Chasing American Dream: Understanding What Shapes Our Fortunes Mark Robert Rank, Thomas A. Hirschl and Kirk A. Foster. Oxford, 2014.Income and wealth inequality have been a central focus of American political discourse for last forty years. Of particular concern has been how increasing inequality erodes working- and middle-class Americans' ability to attain the American of providing a comfortable lifestyle for one's family through rewards of labor. The last forty years' political and economic scholarship focuses on increasing difficulty of attaining this dream; almost no work addresses what American Dream actually means to workingand middle-class Americans. Mark Robert Rank, Thomas A. Hirschl, and Kirk A. Foster's Chasing American Dream: Understanding What Shapes Our Fortunes moves beyond this tradition, using a multidimensional approach to examine what Americans think Dream is, as well as to explore viability of attaining this Dream through traditional pathways. By utilizing individual interviews, focus groups, and a lifetable approach that employs data from Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Pew Center for Research, Rank et al. provide a somewhat different lens for interpreting and assessing current and future status of American (7).The authors break their study into three sections: identifying core components of, assessing pathways to, and exploring meanings of American Dream. Each section utilizes multidimensional approach, providing personal experiences and focus group discussions, as well as longitudinal quantitative data measuring economic risks and rewards across generations. The first section points to what Americans most commonly identify as crucial components of Dream. Most crucial is freedom to pursue one's passions or interests (28). Economic security is requisite for this pursuit and, indeed, ranks as second-most crucial component-more important, for many Americans, even than mobility (39). For most Americans, security is not attaining riches but is having resources and tools to live a comfortable and rewarding life: a decent paying job with benefits, accumulated savings and assets, ability to provide for one's children, home ownership, and possibility of retiring comfortably (49). Three quarters of Americans, however, think that attaining these two components have become more difficult, a reality Rank et al. attest to through data showing fewer decent-paying jobs, lower average wages, fewer benefits, and more part-time work relative to full-time opportunities. American workers have been living up to their end of bargain, producing more despite working less; Corporate America, however, has not lived up to its end (39). Despite this, third component is supreme optimism in ability to attain Dream in one's children's lifetimes, if not in one's own.The second section looks at changing landscape of opportunities for attaining Dream, with an eye specifically toward market for jobs paying enough to support a family. This section provides a wealth of useful data and interpretations of labor markets. There is a mismatch between number who need this type of job and supply, which results in increased polarization of jobs, further fostering inequality (71). …