As Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero and former congressman who murders his wife in a fashionable New York City high-rise, runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen, Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty. One part Nietzsche, one part de Sade, and one part Charlie Parker, An American Dream grabs the reader by the throat and refuses to let go.

Reawakening an American Dream reveals the hidden secrets first-time millionaires have used to gain abundance or achieve financial freedom. Until now, all so called “get rich experts” tout their own style of one-size-fits-all techniques. Their opinions are based on a single idea created through a personal filter, the very subjectivity of which decreases the odds of success for others. The truth is, no single formula for obtaining financial prosperity works. The only “expert” capable of determining how to create wealth is the person themselves and that makes options for succeeding infinite. In Reawakening an American Dream, hundreds of personalities were examined. The conclusion: all people share external traits but what separates success and failure is an applied divine difference that link behaviors on an individual basis. It illuminates behavioral thinking that paves a way to wealth, by unlocking personal power permitting individual outcomes to naturally unfold—retooling the mind for individual best use. Actual success techniques were woven into the stories, making change virtually effortless, in much the same way children learn new behaviors because they are cognitively predisposed. Within Reawakening an American Dream, each story is enlightening and offers instruction that can open doors to readers’ own riches.

Examines desegregation, school funding, testing, vouchers, bilingual education, multicultural education, and ability grouping. These seem to be separate problems, but much of the contention over them comes down to the same thing: an apparent conflict between policies designed to promote each student's ability to pursue success and those designed to insure the good of all students or the nation as a whole. The authors show how polices to promote individual success too often benefit only those already privileged by race or class. The book also examines issues such as creationism and afrocentrism.

This book draws on the philosopher René Girard to argue that three twentieth-century American novels (Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides, Rick Moody's The Ice Storm, and Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road) are tragedies. Until now, Girardian literary analysis has generally focused on representations of human desire in texts, and neglected both other emotions and the place of tragedy. Carly Osborn addresses these omissions by using Girardian theory to present evidence that novels can indeed be tragedies. The book advances the scholarship of tragedy that has run from Aristotle to Nietzsche to Terry Eagleton, proposing a new way to read modern novels through ancient traditions. In addition, this is the first work to examine the place of women as victims, or in Girardian terms, 'scapegoats', in twentieth century fiction, specifically by considering the representation of women's bodies and ambivalence about their identities. In deploying a rich and vivid array of tragic tropes, The Virgin Suicides, The Ice Storm, and Revolutionary Road participate in a deep-rooted American tragic tradition. Tragic Novels, the American Dream and René Girard will be of interest to those working at the intersection of philosophy and literature, as well as Girard specialists.

Drugs and the American Dream presents an up-to-date anthology of chiefly contemporary readings that explore the myriad sociological correlates of licit and illicit drug use in the United States. Unique approach to the topic that offers an organizing theme of sociological concepts-age, social class, ethnicity, gender, as well as societal response to drug use including drug education, treatment, and policy. The book is interdisciplinary in terms of approach, making it useful in a variety of contexts. Includes a wide array of ethnographic articles that place reader directly into the perspectives of drug users through their own voices Brief framing introductions to each article provide "interconnective tissue," guiding the student to the heart of what's important in the piece that follows. Offers a balanced approach to various substances-tobacco, alcohol, prescription drugs, and illegal drugs. Provides students with a realistic perspective on the extent of substance use in American society as well as a critical appreciation of the real versus imagined harms associated with use of various substances.

Norton Garfinkle paints a disquieting picture of America today: a nation increasingly divided between economic winners and losers, a nation in which the middle-class American Dream seems more and more elusive. Recent government policies reflect a commitment to a new supply-side winner-take-all Gospel of Wealth. Garfinkle warns that this supply-side economic vision favors the privileged few over the majority of American citizens striving to better their economic condition. Garfinkle employs historical insight and data-based economic analysis to demonstrate compellingly the sharp departure of the supply-side Gospel of Wealth from an American ideal that dates back to Abraham Lincoln—the vision of America as a society in which ordinary, hard-working individuals can get ahead and attain a middle-class living, and in which government plays an active role in expanding opportunities and ensuring against economic exploitation. Supply-side economic policies increase economic disparities and, Garfinkle insists, they fail on technical, factual, moral, and political grounds. He outlines a fresh economic vision, consonant with the great American tradition of ensuring strong economic growth, while preserving the middle-class American Dream.

Discovering electricity. Ending up the richest man in the world. Becoming a candidate for sainthood. Leading the fight for Civil Rights. Getting inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Revolutionizing consumer digital electronics. These accomplishments are at the heart of the stories of seven incredibly diverse individuals who epitomize the American Dream. There is something particularly magical about dreams, or rather the possibility of achieving your dreams in America, the land of opportunity. American Dream Stories: Elements of Success explores the lives and success of Ben Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Dorothy Day, Malcolm X, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Steve Jobs. Looking at their lives, offering definitions, and establishing themes, the Naval Academy midshipmen authors of this essay collection examine the nature of the American Dream, success, and what both mean to Americans.

Inclusion in the American Dream brings together leading scholars and policy experts on the topic of asset building, particularly as this relates to public policy. The typical American household accumulates most of its assets in home equity and retirement accounts, both of which are subsidized through the tax system. But the poor, for the most part, do not participate in these asset accumulation policies. The challenge is to expand the asset-based policy structure so that everyone is included.

