The American Dream: a short history of an idea that shaped a nation

Abstract

American is one of most familiar and resonant phrases in our national lexicon, so familiar that we seldom pause to ask its origin, its history, or what it actually means. In this fascinating short history, Jim Cullen explores meaning of American Dream, or rather several American Dreams that have both reflected and shaped American identity from Pilgrims to present. Cullen begins by noting that United States, unlike most other nations, defines itself not on facts of blood, religion, language, geography, or shared history, but on a set of ideals expressed in Declaration of Independence and consolidated in Constitution. At core of these ideals lies ambiguous but galvanizing concept of American Dream, a concept that for better and worse has proven to be amazingly elastic and durable for hundreds of years and across racial, class, and other demographic lines. Cullen then traces a series of overlapping American dreams: quest for of religious freedom that brought Pilgrims to New World; political freedom promised in Declaration; dream of upward mobility, embodied most fully in figure of Abraham Lincoln; dream of home ownership, from homestead to suburb; intensely idealistic-and largely unrealized-dream of equality articulated most vividly by Martin Luther King, Jr. The version of American Dream that dominates our own time-what Cullen calls the Dream of Coast-is one of personal fulfillment, of fame and fortune all more alluring if achieved without obvious effort, which finds its most insidious expression in culture of Hollywood. For anyone seeking to understand a shifting but central idea in American history, The American Dream is an interpretive tour de force.