Download or read book American Dream Becomes the Global Nightmare written by Ken Koenen and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2011-02-23 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ken Koenen is a California attorney with a Masters Degree in Tax Law, who has spent the last five years on cases involving people who either were victims of, or in some cases, followed the crowd who abused the loan programs that were partially to blame of today's economic crisis. Ken's background and practice is in real estate, mortgage and taxation and he has consulted with hundreds of people about the tax and legal ramifications of foreclosures, short sales and possible bankruptcy.He will provide some insight into the future of real estate and how to hopefully learn meaningful lessons from this disaster.
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 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 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 Between the World and Me written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by One World. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
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 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 Killing the Natives written by Guy Randall McPherson and published by Dorrance Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book My Underground American Dream written by Julissa Arce and published by Center Street. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A National Bestseller! What does an undocumented immigrant look like? What kind of family must she come from? How could she get into this country? What is the true price she must pay to remain in the United States? JULISSA ARCE knows firsthand that the most common, preconceived answers to those questions are sometimes far too simple-and often just plain wrong. On the surface, Arce's story reads like a how-to manual for achieving the American dream: growing up in an apartment on the outskirts of San Antonio, she worked tirelessly, achieved academic excellence, and landed a coveted job on Wall Street, complete with a six-figure salary. The level of professional and financial success that she achieved was the very definition of the American dream. But in this brave new memoir, Arce digs deep to reveal the physical, financial, and emotional costs of the stunning secret that she, like many other high-achieving, successful individuals in the United States, had been forced to keep not only from her bosses, but even from her closest friends. From the time she was brought to this country by her hardworking parents as a child, Arce-the scholarship winner, the honors college graduate, the young woman who climbed the ladder to become a vice president at Goldman Sachs-had secretly lived as an undocumented immigrant. In this surprising, at times heart-wrenching, but always inspirational personal story of struggle, grief, and ultimate redemption, Arce takes readers deep into the little-understood world of a generation of undocumented immigrants in the United States today- people who live next door, sit in your classrooms, work in the same office, and may very well be your boss. By opening up about the story of her successes, her heartbreaks, and her long-fought journey to emerge from the shadows and become an American citizen, Arce shows us the true cost of achieving the American dream-from the perspective of a woman who had to scale unseen and unimaginable walls to get there.
Download or read book Something for Nothing written by Brian Tracy and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2005-11-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's greatness comes from people working hard to fulfill their dreams. But today that greatness is being undermined by people using the government to steal other people's dreams (and money). Rather than participate and innovate in the marketplace, generating goods and services that benefit society, people are increasingly vying for political advantage to live at the expense of others. Something for Nothing reveals the social and personal threats inherent in this emerging "grabbing match" culture, juxtaposing free-market virtues against government vices, explaining how the something-for-nothing mentality corrupts the political system, undermines corporate success, and stifles the individual's ability to prosper and contribute long-term to society. More than exposing the dangers, however, Tracy helps readers set a personal and culture-wide agenda for change.
Download or read book The American Dream an Unsustainable Nightmare written by Ravi Kashyap and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America is arguably the greatest nation on our planet at this time. An unintended yet welcome consequence of Christopher Columbus setting sail for India, America's achievements, in all fields of arts and sciences, act as a shining beacon of the accomplishments of the human race. Fueling America to such epic proportions of greatness, two of the stimuli have been the amazing natural wealth found on this land and its ability to attract talented individuals from across the globe. Digging deeper into the foundations of the American Dream, we find that a key ingredient has been the unencumbered pursuit of happiness, as defined by the utility maximization principle of economics, the acceptance of seeking ever greater amounts of material goods and the axiom of the invisible hand. We conceptually discuss the asymptotic path of where this could lead to, perhaps, to an Unsustainable Nightmare. We ask the question: if the social planner or the utility maximizer were the Buddha, (or any other wiseman), what this alternative view of the world could be and whether it is practical enough to shape our future. The argument that the Buddha is nothing close to the model citizen, can be laid to rest, by realizing that all education is but to establish better morals and by looking back at the enormous strides, that we have taken as a society, in overcoming hatred, crime and other forms of oppression and misbehavior.
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 Third World America written by Arianna Huffington and published by Crown. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s not an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species and that the American Dream of a secure, comfortable standard of living has become as outdated as an Edsel with an eight-track player. That the United States of America is in danger of becoming a third world nation. The evidence is all around us: Our industrial base is vanishing, taking with it the kind of jobs that have formed the backbone of our economy for more than a century; our education system is in shambles, making it harder for tomorrow’s workforce to acquire the information and training it needs to land good twenty-first century jobs; our infrastructure—our roads, our bridges, our sewage and water, our transportation and electrical systems—is crumbling; our economic system has been reduced to recurring episodes of Corporations Gone Wild; our political system is broken, in thrall to a small financial elite using the power of the checkbook to control both parties. And America’s middle class, the driver of so much of our economic success and political stability, is rapidly disappearing, forcing us to confront the fear that we are slipping as a nation – that our children and grandchildren will enjoy fewer opportunities and face a lower standard of living than we did. It’s the dark flipside of the American Dream – an American Nightmare of our own making. Arianna Huffington, who, with the must-read Huffington Post, has her finger on the pulse of America, unflinchingly tracks the gradual demise of America as an industrial, political, and economic leader. In the vein of her fiery bestseller Pigs at the Trough, Third World America points fingers, names names, and details who’s killing the American Dream. Finally, calling on the can-do attitude that is part of America’s DNA, Huffington shows precisely what we need to do to stop our freefall and keep America from turning into a third world nation. Third World America is a must-read for anyone disturbed by our country’s steady descent from 20th century superpower to backwater banana republic.
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 Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream written by Paul A. Cantor and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2019-05-17 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The many con men, gangsters, and drug lords portrayed in popular culture are examples of the dark side of the American dream. Viewers are fascinated by these twisted versions of heroic American archetypes, like the self-made man and the entrepreneur. Applying the critical skills he developed as a Shakespeare scholar, Paul A. Cantor finds new depth in familiar landmarks of popular culture. He invokes Shakespearean models to show that the concept of the tragic hero can help us understand why we are both repelled by and drawn to figures such as Vito and Michael Corleone or Walter White. Beginning with Huckleberry Finn and ending with The Walking Dead, Cantor also uncovers the link between the American dream and frontier life. In imaginative variants of a Wild West setting, popular culture has served up disturbing—and yet strangely compelling—images of what happens when people move beyond the borders of law and order. Cantor demonstrates that, at its best, popular culture raises thoughtful questions about the validity and viability of the American dream, thus deepening our understanding of America itself.
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
