The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream

What do we mean by the American dream? Can we define it? Or does any discussion of the phrase end inconclusively, the solid turned liquidlike ice melting? Do we know whether the American dream motivates and inspires or, alternately, obscures and deceives? The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream offers distinctive, authoritative, original essays by well-known scholars that address the social, economic, historical, philosophic, legal, and cultural dimensions of the American dream for the twenty-first century. The American dream, first discussed and defined in print by James Truslow Adamss The Epic of America (1931), has become nearly synonymous with being American. Adamss definition, although known to scholars, is often lost in our ubiquitous use of the term. When used today, the iconic phrase seems to encapsulate every fashion, fad, trend, association, or image the user identifies with the United States or American life. The American dreams ubiquity, though, argues eloquently for a deeper understanding of its heritage, its implications, and its impactto be found in this first research handbook ever published on the topic.