The American Dream: A Cultural History

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Write a review Rate this item: Preview this item Preview this item. Lawrence R Samuel Publisher: Syracuse University Press, First edition View all editions and formats Rating: Subjects National characteristics, American. View all subjects More like this User lists Similar Items. Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private. Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item Electronic books History Additional Physical Format: Document, Internet resource Document Type: Lawrence R Samuel Find more information about: Publisher Synopsis "The American Dream" is a fundamental reference in American studies and should therefore be part of every public library in the U.

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Similar Items Related Subjects: User lists with this item 1 Modern Drama paper 7 items by jjones5 updated Linked Data More info about Linked Data. Whether or not the Dream exists, it has been a guiding principle of and shorthand for American national identity since its creation. The phrase was coined, rather tellingly, during the Great Depression, when the nation seemed furthest from achieving the dream.

Historian James Truslow Adams defined the Dream as 'a vision of a better, deeper, richer life for every individual, regardless of the position in society which he or she may occupy by the accident of birth. It has been a dream of a chance to rise in the economic scale, but quite as much, or more than that, of a chance to develop our capacities to the full, unhampered by unjust restrictions of caste or custom.

With this has gone the hope of bettering the physical conditions of living, of lessening the toil and anxieties of daily life. It has constantly been in crisis or under attack, whether from the government's greater assertion of power under FDR's New Deal, the unbridled consumerism and status seeking of the post-war years, from persistent gender and racial inequality that belied the Dream, and new reasons created by the shifting sands of the American economy and political situations.

But the fact that the Dream is rather nebulous optimism is its saving grace. Even as critics pronounce it dead, citizens and immigrants remake the dream anew, defining it in ways that speak to them.

Aug 19, Birgit rated it really liked it. How would you define The American Dream? Samuel explores this constant presence in the minds of the American people as the one thing defining their culture.

The American Dream: A Cultural History

From the beginnings of the Dream during the Great Depression to the times of counterculture in the s straight to the present the author highlights the origins of the Dream, how it evolved over the years, and its relevance today. Of course I've heard about The American Dream before though I admittedly didn't know all that much about this integral part of what shaped the American identity. Mostly compiled through journalistic records the book offers a fascinating, in-depth read for anyone interested in the topic.

What I personally enjoyed the most were the excursions into pop culture, showing how The American Dream reflects in both literature and on the big screen. I also like how the author ponders whether there is such a thing as an European or even a Global Dream. Overall I found this book to be a great illumination of the topic, yet I must admit that I found it to be a bit on the dry side too. Will The American Dream be still there tomorrow? Is it really, as the author suggests, only a myth, existent in our imagination?

A doubtlessly thought-provoking conclusion which everyone should answer for themselves. Concise if somewhat prosaic study on The American Dream! Tati rated it really liked it Oct 02, Cora Belekewicz rated it did not like it Oct 12, Kate rated it liked it Apr 13, Shelly rated it liked it May 12, Jennifer Kelly rated it really liked it Jan 06, Gregory Horst rated it liked it Mar 01, Ellie rated it liked it Nov 24, Tanja rated it liked it Nov 01, Jordan Shapiro rated it liked it May 04, Matthew rated it really liked it Nov 24, Melissa Ormechea rated it really liked it Dec 08, Bog rated it it was ok Jan 18, Bphilips rated it it was amazing Apr 17, Meredith Frederich rated it really liked it Dec 26, Rachel Carr Smith rated it liked it Feb 21, Mary Kelly rated it it was ok Feb 21, Aug 09, Donnell marked it as to-read.

Have skimmed the book. A bit too much of a simple collection of various views on the Dream.

Homeownership is a big part of the dream and still seems to hold us, even after homes have become too expensive for most people. Funny how the American Dream has been popping up a lot around me lately. For example in the Caitlyn Jenner book I am reading she talks about how her success as Bruce Jenner appeared to many as a living of the American Dream.

Then in Amazon's The Last Tycoon which I am watching now, the movie Monroe Stahr wants to make is called The American Dream about his wife who came to the country as a poor Irish immigrant and then became a famous movie star. It thus appears to me that the Dream is a concept--not a real thing but still a powerful thing.

It holds us the same way the people who hold the idea that Richard III was a murderer of his nephews in Daughter of Time. If you try to change the hold on people they don't change and just get mad at you.

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So we live and operate with the feeling that unless we have monetary success and fame, which of course we will use to buy a house, we have failed to achieve the American Dream. Al rated it it was ok Apr 16, Beau Wisdom rated it liked it Jun 09, Brandon Campbell rated it it was ok Apr 22, Bob rated it it was amazing Aug 23, Adams, a blue-blooded Yankee who viewed the New Deal as a mistake and thought Americans were a little too prone to self-congratulation, viewed the American Dream an idea that was too easily conflated with mere consumerism, as did many leftist intellectuals at the time.

And yet, as Samuel shows, there was a surprising vein of optimism surrounding it in the s — more evident in political and psychological terms than economic ones — which only intensified with the coming of the Second World War, which led even Adams to describe it as an instrument in the fight against totalitarian oppression. The first is that the conversation surrounding it has been shaped by larger geopolitical events.

So it is that historically specific phenomena like the Cold War or the Civil Rights Movement immediately become points of reference in discussing the state of the Dream. The second, and more interesting, theme is that the discourse of the Dream is relatively static, returning repeatedly to the same questions.

The American Dream: A Cultural History | Reviews in History

Among the more pressing ones: Is it still alive? With the coming of every economic downturn, commentators repeatedly assert that the Dream frontier is closing again.

There was a lot of this talk in the s. And in the early s. And again in the early s. And of course since the Great Recession of But there was also anxiety about it in the s and s. Samuel quotes a study showing that while 35 per cent of teenagers expected to hold jobs in the professional class, the labor force only supported 10 per cent of such workers p.

Even at a time many in the West regard as a halcyon age of economic opportunity, there were concerns that aspirations outstripped reality.

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Another question Samuel shows coming up repeatedly is just what the American Dream actually means: Is it about upward mobility, typically understood in terms of income? Is it about personal security, often expressed in terms of home ownership? Perhaps a little more surprisingly, he makes no real attempt to articulate his own definition of the term beyond making the apposite observation that basing a dream on pecuniary gain dooms one to frustration, since perceptions of wealth are always relative p.

In the introduction, he writes:. The book relies primarily on period magazines and newspapers as its source material and secondarily on previous books written about aspects of the topic, as I firmly believe that journalists serving on the front lines of the scene represent our most valuable resource to recover unfiltered stories of the Dream p. This makes a lot of sense. The problem is that there is virtually nothing but newspapers and magazines as source material. Entire chapters cite nothing else.

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