American Dream, American Nightmare
Title | American Dream, American Nightmare PDF eBook |
Author | Kathryn Hume |
Publisher | University of Illinois Press |
Pages | 325 |
Release | 2022-08-15 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 025205413X |
In this celebration of contemporary American fiction, Kathryn Hume explores how estrangement from America has shaped the fiction of a literary generation, which she calls the Generation of the Lost Dream. In breaking down the divisions among standard categories of race, religion, ethnicity, and gender, Hume identifies shared core concerns, values, and techniques among seemingly disparate and unconnected writers including T. Coraghessan Boyle, Ralph Ellison, Russell Banks, Gloria Naylor, Tim O'Brien, Maxine Hong Kingston, Walker Percy, N. Scott Momaday, John Updike, Toni Morrison, William Kennedy, Julia Alvarez, Thomas Pynchon, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Don DeLillo. Hume explores fictional treatments of the slippage in the immigrant experience between America's promise and its reality. She exposes the political link between contemporary stories of lost innocence and liberalism's inadequacies. She also invites us to look at the literary challenge to scientific materialism in various searches for a spiritual dimension in life. The expansive future promised by the American Dream has been replaced, Hume finds, by a sense of tarnished morality and a melancholy loss of faith in America's exceptionalism. American Dream, American Nightmare examines the differing critiques of America embedded in nearly a hundred novels and points to the source for recovery that appeals to many of the authors.
American Dream, American Nightmare
Title | American Dream, American Nightmare PDF eBook |
Author | |
Publisher | |
Pages | 359 |
Release | 2002 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
American Nightmare
Title | American Nightmare PDF eBook |
Author | Randal O'Toole |
Publisher | |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2012 |
Genre | Home ownership |
ISBN | 9781937184889 |
The American Dream turned into a nightmare when the housing bubble burst, and people have been trying to figure out who to blame- Greedy bankers? Corrupt politicians? Ignorant homeowners? In American Nightmare: How Government Undermines the Dream of Homeownership, Randal O'Toole explores the forces at play in the housing market and shows how we can rebuild the American dream of homeownership by eliminating federal, state, and local policies that distort the free market for housing.
The American Dream and the American Nightmare
Title | The American Dream and the American Nightmare PDF eBook |
Author | Peter Freese |
Publisher | |
Pages | 72 |
Release | 1987 |
Genre | American Dream |
ISBN |
American Nightmare
Title | American Nightmare PDF eBook |
Author | Richard Lord |
Publisher | |
Pages | 248 |
Release | 2005 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN |
Homeowners who can't borrow from banks have long turned to the subprime lending industry for mortgages. Increasingly, that industry has turned on them by charging outrageous fees and usurious interest, and then taking their homes through foreclosure. Richard Lord explores the spread of predatory lending practices. And it tells the stories of borrowers who've been taken, contractors and brokers who've been co-opted, lenders who've cheated--and the world's biggest financial titans, who've cashed in. A battle is taking shape that could determine whether home ownership for working people will be an achievable dream or an American nightmare. Richard Lord is a writer for the "Pittsburgh City Paper" whose work on subprime lending has won numerous awards.
The american dream and the american nightmare in literature by William D. Howells and Henry James
Title | The american dream and the american nightmare in literature by William D. Howells and Henry James PDF eBook |
Author | Carolina Hein |
Publisher | GRIN Verlag |
Pages | 16 |
Release | 2008-06-19 |
Genre | Literary Collections |
ISBN | 3638065766 |
Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Constance, language: English, abstract: This term paper deals with the origin of the American Dream, with the American Nightmare and with the two novels "The Rise of Silas Lapham" written by William D. Howell (1885) and "The American" by Henry James (1877). The term paper mainly concentrates on the main characters and their social life and shows that the protagonists, who live the way that the term “American Dream” implies, experience the seamy side of the American Dream. The American Dream has a long history which goes back several hundred years. For some people the American Dream might stand for property, for others it might be the image of freedom and equality. By all means, the American Dream promises a more comfortable life and the realization of the deepest dreams. But reality can turn the American Dream into the American Nightmare. Searching for a well paid job to raise their standards of living, people acknowledge that it is difficult to move up the economic ladder. Longing for equal opportunity, people face discrimination due to their race or social class. This term paper deals with the origin of the American Dream and two novels The Rise of Silas Lapham written by William D. Howell, originally published in 1885, and The American by Henry James published in 1877. The term paper mainly concentrates on the main characters and their social life and shows that the protagonists, who live the way that the term “American Dream” implies, experience the seamy side of the American Dream. Before Europeans had moved to the new continent, the first immigrants living in America were Asians (Jordan, Winthrop D./Leon F. Litwack. The United States, Conquering a Continent Volume 1. California: North West, 2003: 1). In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered an unknown continent which was named “America” after the explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Reports of America visitors connected the impression of America with “a paradise on earth” and the “El Dorado” and thus attracted people (Freese, Peter. The American Dream and the American Nightmare: General Aspects and Literary Examples. Paderborner Universitätsreden 7. Paderborn: Universität-Gesamthochschule, 1987: 8). Terrible and dangerous life situations, daily suffered by men and women during the “Protestant Reformation”, forced victims of “religious persecution” to flee the countries (Freese 1987: 10). Searching for protection, they moved from the “Old World” to the “New World” (15).
American Nightmare American Dream
Title | American Nightmare American Dream PDF eBook |
Author | Suge Knight |
Publisher | |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2003 |
Genre | Rap (Music) |
ISBN | 9781573222556 |
Suge Knight, the founder of Death Row Records, the man at the center of the gangsta rap and hip-hop explosion, is a singular combination of showman, businessman, and Godfather, and a natural-born storyteller. In American Nightmare American Dream, he delivers the most candid, unflinching, and thoughtful account of his many lives. American Nightmarechronicles the inspirational story of Suge Knight's emergence from the ghetto streets of Compton to become one of the most significant and controversial personalities in the music industry. For the first time, Knight publicly addresses such subjects as the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls; his notorious run-ins with music executives and producers; and countless provocative incidents involving former colleagues and friends, including Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Vanilla Ice, Berry Gordy, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, and Jennifer Lopez. In harrowing detail, he tells of the five years he spent behind bars-the shock and sadness of arriving at a place that he already knew intimately from stories heard since childhood, and the wisdom gained from being cut off from his former life. American Nightmareis also the story of a uniquely self-made man. The success of Death Row Records turned him into a multimillionaire who crossed impossible borders. He counted himself a friend of John F. Kennedy, Jr., and paid with hard time for his alleged association with known felons. His style of doing business-"bringing the ghetto into the boardroom"-has inspired admiration and fear in equal measure. Even as some in the music business profess to be afraid of him, he is hailed as a hero in Compton, for giving back to the community. He has instituted programs for single-parent families and children of incarcerated parents. In American Nightmare, he tells young people how terrible prison is, how important it is to get an education, and that there are more ways to get out of the ghetto than by being an athlete or a rapper. Suge Knight wants them to dream about success and then make it happen. Suge Knight's life story is a contemporary, urban version of the American rags-to-riches saga. It also uniquely illuminates the most important revolution in popular music of the past few decades-the emergence of gangsta rap and hip-hop into the mainstream. With dead-on humor and bracing candor, Suge Knight pays tribute to the hard lessons of his past, and offers a powerful answer to anyone who feels trapped by circumstances beyond their control: the example of a life lived boldly.