Facets Of The American Dream And American Nightmare In Film

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Facets of the American Dream and American Nightmare in Film

Author : Jessica Narloch
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 364018145X
Total Pages : 105 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis Facets of the American Dream and American Nightmare in Film by : Jessica Narloch

Download or read book Facets of the American Dream and American Nightmare in Film written by Jessica Narloch and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-10 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: 1,7, University of Duisburg-Essen, 60 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: "Predictively, any attempt at abstracting from the plethora of relevant publications something even faintly resembling a definition of the 'Dream' is doomed to failure." Peter Freese As Peter Freese precisely points out, defining the American Dream is a difficult if not irresolvable task. The reason for this is that "beyond an abstract belief in possibility, there is no one American Dream." Nevertheless, it is easy to find short definitions in various encyclopedias. In The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language it is defined as " a]n American ideal of a happy and successful life to which all may aspire: "In the deepening gloom of the Depression, the American Dream represented a reaffirmation of traditional American hopes."' The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy offers a different definition: " a] phrase connoting hope for prosperity and happiness, symbolized particularly by having a house of one's own. Possibly applied at first to the hopes of immigrants, the phrase now applies to all except the very rich and suggests a confident hope that one's children's economic and social condition will be better than one's own." A rather short and simple explanation of the term American Dream can be found in the dictionary WordNet by the Princeton University which says that it is "the widespread aspiration of Americans to live better than their parents did." All of these definitions describe various facets of the dream, but none of them gets to the point. In order to get an idea of what the dream really is or what it is assumed to be and how the idea of it came up, it is necessary to have a look at American history. The recapitulation in this work will make an attempt to reveal why it is the American dream and how it is related to American national id

Blood on White Picket Fences

Author : Marcus J. Mallard
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (841 download)

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Book Synopsis Blood on White Picket Fences by : Marcus J. Mallard

Download or read book Blood on White Picket Fences written by Marcus J. Mallard and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "George A. Romero has been called the "Father of the Modern Zombie Movie." His 1968 classic, Night of the Living Dead, sparked an entirely new sub-genre of horror cinema. Along with this new medium of fright came a new way to interpret America. The Dead series brings in aspects of the American Dream including racial tensions, home ownership, and consumerism and how survivors must cope with the new menace and each other within an apocalyptic scenario. Each film offers a glimpse into the extra-filmic culture surrounding the films' release allowing the audience to interpret the socio-historical subtext. Romero's films demonstrate the inability for human cooperation to occur within a disaster scenario, and that this spells as the ultimate end for the status quo. As for the living dead, the shambling masses are the mirror of the human society that is on its knees, operating on an instinctual mode of mass consumption. As the films progress, the living dead become self-aware and move to protect their own society they have taken from the survivors. The American Dream, the fallen society followed, only turned humanity into the living dead, and those that kept with the American Dream after the beginning of the contagion were not capable of surviving within such a hostile environment."--Abstract.

The American Dream and the American Nightmare

Author : Peter Freese
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 72 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Dream and the American Nightmare by : Peter Freese

Download or read book The American Dream and the American Nightmare written by Peter Freese and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The American Dream and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

Author : John Emmett Winn
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781628929010
Total Pages : 163 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Dream and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema by : John Emmett Winn

Download or read book The American Dream and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema written by John Emmett Winn and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "While the myth of a classless America endures in the American Dream, the very stratification that it denies unfairly affects the majority of Americans. Study after study shows that it's increasingly difficult for working class people to achieve upward mobility in the US - so how does the American Dream continue to thrive? J. Emmett Winn shows us that the American Dream's continued glorification in contemporary Hollywood cinema should not be ignored. The book explicates three major themes surrounding the American Dream in contemporary Hollywood cinema and relates those findings to the United States' social and cultural changes in the last 25 years. Through his thoughtful analysis of films as diverse as Working Girl, Titanic, Pretty Woman, Flashdance, The Firm, Good Will Hunting, Saturday Night Fever, Wall Street and many others, Winn shows that contemporary Hollywood is very much in the business of keeping the Dream alive."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

