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THE SUM OF OUR DREAMS by Louis P. Masur

THE SUM OF OUR DREAMS

A History of America

by Louis P. Masur

Pub Date: Sept. 1st, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-069257-5
Publisher: Oxford Univ.

A levelheaded history of the U.S. framed on the pursuit of the American dream, however illusory it might now seem.

At the dawn of the Great Depression, a banker-turned-historian concocted the phrase “the American Dream” to indicate the governing force of the Declaration of Independence’s exaltation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. “Whether that dream is obtainable, and how access to it has changed over time, is the central theme of American history,” writes Masur, a scholar whose works have ranged from histories of the Civil War era to a book-length look at Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” The notion of equal opportunity is pretty much hard-wired into the American mind, though it’s often found wanting in practice; in any event, it was long denied to various categories of human being, including those of African descent and Indigenous people. Justifications for this exclusion came in many ideological guises, from the insistence of the Confederate constitution that slavery was the natural order of things to the social Darwinism of the post–Civil War era, which “served to undergird such various ideas as laissez-faire capitalism, imperialism, and eugenics.” (Masur ventures an intriguing connection between that dog-eat-dog belief system and the widespread popularity of boxing in the late 19th century.) The author’s dissection of the American dream often turns to areas in which it did not hold, such as the Panic of 1893, “a worldwide economic crisis caused by a decline in commodity prices,” and populist Wisconsin governor Robert La Follette’s efforts to smash the Republican political machine that eventually crushed him. Money is now the determinant of the dream, Masur suggests, with deep-pocketed players such as the Koch brothers and the National Rifle Association holding the keys to government. Meanwhile, the dreams of others for social justice, equality, and “pursuing a better life,” if often invoked, seem ever less attainable.

A survey of our past that capably blends politics, popular culture, and social history into a coherent, readable whole.