Despite the fact that American society and culture have experienced radical, dramatic changes over the centuries, the whole concept of a unique "dream" associated with it typically remains constant. Perpetuating good and ill alike depending on the individual, it often involves idealistic portrayals of opportunity, family, freedom, and economic prosperity, particularly home ownership. Whether or not these factors work for everyone is another story entirely. Recent graduates now faced with forging a life of their own will inevitably encounter many, if not all, of its tenets at some point, regardless of whether they ultimately end up fulfilled. As most of these books illustrate, The American Dream may not always prove to be the apple pie ideal everyone thinks it is. Maybe, just maybe, it’s best to follow one’s own bliss instead, provided nobody ends up hurt in the process.
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey into the Heart of The American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
Both one of the quintessential nonfiction novels and a sterling example of gonzo journalism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas sees author Hunter S. Thompson and his irascible lawyer bro embarking on the country’s weirdest road trip. One of their main goals involves attempting to seek out The American Dream while crammed with enough drugs and booze to turn a bull elephant inside-out. Instead of covering their assignments, the decidedly dastardly duo end up terrorizing Vegas searching for answers to vague, subjective conceptual questions instead.
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The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming The American Dream by Barack Obama
Written and printed before his successful 2008 presidential campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama blended memoir and reflections on his beliefs regarding America’s main values. He announced his candidacy with the Democratic Party three months after publication, and many fans and critics considered the book a detailed outline of what to expect from his platform. Regardless of whether you agree with what he has to say, the book still provides a glimpse into how some contemporary politicians interpret the concept of The American Dream.
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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jay Gatsby, on the surface, seems the physical embodiment of everything The American Dream supposedly entails: a bootstraps-pulling innovator with enough coin to throw lavish parties and probably to fill his pool with coins, Scrooge McDuck-style, if it weren’t destined as a grisly, watery murder scene. Considering F. Scott Fitzgerald meant for his now-classic to thoroughly skewer Jazz Age frivolities and fakeries, the glitz and glamour that citizens of the U.S.of A. are supposed to constantly chase ultimately signify nothing when its all lost in the end. Save for personal and intellectual emptiness and futility, anyways.
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Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Published prior to the Civil Rights Movement, Invisible Man brutally deconstructed The American Dream as exclusive only to white men, and mostly rich ones at that. Ralph Ellison noted how so many supposedly ideal situations came about because of exploiting African-Americans and other marginalized demographics. The nameless protagonist rails against this unjust machine by turning their dehumanizing, underhanded methods right back on the oppressors.
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The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
Hollywood allegedly embodies everything Americans are supposed to want in life: exorbitant wealth and excess, slavish attention and fame, and conventional physical appeal. All of these things end up nurturing entitlement issues and narcissism, as horrifically depicted in this oft-overlooked novel by a former screenwriter. Like so many novels analyzing the concept of The American Dream, The Day of the Locust views the more lofty, self-centered components with utter contempt rather than fanciful wonder.
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How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis
Published during the late nineteenth century, this heavy photojournalism work chronicled the grim lives led by immigrants in New York tenement housing. So many struggled their way to the States in order to pursue a more prosperous existence for themselves and loved ones alike. Values dissonance means contemporary audiences might pick out some unfortunate racial and ethnic stereotypes and commentary, but it remains an essential read for understanding some classist downsides to eking out The American Dream.
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Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Willie Loman remains one of the most memorable central characters in American drama, owing largely to his sadsack reflection of how societal expectations can crush a man and his family. Financial and professional success mean so much to him that he cheats on his wife and marginalizes his sons, even though he wishes them to someday emulate him. All that despite the fact that Loman actually fails to accomplish much of anything both professionally and personally.
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The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Two generations of Chinese-American women share their stories of family, loss, love, life, and plenty of other themes in one of the most notable examples of immigrant literature. Despite differing motivations for crossing the Pacific, the mothers still perpetuate the theme of starting over in America and hoping to take advantage of the available opportunities. As one can probably assume, the transition proves smoother for some than others, illustrating a number of possible outcomes.
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Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Like so many novels concerning themselves with making sense of The American Dream, Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt satirizes the many flaws present in the system. Specifically, the empty materialism and crushing pressures to conform, which both receive plenty of much-deserved acidic analysis here. Although the author illustrates how more traditional approaches do, in fact, work for so many, he decries moments when they impress what works for them onto their unwilling and often unlistening peers and offspring.
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The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
The rise and fall of a popular mambo band, comprised largely of Cuban immigrants, serves as an apt narrative of how some successful individuals sabotage their own opportunities at happiness. Brothers Cesar and Nestor Castillo go from playing on I Love Lucy to obscure casualties of a fickle musical fad, though the former’s extravagant habits certainly play their role. Anyone hoping to achieve their own unique goals in America or elsewhere might find some valuable lessons in staying humble and moderate after garnering fame.
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Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
When frustrations stemming from expectations of societal conformity and possession worship mount, a formerly quiet little American worker drone snaps. And in his increasingly violent rebellion against all things homogenous, he ends up organizing a terrorist organization as relentlessly (if not more so!) rigid than the system against which they fight. Destroying something beautiful isn’t exactly the most productive way to deal with the Dream’s downsides, by the way.