The American Dream in "The Pursuit of Happyness" (2006)

Author :
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3346955907
Total Pages : 25 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (469 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Dream in "The Pursuit of Happyness" (2006) by :

Download or read book The American Dream in "The Pursuit of Happyness" (2006) written by and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2023-10-18 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2023 in the subject American Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,2, University of Hannover, language: English, abstract: "From Rags to Riches" - This sentence has left an indelible mark on American history like no other before. It encapsulates the journey from poverty to wealth of a single individual, a dream that countless people sought in their pursuit of a land brimming with boundless opportunities. We are speaking of the American Dream, a vision deeply ingrained in the minds of the earliest settlers of America. This dream stands as a symbol of the American self-image and is an integral component of the nation's identity. The human right articulated as "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" in the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson can be viewed as the quintessential embodiment of the American Dream. Over 150 years later, James Truslow Adams popularized the term and defined it as follows: "The American dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better, richer, and fuller for every man, with opportunities for each according to his ability and achievement". The American Dream has been explored in numerous works, including the iconic novel "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which not only left an indelible mark on American literature but also on American history. Moreover, it is considered one of the most widely taught English novels in American educational institutions in the last decade. The life of the titular character, Jay Gatsby, serves as a poignant example of the American Dream's disillusionment, as he tragically perishes without ever attaining his coveted life. However, for this essay, we will delve into the biographical drama film "The Pursuit of Happyness," directed by Gabriele Muccino, which focuses on yet another facet of the American Dream. It is particularly intriguing to note that the film centers around Will Smith's character, Chris Gardner, an African American man who is determined to chase his own happiness. This essay endeavors to explore the relationship between the life of African American Chris Gardner and the American Dream as portrayed in "The Pursuit of Happyness." To commence our analysis, we shall first define the term "American Dream". This definition will lay the groundwork for our exploration of the American Dream in the film. Following this, we will delve into the historical backdrop, for, as Samuel aptly puts it, "There is no better way to understand America than by comprehending the cultural history of the American Dream" (Samuel).

American Dream, American Nightmare

Author : Kathryn Hume
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 025205413X
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis American Dream, American Nightmare by : Kathryn Hume

Download or read book American Dream, American Nightmare written by Kathryn Hume and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2022-08-15 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 Dreams, American Nightmares

Author : David Madden
Publisher : Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis American Dreams, American Nightmares by : David Madden

Download or read book American Dreams, American Nightmares written by David Madden and published by Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press. This book was released on 1970 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pursuit of the American Dream, supposedly shaped by the edenic promises of the American land, has engaged our writers from the beginning, and much of our literature has come out of the national literary experience thus expressed. This collection of nineteen original, unpublished essays written for this book is particularly relevant today, when our collective field of vision seems obscured, and when the American Dream seems to have become a cliché, symbolic of the Dream defunct. The nineteen critics here presented include, among others, Leslie Fiedler, Oscar Cargill, Maxwell Geismar, Jules Chametzky, Louis Filler, and Ihab Hassan. Most of them seem to agree with the view expressed by the majority of our best creative writers: that in pursuing the American Dream, America has created a nightmare. Taken together, the nineteen essays provide a comprehensive view of American literature, past and present, as it has dealt with the Dream; but the emphasis is on modern works and present social, cultural, and political problems--poverty, war, and racism. Ten of the essays focus on such key works as Herman Melville's "The Two Temples," F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, William Faulkner's "The Bear," Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, and Norman Mailer's Why Are We in Vietnam?

