Download or read book Deepening the American Dream written by Mark Nepo and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 2005-09-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Deepening the American Dream offers a collection of reflections on the spiritual meaning of being American in today's world from some of our most respected thinkers. Deepening the American Dream explores the inner life of democracy, the way citizens are formed, and considers the spiritual aspects of the American dream - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With original essays from distinguished writers and thinkers, this important work examines the American dream and gives us a deeper understanding of who we are now and what our dreams and aspirations are today." "Deepening the American Dream offers all Americans thoughtful consideration of the spiritual aspects of our common dream." --Book Jacket.
Download or read book Chasing the American Dream written by Mark R. Rank and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-05 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the authors show that the risk of economic vulnerability has been increasing substantially over the past four decades, and argue that while not unattainable, the American Dream - as we currently define it - is becoming harder to reach and harder still to keep.
Download or read book American Dream written by Pearson and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 2009-02-27 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maturing the American Dream To fulfill our destiny as a nation, our challenge is to fully realize the intent of our brave forebears-and to do so in a way that is relevant to the challenges of the twenty-first century in a complex, interdependent, global context. Our power in the world today is considerable, and the consequent responsibility is sobering. Yet we are a young nation-adolescent in many ways-thrust into global leadership in part as a result of military and economic might and the moral authority we hold when we best embody the American dream. In the face of our declining reputation around the world and diminished confidence at home -and in the context of the hope for change engendered by President Obama- it is essential that we understand this dream and how we can mature into living it in a way that serves all of humanity, not just "our own kind." This essay is written out of concern about the great challenges facing the United States and the world today. Its purpose is to identify the strengths that can help us tap into what is best about us and guard against our weaknesses so that we can use our power as wisely as possible and in ways that promote the common global good. To do this will take the maturing of the American dream. If we are to mature the American dream, it is essential to decode the deeper cultural narratives that nurtured its conscious life at its founding and continue to do so today so that we can live them out in ways that bring us happiness and also have a positive impact on the world. -Carol S. Pearson, From Maturing the American Dream: Archetypal American Narratives Meet the Twenty-First Century The Fetzer Institute's project on Deepening the American Dream began in 1999 to explore the relationship between the inner life of spirit and the outer life of service. Through commissioned essays and in dialogue with such writers as Huston Smith, Jacob Needleman, Gerald May, Charles Gibbs, Robert Inchausti, Carolyn Brown, Elaine Pagels, and others, the project is beginning to sow the seeds of a national conversation. With the publication of these essays, the thinking and writing coming from these gatherings is being offered in a series of publications sponsored by The Fetzer Institute in partnership with Jossey-Bass. In an effort to surface the psychological and spiritual roots at the heart of the critical issues that face the world today, we are extending this inquiry by creating a parallel series focused on Exploring a Global Dream. The essays and individual volumes and anthologies published in both series will explore and describe the many ways, as individuals and communities and nations, that we can illuminate and inhabit the essential qualities of the global citizen who seeks to live with the authenticity and grace demanded by our times.
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 The American Dream and the Economic Myth written by Flowers and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 2007 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The mythologist Joseph Campbell used to say that you could always tell what the dominant myth of a culture was by looking at its tallest buildings. In medieval times, the tallest buildings in any city were the cathedrals; later, princely palaces and government buildings dominated the landscape; now the tallest buildings are commercial, reflecting the economic myth within which we now live. In the west, and especially in the United States, four myths have shaped us: the religious myth, the hero myth, the democratic/enlightenment myth, and the economic myth. Over time, our culture has often had a double standard for its governing myth: the winners played the hero game, while women, minorities, and "inferiors" were expected to organize their lives around the myth of religion, to behave for the good of society. Today, for the most part, we treat each other not as citizens but as consumers. In truth, if we do not understand the limitations and deeper opportunities of the economic myth, we will not be able to deal with the difficult challenges that face the global community. More than ever, the ideals of responsibility, community, and the common good are absolutely necessary for the health of the civic spirit. In a society that devalues sources, we're still learning how to tell our cultural story through the lens of ordinary men and women and not just through the biographies of great men. Yet, we don't have one story about who we are anymore, so how can we articulate a common good? How do we make a new myth? The first thing to understand is that we can't simply make them. They arise out of what is there. We can't hold up a myth of community and wait for it to take hold. We have to work within our own myth, however impoverished it seems to us. To deepen the American Dream is to engage the imagination-to create better stories of who we are and who we might become. And to create deeper stories requires us to look closely at the stories we already inhabit, both individually and collectively." -Betty Sue Flowers, from The American Dream and the Economic Myth The Fetzer Institute's project on Deepening the American Dream began in 1999 to explore the relationship between the inner life of spirit and the outer life of service. Through commissioned essays and in dialogue with such writers as Huston Smith, Jacob Needleman, Gerald May, Cynthia Bourgeault, Kathleen Norris, Robert Inchausti, Carolyn Brown, Elaine Pagels, Parker Palmer, and others, the project is beginning to sow the seeds of a national conversation. With the publication of these essays, the thinking and writing coming from these gatherings is being offered in a series of publications sponsored by Fetzer Institute in partnership with Jossey-Bass. The essays and individual volumes and anthologies to be published will explore and describe the many ways, as individuals and communities and nations, that we can illuminate and inhabit the essential qualities of the global citizen who seeks to live with the authenticity and grace demanded by our times.