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Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Investigative journalist Barbara Ehrenreich spent 18 months working one or more minimum-wage jobs, attempting to reveal the very real fiscal struggles behind policies ostensibly meant to keep them afloat. So often, their economic situations have less to do with laziness and an inability to "Grab those bootstraps, boys" and stem almost entirely from a flawed system. Published in 2001, it proves that even now, class disparities exist and The American Dream is still out of reach for so many who desire — and deserve! — a slice of it.
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The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
Not every read exploring The American Dream necessarily takes a negative stance or worms its way through its darkest underbelly. Some, like Tom Wolfe’s landmark work of New Journalism, prefer asking questions about what it takes to be considered a hero here in the States. The Right Stuff tells the very complex, even more human story of the astronauts chosen to participate in Project Mercury and the political climate that prompted it.
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Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Published in 1961, Richard Yates meant for his novel to be read as "an indictment of American life in the 1950s," particularly the push for stark raving homogeny, usually with classist, racist, homophobic, and sexist components. Taking place in a seemingly idyllic suburb, a condescending, stuffy couple begins sabotaging their own lives through deception and adherence to a rigid conformist agenda. They dream of hauling off to Paris and escaping the damages they constantly inflict, but grisly, bloody mistakes render it nothing more than a passing fancy.
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A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
At the center of this essential family drama sits a $10,000 insurance check, which causes some degree of discord among the wife and children the deceased Mr. Younger left behind. Prior to his death, the patriarch and matriarch adhered to the facet of The American Dream promoting home ownership as the ultimate goal: a near impossibility for most African-Americans prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Despite some major setbacks, the survivors do manage to secure a new home, though their future remains rather uncertain.
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Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Both an immigrant story and a very frank, insightful depiction of intersexuality, the Pulitzer-winning Middlesex takes a somewhat different approach to familiar immigrant narratives. Calliope’s (later Cal) oft-misunderstood medical condition can be traced back to her (later his) incestuous grandparents, who eventually eke out a comfortable middle-class existence while harboring their world-shattering secret. Here, their American Dream eventually veers on an unexpected course when the narrator receives a 5-alpha-reductase diagnosis.
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Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Even a British writer can still provide incredible, provocative, and necessary commentary on The American Dream, as evidenced by one of the greatest graphic novels of the 20th century. Powerless superheroes and an alternate Cold War history shed light on the volatile emotions behind giving into political and social expectations so much that the citizenry snaps. "Heroes" of often questionable heroism — some of them lamenting the loss of a "simpler" time — simultaneously keep the peace and foster a more chaotic nation devoid of hope and drive.
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The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Once the Great Depression hit, it challenged Americans to rethink their values and whether or not the goals and opportunities they were to ostensibly chase are worth it in the end. John Steinbeck’s English class staple follows a foreclosed family along Route 66 as they seek out employment and permanent shelter. Sometimes, the whole "American Dream" thing has to take a back seat to survival and keeping one’s family as safe from every stimuli meant to dissolve it as possible.
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
A creative pair of cousins harness their creativity creating popular comic books reflecting their respective inner and outer turmoil. One, a homosexual at a time when the community faced unfair arrest for no crime or sin, forces himself into the mold expected and ends up worsening the lives of his wife and son. The other ends up torn between his native Prague and America, wishing to provide them with everything The American Dream promises; love might not conquer all, but it certainly acts as a nice enough supplement.
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Pretty much everything Horatio Alger ever wrote
Horatio Alger’s entire oeuvre pretty much embodies every single trope associated with The American Dream. But sometimes he’s exactly what a reader wants. Obviously, those turning an eye toward the serious problems and inequities present in the concept are absolutely necessary if positive change is to take place. There’s room for the ones painting it in a more lighthearted, optimistic manner as well.
Lovers of the magic realism style might want to spend their winters in Florida's sweltering Everglades, following the noble journey of a teen girl hoping to pull her beloved family from ruin. Their gator park livelihood stands threatened when the matriarch, as its main draw, winds up severely sick and sets off a chain reaction of total uncoolness.
The lives of three Brown seniors congeal into a strange love triangle that follows them through a year past graduation and pays homage to the romantic narratives of George Eliot and Jane Austen. While everything twists and turns and intertwines, the gorgeous story also plays as a lit crit tug-of-war between the postmodern and the more traditional tales from the nineteenth century.
University of Houston professor Mat Johnson possesses contemporary American literature's keenest pen for racial satire, as evidenced in his provocative, positively searing parody Pym. Tired of treatment as a token, an English professor indulges his lust for Edgar Allen Poe's only novel and sets forth to find an Antarctic utopia where he and his crew might very well find their niche…or not.
Although unfinished, the late David Foster Wallace's 2011 release still earned it a right fair amount of attention and accolades, so fans of His Royal Footnote Enthusiast should certainly give it a read if they haven't already. Challenging and dense, The Pale King opens up crushing and humorous insight into human emotional suffering through an absurdist corporate espionage tale.