Between the World and Me

Author : Ta-Nehisi Coates
Publisher : One World
ISBN 13 : 0679645985
Total Pages : 163 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (796 download)

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Book Synopsis Between the World and Me by : Ta-Nehisi Coates

Download or read book Between the World and Me written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by One World. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Projecting the End of the American Dream

Author : Gordon B. Arnold
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313385645
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (133 download)

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Book Synopsis Projecting the End of the American Dream by : Gordon B. Arnold

Download or read book Projecting the End of the American Dream written by Gordon B. Arnold and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative book reveals how Hollywood films reflect our deepest fears and anxieties as a country, often recording our political beliefs and cultural conditions while underscoring the darker side of the American way of life. Long before the war in Iraq and the economic crises of the early 21st century, Hollywood has depicted a grim view of life in the United States, one that belies the prosperity and abundance of the so-called American Dream. While the country emerged from World War II as a world power, collectively our sense of security had been threatened. The result is a cinematic body of work that has America's decline and ruin as a central theme. The author draws from popular films across all genres and six decades to illustrate how the political climate of the times influenced their creation. Projecting the End of the American Dream: Hollywood's Visions of U.S. Decline combines film history, social history, and political history to reveal important themes in the unfolding American narrative. Discussions focus on a wide variety of films, including Rambo, Planet of the Apes, and Easy Rider.

The American Dream and American Cinema in the Age of Trump

Author : Graham S. Clarke
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000615537
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Dream and American Cinema in the Age of Trump by : Graham S. Clarke

Download or read book The American Dream and American Cinema in the Age of Trump written by Graham S. Clarke and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-28 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Dream and American Cinema in the Age of Trump uses both film theory and insights from object relations theory in order to examine how recent films address and reflect the state of the ‘American Dream’. This fascinating book looks at how the American Dream is one of the organising ideas of American cinema, and one of the most influential cultural outputs of the twenty-first century, at a time of internal crisis. In an era characterised by populism, climate change and economic uncertainty, the book considers nine auteur films in how they illustrate the challenges of contemporary America. Graham S. Clarke and Ross Clarke present a bifocal perspective on some of the most well-received American films of recent years and how they relate to the American Dream in the context of the Trump presidency. For each of the nine films discussed, two different accounts are presented side by side so that each film is considered from an object relations psychoanalytic point of view (internal world) as well as a film and cultural theory perspective (external world). This unique approach is complemented by discussion of political and critical theory, providing a thorough and engaging analysis. Challenging and insightful, The American Dream and American Cinema in the Age of Trump will be of great interest to scholars of cinema, popular culture, American studies and psychoanalytic studies.

The Curse of the Blessed

Author : Martha J. Steadham
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (882 download)

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Book Synopsis The Curse of the Blessed by : Martha J. Steadham

Download or read book The Curse of the Blessed written by Martha J. Steadham and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The American Dream and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

Author : J. Emmett Winn
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 0826428614
Total Pages : 174 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (264 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Dream and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema by : J. Emmett Winn

Download or read book The American Dream and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema written by J. Emmett Winn and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2007-09-26 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the myth of a classless America endures in the American Dream, the very stratification that it denies unfairly affects the majority of Americans. Studies show that it's difficult for working class people to achieve upward mobility in the US. This book shows that the American Dream's glorification in Hollywood cinema should not be ignored.

Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream

Author : Paul A. Cantor
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813177332
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (131 download)

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Book Synopsis Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream by : Paul A. Cantor

Download or read book Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream written by Paul A. Cantor and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2019-05-17 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The many con men, gangsters, and drug lords portrayed in popular culture are examples of the dark side of the American dream. Viewers are fascinated by these twisted versions of heroic American archetypes, like the self-made man and the entrepreneur. Applying the critical skills he developed as a Shakespeare scholar, Paul A. Cantor finds new depth in familiar landmarks of popular culture. He invokes Shakespearean models to show that the concept of the tragic hero can help us understand why we are both repelled by and drawn to figures such as Vito and Michael Corleone or Walter White. Beginning with Huckleberry Finn and ending with The Walking Dead, Cantor also uncovers the link between the American dream and frontier life. In imaginative variants of a Wild West setting, popular culture has served up disturbing—and yet strangely compelling—images of what happens when people move beyond the borders of law and order. Cantor demonstrates that, at its best, popular culture raises thoughtful questions about the validity and viability of the American dream, thus deepening our understanding of America itself.

