four-room, slab-based Cape Cods and Ranches, Levittown homeowners invested time and effort, barter and money in the expansion and redesign of their houses. The author shows how this gradual process has altered the socioeconomic nature of the community as well, bringing Levittown fully into the mainstream of middle-class America. This book works on several levels. For planners, it offers a reassessment of the housing policies of the 1940s and '50s, suggesting that important lessons remain to be learned from the Levittown experience. For historians, it offers new insights into the nature of the suburbanization process that followed World War II. And for those who wish to understand the subtle workings of their own domestic space within their lives, it offers food for speculation.
Download or read book The All Consuming Nation written by Mark H. Lytle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his 1958 "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev, Richard Nixon argued that the freedom to consume defined the American way of life. High wages, full employment, new technologies, and a rapid growth in population known as the "Baby Boom" ushered in a golden age of economic growth. By the end of the twentieth century, consumerism triumphed over communism, socialism, and all other isms seeking to win hearts and minds around the world. Advertising, popular culture, and mass media persuaded Americans that shopping was both spiritually fulfilling and a patriotic virtue. Mark Lytle argues that Nixon's view of consumer democracy contained fatal flaws -- if unregulated, it would wholly ignore the creativedestruction that, in destroying jobs, erodes the capacity to consume. The All-Consuming Nation also examines how planners failed to take into account the environmental costs, as early warning signs--whether smog over Los Angeles, the overuse of toxic chemicals such as DDT, or the Cuyahoga River in flames--provided evidence that all was not well. Environmentalists from Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich to Ralph Nader and Al Gore cautioned that modern consumerism imposed unsustainable costs on the natural world. Not for lack of warning, climate change became the defining issue of the twenty-first century. The All-Consuming Nation investigates the environmental and sociocultural costs of the consumer capitalism framework set in place in the 20th century, shedding light on the consequences of a national identity forged through mass consumption.
Download or read book The Humanities and the Dream of America written by Geoffrey Galt Harpham and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this bracing and original book, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that today’s humanities are an invention of the American academy in the years following World War II, when they were first conceived as an expression of American culture and an instrument of American national interests. The humanities portray a “dream of America” in two senses: they represent an aspiration of Americans since the first days of the Republic for a state so secure and prosperous that people could enjoy and appreciate culture for its own sake; and they embody in academic terms an idealized conception of the American national character. Although they are struggling to retain their status in America, the concept of the humanities has spread to other parts of the world and remains one of America's most distinctive and valuable contributions to higher education. The Humanities and the Dream of America explores a number of linked problems that have emerged in recent years: the role, at once inspiring and disturbing, played by philology in the formation of the humanities; the reasons for the humanities’ perpetual state of “crisis”; the shaping role of philanthropy in the humanities; and the new possibilities for literary study offered by the subject of pleasure. Framed by essays that draw on Harpham’s pedagogical experiences abroad and as a lecturer at the U.S. Air Force Academy, as well as his vantage as director of the National Humanities Center, this book provides an essential perspective on the history, ideology, and future of this important topic.
Download or read book Fighting for the Dream written by Victoria Moy and published by Chinese Historical Society of Southern California. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fighting for the Dream is a collection of oral histories of 40 Chinese American men and women-ages 24 to 94-who served in wars from World War II to conflicts in Afghanistan. These individuals defied boundaries, went against their cultural grain, and changed history. Through their personal stories, we see a greater tapestry that is the story of America in the last hundred years. This collection includes interviews with the first Asian American general (John Fugh), the first Asian American Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Management Policy (Frederick Pang), the first Asian American full unrestricted Marine (Kurt Lee), the first Asian American National Commander of the American Legion (Fang Wong), the first Asian American judge in New York State (Randall Eng), as well as some of the 20,000 Chinese Americans - a quarter of the Chinese American population at the time - who served during World War II. This collection also features the stories of: World War II veterans Genson Lum, Peter Woo, Kay Wong Chin, Dr. Wing Mar, Al Chinn, Earl Jung, Tom Wah Sun Lew, Mack Pong, Sam Jue, Richard Y.W. Chin, Richard Goon, Lester Fong, Elsie Seetoo, Wayne H. Wong Korean War veterans Kurt Lee, Rita K. Chow Vietnam War veterans John Gerald Miki, David J. Louie, Gabe Mui, Richard Wong, Thomas Wing Persian Gulf War veterans Tony Lee, Mimi Wang Iraq & Afghanistan veterans Chi Szeto, Pakee Fang, Michael Chan, See-wan Szeto, Welton Chang, Wilem Wong, Cindy Wu, Howard Chin, Cliff Chen, Juliet Shum, Mo Pan, Astrid Szeto, William Chan
Download or read book The American Dream written by Lesset Clarke and published by . This book was released on 2021-08-04 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever heard of a young lady who followed her dreams and got the biggest surprise of her life? Lesset is that lady. She left Jamaica, a beautiful tropical island, with nothing but sunshine-a place where one doesn't need a vacation-for America, a country with four seasons (spring, summer, fall, and winter). Most of all, she tends to enjoy the snow and a lot more for one to know. So come with Lesset on her journey and many more to come. Live, love, and stay blessed. See you in my next book.