Download or read book Race Sport and the American Dream written by Earl Smith and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race, Sport and the American Dream (2007) won the annual North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Best Book Award, announced at the Society''s 2008 annual conference. Race, Sport and the American Dream reports the main findings of a long term research project investigating the scope and consequences of the deepening relationship between African American males and the institution of sport. While there is some scholarly literature on the topic, author Earl Smith tries to understand through this project how sport has changed the nature of African American Civil Society and has come to be a major influence on economic opportunities, schooling and the shaping of African American family life. The third edition of Race, Sport and the American Dream improves upon the second edition in four key ways: (1) by updating the empirical data so that it is the most current on the market, (2) by expanding the discussion of the Athletic Industrial Complex (AIC) to include a robust discussion of the explosion of Conference Realignment, (3) by expanding the discussion of leadership in SportsWorld to include the most current theory in the area of sports management and (4) by adding an entirely new chapter on male athletes and violence against women. In addition, the third edition expands the discussion of the elusive American Dream and the role of sports in accessing better life chances, success and happiness. The third edition of Race, Sport and the American Dream also includes a discussion of the increased role that social media plays in SportsWorld by allowing everyone and anyone to become a "sports critic" as well as a discussion of race in SportsWorld in the era of changing the racial landscape of the US. Specifically, the US has become more racially diverse and critics are debating the role that the election of the first African American president plays in this changing landscape. All in all, the third edition of Race, Sport and the American Dream expands on existing discussions and provides new areas of inquiry. This book is intended to provide social scientists and others interested in sports with an understanding of carefully selected issues related to the African American athlete. Smith examines the world of amateur sports (Olympic and intercollegiate sport) using Immanuel Wallerstein''s "World-Systems Paradigm" which provides a lens with which to examine the colonizing and exploitative nature of intercollegiate sports and the special arrangements that universities have with SportsWorld. All of the topics in this book are addressed within the context of the history of racial oppression that has dominated race relations in the United States since its inception as a nation-state in the 1620s. Across a variety of topics including sport as big business--which Smith terms the Athletic Industrial Complex--to criminal behavior by athletes, to the lack of leadership opportunities for African American athletes, to the question of the biological superiority of African American athletes, Smith argues that any discussion of race and sport must be understood within this context of power and domination. Otherwise the importance of the question itself will always be (a) misunderstood or (b) underestimated. "Dr. Earl Smith''s 3rd edition of Race, Sport and the American Dream is much-needed scholarship for understanding the life chances for not only young African American athletes -- competing in a new global sports marketplace -- but their family''s investments in sports. His analysis is crisp, insightful and he brings to this 3rd edition new empirical evidence for understanding a whole set of interlocking and very complicated issues that have exploded in SportsWorld since the 2nd edition, including, but not limited to: NCAA conference realignment and its impact on college athletes; violence against women perpetrated by college and professional athletes; and a complex theoretical analysis of the decline of Black head coaches, especially in college and professional football and other challenges African Americans face in their lives after sports." -- Kenneth L. Shropshire, David W. Hauck Professor at the University of Pennsylvania''s Wharton School of Business, Director of the Wharton Sports Business Initiative. His most recent book is Negotiate Like the Pros: A Top Sports Negotiator''s Lessons for Making Deals, Building Relationships and Getting What You Want. "Earl Smith has been a scholar on the issue of race and sport for many years. His Race, Sport and the American Dream is essential reading for anyone interested in the subject. He organized the book in a clear layout that puts forth an important lens on the issue. He gives us theory that demonstrates the mighty struggles of African Americans in sport but also is real-life enough to help us feel both the pain of the barriers and the joy in overcoming them." -- Richard Lapchick, Director, Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, University of Central Florida "This well-documented book provides insights into race and sport, as African American athletes have made their way along the path toward an equal playing field and the American dream. Summing up: Recommended." -- CHOICE Magazine
Download or read book The Real American Dream written by Andrew Delbanco and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since we discovered that, in Tocqueville’s words, “the incomplete joys of this world will never satisfy the heart,” how have we Americans made do? In The Real American Dream one of the nation’s premier literary scholars searches out the symbols and stories by which Americans have reached for something beyond worldly desire. A spiritual history ranging from the first English settlements to the present day, the book is also a lively, deeply learned meditation on hope. Andrew Delbanco tells of the stringent God of Protestant Christianity, who exerted immense force over the language, institutions, and customs of the culture for nearly 200 years. He describes the falling away of this God and the rise of the idea of a sacred nation-state. And, finally, he speaks of our own moment, when symbols of nationalism are in decline, leaving us with nothing to satisfy the longing for transcendence once sustained by God and nation. From the Christian story that expressed the earliest Puritan yearnings to New Age spirituality, apocalyptic environmentalism, and the multicultural search for ancestral roots that divert our own, The Real American Dream evokes the tidal rhythm of American history. It shows how Americans have organized their days and ordered their lives—and ultimately created a culture—to make sense of the pain, desire, pleasure, and fear that are the stuff of human experience. In a time of cultural crisis, when the old stories seem to be faltering, this book offers a lesson in the painstaking remaking of the American dream.
