![]() Adams wanted to write a one-volume history of the United States for the general reader, and his publisher, Little, Brown, agreed. He was now poised to become the premier popularizer of his day. Schlesinger Sr., leading academic historians. “History of American Life” series edited by Dixon Ryan Fox and Arthur M. After the war, Adams wrote his “New England trilogy”which included the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Founding of New England ()and gained scholarly recognition for Provincial Society, – (), a volume in the highly regarded House, who hired him to assemble data for the Paris Peace Conference following World War I, which he attended as a cartographer in the American delegation. His local histories of Long Island brought him some renown and attracted the attention of presidential adviser Col. (His father was an unsuccessful Wall Street broker.) After graduating from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in and earning a master’s degree in philosophy at Yale in , he went to work on Wall Street himself, making enough money to devote himself to writing. A man with elite bloodlines dating back to the seventeenth century, when one of his ancestors came to Virginia as an indentured servant and ended up in the landowning class, Adams, born in , had nevertheless grown up under relatively modest circumstances. Adams, author of a series of popular books on American historythink of him as the David McCullough or Ken Burns of the swas seeking to broaden his literary horizons. No one will pay three dollars for a book about a dream. T ’ , James Truslow Adams was told. I have learned this, at least, from my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. I N T RO D U C T I O N : A D R E A M C O U N T RY King of America: The Dream of Equality ĭetached Houses: The Dream of Home Ownership ĭream of the Good Life (III): The Coast Introduction: A Dream Countr y ĭream of the Good Life (I): The Puritan Enterprise ĭream Charter: The Declaration of Independence ĭream of the Good Life (II): Upward Mobility Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country, Unless such loyalty exists, the ideal has no chance of becoming actual. You have to be loyal to a dream country rather than to the one to which you wake up every morning. You have to describe the country in terms of what you passionately hope it will become, as well as in terms of what you know it to be now. dc Book design and composition by Mark McGarry, Texas Type & Book Works Set in Monotype Baskerville Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper United StatesPolitics and governmentPhilosophy. Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data Cullen, Jim, – The American dream : a short history of an idea that shaped a nation / Jim Cullen. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Madison Avenue, New York, New York Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright © by Jim Cullen Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. THE AMERICAN DREAM e A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation (Photo from the collections of the Library of Congress) The photo is a virtual compendium of American Dreams: house, car, beauty, youth, talent. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald on their honeymoon, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation
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