Download or read book America s Dream Palace written by Osamah F. Khalil and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-17 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In T. E. Lawrence’s classic memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence of Arabia claimed that he inspired a “dream palace” of Arab nationalism. What he really inspired, however, was an American idea of the area now called the Middle East that has shaped U.S. interventions over the course of a century, with sometimes tragic consequences. America’s Dream Palace brings into sharp focus the ways U.S. foreign policy has shaped the emergence of expertise concerning this crucial, often turbulent, and misunderstood part of the world. America’s growing stature as a global power created a need for expert knowledge about different regions. When it came to the Middle East, the U.S. government was initially content to rely on Christian missionaries and Orientalist scholars. After World War II, however, as Washington’s national security establishment required professional expertise in Middle Eastern affairs, it began to cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship with academic institutions. Newly created programs at Harvard, Princeton, and other universities became integral to Washington’s policymaking in the region. The National Defense Education Act of 1958, which aligned America’s educational goals with Cold War security concerns, proved a boon for Middle Eastern studies. But charges of anti-Americanism within the academy soon strained this cozy relationship. Federal funding for area studies declined, while independent think tanks with ties to the government flourished. By the time the Bush administration declared its Global War on Terror, Osamah Khalil writes, think tanks that actively pursued agendas aligned with neoconservative goals were the drivers of America’s foreign policy.
Download or read book American Dreams written by H. W. Brands and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From bestselling historian H. W. Brands, an incisive chronicle of the events and trends that guided-and sometimes misguided-our nation from the A-bomb to the iPhone. For a brief, bright moment in 1945, America stood at its apex, looking back on victory not only against the Axis powers but against the Great Depression, and looking ahead to seemingly limitless power and promise. What we've done with that power and promise over the past six decades is a vitally important and fascinating topic that has rarely been tackled in one volume, and never by a historian of H. W. Brands's stature. As American Dreams opens, Brands shows us a country dramatically different from our own-more unequal in social terms but more equal economically, more religious and rural but also more liberal and more wholeheartedly engaged with the rest of the world. As he traces the changes we have gone through as a nation, he reveals the great themes and dreams that have driven America-the rising focus on individual rights and pleasures, the growing distance between our global goals and those of the rest of the world, and the inexorable dissolution of a shared sense of what it means to be American. In Brands's adroit hands, these trends unfold through a character-driven narrative that sheds brilliant light on the obvious highs and lows-from Watergate to the Berlin Wall, from Apollo 11 to 9/11, from My Lai to shock and awe. But he also chronicles the surprising impact of less celebrated events and trends. Through his eyes, we realize the sweeping significance of the immigration reforms of the 1960s, which gradually transformed American society. We come to grasp the vast impact of abandoning the gold standard in 1971, which enabled both globalization and the current financial crisis. We ponder the unnerving results of CNN's debut in 1979, which sped up the news cycle and permanently changed our foreign policy by putting its effects live on our TV screens. Blending political and cultural history with his keen sense of the spirit of the times, Brands captures the national experience through the last six decades and reveals the still-unfolding legacy of dreams born out of a global cataclysm.
Download or read book Nisei linguists Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service During World War II Paperbound written by James C. McNaughton and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2006 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book tells the story of an unusual group of American soldiers in World War II, second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) who served as interpreters and translators in the Military Intelligence Service."--Preface.
Download or read book Transaction Man written by Nicholas Lemann and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last generation, the United States has undergone seismic changes. Stable institutions have given way to frictionless transactions, which are celebrated no matter what collateral damage they generate. The concentration of great wealth has coincided with the fraying of social ties and the rise of inequality. How did all this come about? In Transaction Man, Nicholas Lemann explains the United States’—and the world’s—great transformation by examining three remarkable individuals who epitomized and helped create their eras. Adolf Berle, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s chief theorist of the economy, imagined a society dominated by large corporations, which a newly powerful federal government had forced to become benign and stable institutions, contributing to the public good by offering stable employment and generous pensions. By the 1970s, the corporations’ large stockholders grew restive under this regime, and their chief theoretician, Harvard Business School’s Michael Jensen, insisted that firms should maximize shareholder value, whatever the consequences. Today, Silicon Valley titans such as the LinkedIn cofounder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman hope “networks” can reknit our social fabric. Lemann interweaves these fresh and vivid profiles with a history of the Morgan Stanley investment bank from the 1930s through the financial crisis of 2008, while also tracking the rise and fall of a working-class Chicago neighborhood and the family-run car dealerships at its heart. Incisive and sweeping, Transaction Man is the definitive account of the reengineering of America—with enormous consequences for all of us.
Download or read book The Third Coast written by Thomas L. Dyja and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Chicago Tribune‘s 2013 Heartland Prize A critically acclaimed history of Chicago at mid-century, featuring many of the incredible personalities that shaped American culture Before air travel overtook trains, nearly every coast-to-coast journey included a stop in Chicago, and this flow of people and commodities made it the crucible for American culture and innovation. In luminous prose, Chicago native Thomas Dyja re-creates the story of the city in its postwar prime and explains its profound impact on modern America—from Chess Records to Playboy, McDonald’s to the University of Chicago. Populated with an incredible cast of characters, including Mahalia Jackson, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, Sun Ra, Simone de Beauvoir, Nelson Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Turkel, and Mayor Richard J. Daley, The Third Coast recalls the prominence of the Windy City in all its grandeur.
Download or read book Asian American Dreams written by Helen Zia and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2001-05-15 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " ... about the transformation of Asian Americans ... into a self-identified racial group that is influencing every aspect of American society."--Jacket.
Download or read book No Ordinary Time written by Doris Kearns Goodwin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 790 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic about the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, and how it shaped the nation while steering it through the Great Depression and the outset of World War II. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story lines—Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage and remarkable partnership, Eleanor’s life as First Lady, and FDR’s White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin effectively melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born.