Download or read book Untitled Fetzer Global Booklet written by Abdul Aziz Said and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 2006-08-08 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The people of the world are becoming increasingly conscious of their growing interdependence. They share an emerging dream of a world community founded on cooperation and justice. This dream, like all dreams, is imperfect and subject to contextual, cultural, and historical biases, yet it opens the road for a future that yields a process in which the peoples of the world can move away from chaos; take steps towards the alleviation of famine, disease, and misery; reduce the burden of the world arms race; and decrease the burden of repression on millions. We are discovering that our fates and futures increasingly depend on one another, making mutual understanding, respect, and cooperation essential. It is up to us, at this crucial time in our shared history, to ask three vital questions. How will we know and relate with each other? How will we define and benefit from our relationship? How will we cope together with the teeming diversity of our global community? Modernization, when understood holistically, is directed by the goal of spiritual realization. This goal anticipates that a nation will attain community and prosperity as byproducts, but such things are viewed as incidental to the larger issue of spiritual identity. More or less consciously, all real social development is driven by this same goal. A nation in the process of development is like a person on a spiritual path. As such, spirituality has a vital role to play in efforts to fashion a new compass capable of guiding humanity toward a culture of peace. The visions offered by reductionist science to explain humanity's place in the universe have failed because they could not bridge the tremendous material and cultural divides that define the world today, nor could they provide impetus for an ecologically sustainable future. Therefore, we must look to the world's great contemplative traditions for the untapped spiritual resources and enduring wisdom necessary to construct new visions. The reorientation of international relations to a moral framework derived from a spiritual perspective is the world's best (and perhaps only) hope for transcending separateness and encouraging universal solidarity. Leadership that does not inspire such noble responses and trust of others ultimately will not last. This active concept of peace is not an abstract, static goal that lies ahead at some indeterminate point, but consists instead of a dynamic process of doing and being that can be started immediately. This generation marks a turning point in the affairs of humanity. America and other nations need to take every action necessary to ensure that the world's lasting legacy will be founded upon human solidarity and the holistic nature of life. —Abdul Aziz Said, from Bridges Not Barriers: The American Dream and the Global Community The Fetzer Institute's project on Deepening the American Dream began in 1999 to explore the relationship between the inner life of spirit and the outer life of service. Through commissioned essays and in dialogue with such writers as Huston Smith, Jacob Needleman, Gerald May, Charles Gibbs, Robert Inchausti, Carolyn Brown, Elaine Pagels, and others, the project is beginning to sow the seeds of a national conversation. With the publication of these essays, the thinking and writing coming from these gatherings is being offered in a series of publications sponsored by The Fetzer Institute in partnership with Jossey-Bass. In an effort to surface the psychological and spiritual roots at the heart of the critical issues that face the world today, we are extending this inquiry by creating a parallel series focused on Exploring a Global Dream. The essays and individual volumes and anthologies published in both series will explore and describe the many ways, as individuals and communities and nations, that we can illuminate and inhabit the essential qualities of the global citizen who seeks to live with the authenticity and grace demanded by our times.
Download or read book Maturing the American Dream written by Carol Pearson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The American Dream written by Jim Cullen and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cullen particularly focuses on the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence ("the charter of the American Dream"); Abraham Lincoln, with his rise from log cabin to White House and his dream for a unified nation; and Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of racial equality. Our contemporary version of the American Dream seems rather debased in Cullen's eyes-built on the cult of Hollywood and its outlandish dreams of overnight fame and fortune.