A must-read, insightful blueprint to fulfilling your dreams and potentials of becoming financially emancipated. This book is a culmination of 4 years of extensive and meticulous research to uncover why some people do so well in the capitalist economy while the vast majority struggle to make ends meet. My quest was to discover answers to these elusive questions about the few who are doing so handsomely well: What do they know? What do they do differently? The research results were a total shock to my very core. I simply could not believe how uncomplicated it really is to create wealth and live the American Dream. “For lack of knowledge my people perish.”---Hosea 4:6. Education is THE KEY to success in any endeavor. Financial Education is THE KEY to financial success, and in the current globalized economic environment, everyone needs that in addition to their degrees, diplomas, and professional training. That need is essential and cardinal now than ever before. This book provides the entire Financial Education package, which would help readers expand their means rather than just managing their current, often meagre means, in an easy-to understand step-by-step approach towards Financial Freedom.

How to give working families the tools and opportunities to prosper in the new economy: a call to action for families, business, labor, and government. Many American families have not prospered in the new "knowledge economy." The layoffs, restructurings, and wage and benefit cuts that have followed the short-lived boom of the 1990s threaten our deeply held values of justice, fairness, family, and work. These values -- and not those superficial ones political pollsters ask about -- are the foundation of the American dream of good jobs, fair pay, and opportunities for all. In this call to action for families, business, labor, and government, Thomas Kochan outlines ways in which we can empower working families to earn a good living by doing satisfying work while still having time for family and community life. We cannot make the transition to a knowledge economy, writes Kochan, with a workforce that is stressed, frustrated, and insecure. Businesses need to rebuild relationships with their employees based on trust. And working families need to take control of their own destinies. First, we can take action that goes beyond the workplace buzzwords flexible and family friendly to design systems that support productive work and healthy family life. We can invest in better basic education and life-long learning, and we can work toward strategies for creating and sustaining good jobs with portable benefits. We need organizations that value investors of human capital -- their employees -- as highly as they do investors of financial capital, and we need a renewed labor movement to give workers a stronger voice. Kochan lays out an agenda for working families in the twenty-first century that calls for business, labor, government, and workers to come together to make the changes that will allow us all to benefit from the new economy. The solution to our problems, he points out, is too important to be left to "the market."

The American Dream for Students of Color examines how the American Dream informs beliefs about talent, hard work, and perseverance rather than dismantling barriers to educational success for marginal students. Using narrative methodologies, connections between the authors narratives and those of school youth and educators are explored.

Film Comedy and the American Dream is an examination of national identity in the era of the American superpower as projected in popular comedic films that center on issues of upward mobility. It is the story of what made audiences laugh and why, and what this says about the changing shape of the American Dream from the end of the Second World War through the first part of the twenty-first century. Through a combination of narrative and thematic analyses of popular comedic films, contextualized within a dynamic historical framework, the book traces the increasing disillusionment with this central ideology in the face of multiple forms of systemic exclusion. It argues that film comedy is a major component of the discourse surrounding the American Dream because these movies often evoke humor by highlighting the incongruities that exist between the ideals that define this nation versus the actual lived experiences of its citizens.

Affluence, autonomy, safety, and power—the central values of the American dream. But are they compatible with Jesus' command to love our neighbor as ourselves? In essays grouped around these four values, D. L. Mayfield asks us to pay attention to the ways they shape our own choices, and the ways those choices affect our neighbors.

There is little question about the incredible power of Bruce Springsteen's work as a particularly transformative art, as a lyrical and musical fusion that never shies away from sifting through the rubble of human conflict. As Rolling Stone magazine's Parke Puterbaugh observes, Springsteen 'is a peerless songwriter and consummate artist whose every painstakingly crafted album serves as an impassioned and literate pulse taking of a generation's fortunes. He is the foremost live performer in the history of rock and roll, a self-described prisoner of the music he loves, for whom every show is played as if it might be his last.' In recent decades, Puterbaugh adds, 'Springsteen's music developed a conscience that didn't ignore the darkening of the runaway American Dream as the country greedily blundered its way through the 1980s' and into the sociocultural detritus of a new century paralysed by isolation and uncertainty. Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies, and the Runaway American Dream reflects the significant critical interest in understanding Springsteen's resounding impact upon the ways in which we think and feel about politics, religion, gender, and the pursuit of the American Dream. By assembling a host of essays that engage in interdisciplinary commentary regarding one of Western culture's most enduring artistic and socially radicalizing phenomena, this book offers a cohesive, intellectual, and often entertaining introduction to the many ways in which Springsteen continues to impact our lives by challenging our minds through his lyrics and music.

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.

Americans have always shown a fascination with the people, customs, and legends of the "East--witness the popularity of the stories of the Arabian Nights, the performances of Arab belly dancers and acrobats, the feats of turban-wearing vaudeville magicians, and even the antics of fez-topped Shriners. In this captivating volume, Susan Nance provides a social and cultural history of this highly popular genre of Easternized performance in America up to the Great Depression. According to Nance, these traditions reveal how a broad spectrum of Americans, including recent immigrants and impersonators, behaved as producers and consumers in a rapidly developing capitalist economy. In admiration of the Arabian Nights, people creatively reenacted Eastern life, but these performances were also demonstrations of Americans' own identities, Nance argues. The story of Aladdin, made suddenly rich by rubbing an old lamp, stood as a particularly apt metaphor for how consumer capitalism might benefit each person. The leisure, abundance, and contentment that many imagined were typical of Eastern life were the same characteristics used to define "the American dream." The recent success of Disney's Aladdin movies suggests that many Americans still welcome an interpretation of the East as a site of incredible riches, romance, and happy endings. This abundantly illustrated account is the first by a historian to explain why and how so many Americans sought out such cultural engagement with the Eastern world long before geopolitical concerns became paramount.