The American Idea of Success - Softcover

From Ben Franklin's pragmatic materialism to Dale Carnegie's advice on how to manipulate people, American pundits and hucksters have promoted the idea of success and the money and status it brings. Huber's iconoclastic history of this country's literature of success, first published in 1971, traces the shift from a "character ethic" of ambition and self-reliance to a "personality ethic" of self-packaging and personal leverage. In separate chapters covering the McGuffey Reader, Horatio Alger's novels, the autosuggestion of Emile Coue, keeping up with the Joneses and Norman Vincent Peale, Huber documents the tension between our worship of the bitch-goddess success and our feeling that success ought to mean more than the mere possession of objects. In a foreword, Huber notes that women, like men, increasingly tend to measure self-worth by occupational achievement.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A notable achievement . . . definitive. An extraordinary illumination of a very important aspect of American culture. -- Ralph H. Gabriel, Yale University

Even more relevant today than when first published, Richard Huber's book, now extended to address the young achievers of today, is a veritable tract for the times. . . . In a searching, sweeping analysis of what success has meant to Americans from the very beginning, the author offers many insights into the nature of the American character and calls upon each of us once again to question where we are going and why. -- David W. Hirst, Princeton University

Keenly relevant . . . provides a fascinating perspective. -- Wall Street Journal