American Dreams: Lost and Found - Hardcover

Terkel, Studs

4.15

379 ratings by Goodreads

9780340267011: American Dreams: Lost and Found

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0340267011 ISBN 13: 9780340267011

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 1981

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The author gives us a hundred American lives and a thousand dreams. He has sought out the broadest cross sections of his countrymen and countrywomen, and persuaded them to tell him their innermost hopes, and dreams. Most remarkable about this book is how surprising it is. Terkel demonstrates his genius for uncovering the unknown. Here is a group portrait of secret hopes that astonishes with what we have ceased to expect. From the opening pages, Terkel shows us how American reality defies our stereotyped expectations. We start with a marvelously embittered winner of the Miss USA contest, a tough, sparkling young woman who sees the con behind the dream of success. Here are the businessmen getting ahead, the immigrants who arrived then and now, the city boys determined to break out, the farm kids dreaming of the city, the visionaries, the idealists, the rebels, the kids next door. We encounter a wide variety of well-known folk, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jesse Helms to Joan Crawford. This book succeeds in telling us something about ourselves we did not dare to suspect. Few books will speak so directly as American Dreams to the hopes, often disappointed yet still fundamental, that we all share. We should all listen to what Studs Terkel has heard.

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