Bonfires of the American Dream in American Rhetoric, Literature and Film

(Hardback)

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How could American social solidarity have so collapsed that we cannot even cooperate in fighting a pandemic One problem lies in how our values mutate and intersect in an era of runaway high-end inequality and evaporating upward mobility. Under such conditions, the American Dreams seeming to suggest, falsely, that those who succeed economically are winners, while the rest of us are losers, puts it in dire conflict with our traditions of democracy and egalitarianism. In Bonfires of the American Dream, throughclose cultural studies of classic novels and films Atlas Shrugged, The Great Gatsby, Its a Wonderful Life, and The Wolf of Wall Street Daniel Shaviro helps to provide a betterunderstanding of what went wrong culturally in America.

Reviews

This is a wonderful book, a page-turner about popular American thinking about the American Dream. Shaviro shows how much of our cultural experience consists of economic fantasies, and how much in turn those fantasies shape our culture and our politics. Brilliant, accurate, surprising, and unfailingly interesting. William Flesch, Professor of English, Brandeis University, USA.

These readings of film and literature are subtle, convincing, and fascinating. Further, since they are written in short sentences, in plain yet lively prose, with carefully explicit conclusions, they are wholly accessible to the lay reader. Their theme is of exceptional interest to us all, in our anxious perception that American democratic values may be on course for disintegration. Professor Chris Fitter, Department of English and Communication, Rutgers University, USA.

A selective but fascinating tour of American popular culture (Atlas Shrugged, The Great Gatsby, Its a Wonderful Life, The Wolf of Wall Street) that illuminates destructive discrepancies between American ideals and practices and bitter divisions between rival ideals since the founding. One wonders how America has survivedand if it should. Professor Steven Johnston, Political Science Department, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA.

Author Bio

Daniel Shaviro, the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at NYU Law School, writes mainly about tax policy and inequality. Anthem Press published his well-regarded prior literary study, Literature and Inequality, in 2020.