The American Idea of Success
Language: English
Published by Pushcart Press, 1971
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: Southampton Books, Sag Harbor, NY, U.S.A.Southampton Books
AbeBooks seller since August 1, 2012
Condition: Used - Very good
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First Edition Thus, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Pushcart Press, 1971. Octavo. Paperback. Book is very good with light spotting to the page ends and the first page, and very light edgewear. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.
Seller Inventory # 356975
- Title
- The American Idea of Success
- Author
- Richard M. Huber
- Publisher
- Pushcart Press
- Publication year
- 1971
- Condition
- Very Good
- Binding
- Paperback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 091636643X
- ISBN 13
- 9780916366438
- Edition
- FIRST THUS.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Author
"Doing your own thing" has always meant for most Americans becoming what society most respected -- a success. But if money was what one worked so hard for, making money was not a philosophy to live by. The book moves beyond a definition of success to examine what has been the philosophy of achievement for middle-class Americans. Focusing on business success, which most Americans have pursued, the history takes us back to the founding of American Civilization to explain the heritage of the idea of success. Puritan-Protestant clergymen assured the colonists that God wanted them to be productive in the new land, to make money by hard work, perseverance, and thrift. They justified the successful man by depicting him as the steward of God giving away a part of his money. The amount of money a successful man made also became an index of his service to the community. However, making money was not supposed to be the final goal in life. That goal was to 'true success,' a higher aim above and beyond money. The character ethic, in both its religious and secular interpretations, dominated the idea of success until the 1930s. Through the life and thought of the apostles of success, the book carries the historical narrative forward. Benjamin Franklin and Horatio Alger, Jr., Russell Conwell and Elbert Hubbard, Bruce Barton and B.C. Forbes spoke for middle-class, popular thought during their own times. Relating the success idea to other values and the conditions of American life, I suggest a variety of reasons why Americans were ambitious to get ahead, including an evaluation of the importance of the mother in instilling a need for achievement. Since the 1930s the personality ethic has dominated the success idea. In the world of Dale Carnegie, one gets ahead by manipulating the responses of other people. In recent decades Norman Vincent Peale's power of positive thinking has been influential. The history reaches back a century to examine the roots of this major philosophical construct of achievement--the mind power ethic. The closing chapters explore both the critics and the consequences of the drive to get ahead in American life. Beginning with the chapter on "The Failure of Success," the narrative weaves together a tapestry of American values about achievement from Henry David Thoreau to today's New Romantics. With challenges to prevailing viewpoints about happiness and leisure in America, I point out that both political liberals and conservatives have shared similar values about success but have differed about the reality of the American Dream. In the final chapter the story comes full circle and returns to the problem of definition. We come to understand ourselves and American culture better by being made aware of our ambivalent feelings about success. I have found the final meaning of success in a number of dilemmas that the United States has endured and that every American must live with who chooses to confront life in the 1990s. Author bio: Richard M. Huber is a magna cum laude graduate in history from Princeton with a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Southampton Books
Sag Harbor, NY, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since August 1, 2012
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