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 The Fall of the American Dream written by Sidney Mack and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2009-07-16 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning around 2005, this book grew out of frustration and necessity as I observed the slow crumbling away of our so-called American Way. As a teacher, patriot, mother, sister, and troubled soul, I literally began piecing together thiswriting whetherI liked it or not. I kept trying to stop the flow of words, but couldn't. Stream of consciousnessstabbed atme like a dagger,yet Ideclared to myself thatthenegative thrusts of violence, selfishness, and willfulness on the part of societal beings was temporary, not the tip of a disastrous iceberg beginning to crush civility in natureall around me, all around all of us. The tip of collapsehas deepenedin spite of looking the other way or putting my words in a drawer whereI couldn't see them. My language is strongcoupled with a bit of levity, but we must act collectively to make theincreasingly sparce specks of hope materialize into action and perseverance if we are tothrive and survive as a free nation.
Download or read book The Most Powerful Words about the American Dream written by Caitie McAneney and published by . This book was released on 2019-12-15 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For hundreds of years, newcomers to the United States have dreamed the American Dream, hoping for prosperity and freedom. This valuable volume highlights important quotes about the American Dream, from the past to the present. Readers will learn the significance of each quote, its historical context, and all about its speaker. Engaging historical text and authentic photographs will give readers a dynamic learning experience and open their eyes to the profound hope that lies within the great American Dream.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream written by Robert C. Hauhart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we mean by the American dream? Can we define it? Or does any discussion of the phrase end inconclusively, the solid turned liquid—like ice melting? Do we know whether the American dream motivates and inspires or, alternately, obscures and deceives? The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream offers distinctive, authoritative, original essays by well-known scholars that address the social, economic, historical, philosophic, legal, and cultural dimensions of the American dream for the twenty-first century. The American dream, first discussed and defined in print by James Truslow Adams’s The Epic of America (1931), has become nearly synonymous with being American. Adams’s definition, although known to scholars, is often lost in our ubiquitous use of the term. When used today, the iconic phrase seems to encapsulate every fashion, fad, trend, association, or image the user identifies with the United States or American life. The American dream’s ubiquity, though, argues eloquently for a deeper understanding of its heritage, its implications, and its impact—to be found in this first research handbook ever published on the topic.
Download or read book Requiem for the American Dream written by Noam Chomsky and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! In his first major book on the subject of income inequality, Noam Chomsky skewers the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism and casts a clear, cold, patient eye on the economic facts of life. What are the ten principles of concentration of wealth and power at work in America today? They're simple enough: reduce democracy, shape ideology, redesign the economy, shift the burden onto the poor and middle classes, attack the solidarity of the people, let special interests run the regulators, engineer election results, use fear and the power of the state to keep the rabble in line, manufacture consent, marginalize the population. In Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky devotes a chapter to each of these ten principles, and adds readings from some of the core texts that have influenced his thinking to bolster his argument. To create Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky and his editors, the filmmakers Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks, and Jared P. Scott, spent countless hours together over the course of five years, from 2011 to 2016. After the release of the film version, Chomsky and the editors returned to the many hours of tape and transcript and created a document that included three times as much text as was used in the film. The book that has resulted is nonetheless arguably the most succinct and tightly woven of Chomsky's long career, a beautiful vessel--including old-fashioned ligatures in the typeface--in which to carry Chomsky's bold and uncompromising vision, his perspective on the economic reality and its impact on our political and moral well-being as a nation. "During the Great Depression, which I'm old enough to remember, it was bad–much worse subjectively than today. But there was a sense that we'll get out of this somehow, an expectation that things were going to get better . . ." —from Requiem for the American Dream
Download or read book The American Dream written by Joseph L. Daleiden and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can each of us achieve our own American dream while recognizing needs of other individuals, society, and future generations? Not if our present national policies continue, warns long term planning expert Joseph L. Daleiden. He persuasively argues that if present socioeconomic trends remain, our nation faces social disaster before the middle of the 21st century.These trends can be reversed, he insists, but only if we are willing to (1) reject failed policies both liberal and conservative directed at population growth, the environment, the national debt, trade, poverty, crime, race relations, education, healthcare, social security, and tax reform; (2) accept that all of these areas of concern are intertwined; and (3) take responsibility for our decisions.Avoiding ideology and platitudes, Daleiden's pragmatic approach relies on actual evidence of how prospective policies will influence human behavior and whether their outcomes will increase or decrease human happiness in the long run.Joseph L. Daleiden (Evanston, IL) is also the author of The Final Superstition: A Critical Evaluation of the Judeo-Christian Legacy, and The Science of Morality: The Individual, Community, and Future Generations.
Download or read book American Dream Program Book written by American Dream, Inc and published by . This book was released on 1956 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