Nightmare Alley

Author : Mark Osteen
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421408325
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Nightmare Alley by : Mark Osteen

Download or read book Nightmare Alley written by Mark Osteen and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2013-01-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classic film noir offers more than pesky private eyes and beautiful bad girls—it explores the quest for the not-so-attainable American dream. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Desperate young lovers on the lam (They Live by Night), a cynical con man making a fortune as a mentalist (Nightmare Alley), a penniless pregnant girl mistaken for a wealthy heiress (No Man of Her Own), a wounded veteran who has forgotten his own name (Somewhere in the Night)—this gallery of film noir characters challenges the stereotypes of the wise-cracking detective and the alluring femme fatale. Despite their differences, they all have something in common: a belief in self-reinvention. Nightmare Alley is a thorough examination of how film noir disputes this notion at the heart of the American Dream. Central to many of these films, Mark Osteen argues, is the story of an individual trying, by dint of hard work or, more often, illicit enterprises, to overcome his or her origins and achieve material success. In the wake of World War II, the noir genre tested the dream of upward mobility and the ideas of individualism, liberty, equality, and free enterprise that accompany it. Employing an impressive array of theoretical perspectives (including psychoanalysis, art history, feminism, and music theory) and combining close reading with original primary source research, Nightmare Alley proves both the diversity of classic noir and its potency. This provocative and wide-ranging study revises and refreshes our understanding of noir's characters, themes, and cultural significance.

The American Dream and Dreams Deferred

Author : Carlton D. Floyd
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793634122
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Dream and Dreams Deferred by : Carlton D. Floyd

Download or read book The American Dream and Dreams Deferred written by Carlton D. Floyd and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-11-14 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Dream and Dreams Deferred: A Dialectical Fairy Tale shows how rival interpretations of the Dream reveal the dialectical tensions therein. Exploring often neglected voices, literatures, and histories, Carlton D. Floyd and Thomas Ehrlich Reifer highlight moments when the American Dream appears both simultaneously possible and out of reach. In so doing, the authors invite readers to make a new collective dream of a better future, on socially just, multicultural, and ecologically sustainable foundations.

The Epic of America

Author : James Truslow Adams
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351304119
Total Pages : 454 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (513 download)

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Book Synopsis The Epic of America by : James Truslow Adams

Download or read book The Epic of America written by James Truslow Adams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a tradition of one-volume narrative histories of the United States in which the political, military, diplomatic, social, and economic strands are skillfully interwoven. Rather than add to these volumes, The Epic of America paints a sweeping picture of the diverse past that has created America's national story. In this important narrative, James Truslow Adams reviews how the ordinary American has matured over time in outlook, character, and opinion. Adams grew increasingly conscious of how different an American is now from the man or woman of any other advanced nation. He is equally interested in the whole of American history, how it began, and what it represented in the first half of the twentieth century. Adams traces the historical origins of the American concept of "bigger and better," attitudes toward business, the American Dream, and other characteristics generally considered "typically American." Ever since America became an independent nation, each generation has seen an uprising of its citizens to save the American Dream from forces seeking to overwhelm and dispel it. Possibly the greatest of these struggles is still ahead not a struggle of revolutionists against established order, but of the ordinary person who seeks to hold fast to the rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This classic book is valuable for a new age and as important for this new century as it was when originally written.

American Dream, Global Nightmare

Author : Ziauddin Sardar
Publisher : Icon Books Company
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis American Dream, Global Nightmare by : Ziauddin Sardar

Download or read book American Dream, Global Nightmare written by Ziauddin Sardar and published by Icon Books Company. This book was released on 2004 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Propelled by its mythology, America pursues its dream relentlessly. Here, the authors expose the dark side of that fantasy: death, suffering, perpetual fear, an increasing divide between rich and poor, a squandering of the human future, and the relentless building of more and more pretexts for future wars.