In a dystopian future Chicago, all 16-year-olds are required to pledge their lives to specific virtues; protagonist Beatrice Prior (or "Tris") allies herself with Courage despite hailing from a family devoted to Selflessness. Young adult literature fanatics will love following the heroine as she learns that building up her stores of bravery requires more than just surviving a bit of the old ultra-violence.
Another haunting masterpiece by quintessential postmodernist author Haruki Murakami, this time exploring one woman's experiences trapped between two different realities in 1984. She eventually crash-lands in with a ghostwriter on a particularly strange assignment, and the pair unite to meander the brave new divergent reality world in search of something that makes sense.
Folklore and family collide when a doctor in the war-ravaged Balkans decides to investigate the myriad questions surrounding her grandfather's passing, believing answers may lie in the stories he used to tell and the books he used to read. Her research, however, unearths more tales he never spoke of – tales which might very well unlock some of the mysteries she's encountered along the way.
Over the course of eight vignettes, a diverse selection of new twists on familiar female stock characters ruminate on the qualities that make them them and bridges between daughterhood and motherhood. Each narrative connects with the others around it, and they unfold over decades in order to illustrate how things have changed for women over time.
Rapture fervor engulfed some demographics in 2011, and things only get crazier as 2012 conspiracy theorists edge closer to humanity's alleged date with doom; Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers, suffice to say, hit shelves at a very appropriate time. His lauded novel covers what happens to those remaining after something quite unexpected causes millions of people to just up and disappear one day.
A hunting accident leaves a veterinarian's son in a coma, sending his formerly idyllic existence into a tense frenzy of finding out who's to blame for the tragic accident. Humor, strength, and a task delegated to him by an odd stranger guide Dr. David Appleton and his wife through their trying new situation.
Whomever touts that women just can't write comedy – as well as those who know and love the fact that they can – should add Tina Fey's essays to their winter read pile. Here, she wrings humor out of pretty much everything imaginable, sprinkling it with liberal dashes of insight into the realities of nerd-dom, womanhood, and nerdy womanhood.
Foodie bibliophiles eager to add something to their shelves alongside Anthony Bourdain and Fergus Henderson now have another critically-acclaimed culinary delight to explore. Popular Prune owner Gabrielle Hamilton covers her transition from lover of all things gustatory to a celebrated restaurateur, which involves some fascinating people, places and events that eventually molded her career.
Three survivors of a horrific plane crash during World War II must maneuver the potentially lethal New Guinea jungles, home to violent indigenous peoples and the Japanese military along with the usual milieu of toxic flora and predatory fauna. It's a strange-but-true adventure story about testing the very limits of everything the human body, mind, and spirit can endure.
Celebrated largely as a novelist, Jonathan Lethem allows audiences to witness the true extent of his literary knowledge in this lovely essay collection celebrating everything he finds inspiring. One can easily enjoy his musings on pop culture, family, Brooklyn, drugs, and other eclectic topics without previously picking Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, As She Climbed Across the Table and other novels, though doing so certainly helps broaden understanding of his mindset and creative process.
In 1933, William E. Dodd ended up serving as the U.S.' ambassador to Germany, which just so happened to coincide with the mounting persecution of Jews under the Third Reich. Despite all attempts to alert the State Department about their atrocities, his pleas for intervention end up largely ignored; add in the fact that his daughter harbored quite the Nazi fetish and one ends up with a glimpse into a complex, engaging historical moment.
Half journalistic research, half memoir, Moonwalking with Einstein stands as a super cool analysis of the human memory – specifically, why some people possess particularly adroit ones and what strategies they use to keep their skills in tippy-top shape. Author Joshua Foer ended up competing in the U.S. Memory Championship a year after embarking on his quest, utilizing many of the age-old techniques he picked up on along the way.
Following his parents' divorce, the son of a recognized author ends up coming of age amongst grotesque violence, believing that physical prowess remains the only conduit for survival. What little time Andre Dubus III could muster with his father opened him up to the therapeutic benefits of writing, providing a far safer, peaceful outlet for frustration – not to mention an eventual escape from the cycle of horrors.
One year after Cristoforo Colombo started conquering the indigenous peoples of the Americas, massive biological changes began occurring around settler and native alike, forever altering the continents' ecosystems. Both botanical and zoological species hitched rides on Atlantic-spanning ships (oftentimes to the crew's complete ignorance) and only spread from there, resulting in what some believe to be one of the most significant life scientific moments in history.
Geek culture reigns as one of the more mainstream, influential lifestyles out there these days, up from the former fringes to which it was once pushed. High school, however, continues trying to suppress those who do not conform to some arbitrary (often media-induced) standards – but after graduation, the supposed "undesirables" frequently end up better off than their bullying peers.
Pretty, pretty pink princesses aren't inherently problematic, but an oversaturation of pastel royalty does lead to some interesting – and potentially damaging – sociological phenomena. Specifically, the creation of arbitrary gender norms, which lead to the ostracizing of those who do not sit inside a narrow definition of acceptability; not to mention the infantilizing of young girls who grow up into severely entitled adults.