Awards

• Commended for Nautilus Award (Social Change) 2005

Overview

"The American Dream is in decline. Americans are increasingly overworked, underpaid, and squeezed for time. But there is an alternative: the European Dream - a more leisurely, healthy, prosperous, and sustainable way of life. Europe's lifestyle is not only desirable, argues Jeremy Rifkin, but may be crucial to sustaining prosperity in the new era. With the dawn of the European Union, Europe has become an economic superpower in its own right - its GDP now surpasses that of the United States. Europe has achieved newfound dominance not by single-mindedly driving up stock prices, expanding working hours, and pressing every household into a double- wage-earner conundrum. Instead, the New Europe relies on market networks that place cooperation above competition; promotes a new sense of citizenship that extols the well-being of the whole person and the community rather than the dominant individual; and recognizes the necessity of deep play and leisure to create a better, more productive, and healthier workforce. From the medieval era to modernity, Rifkin delves deeply into the history of Europe, and eventually America, to show how the continent has succeeded in slowly and steadily developing a more adaptive, sensible way of working and living. In ""The European Dream"", Rifkin posits a dawning truth that only the most jingoistic can ignore: Europe's flexible, communitarian model of society, business, and citizenship is better suited to the challenges of the twenty-first century. Indeed, the ""European Dream"" may come to define the new century as the American Dream defined the century now past. The contents of this book are: Introduction; New Lessons from the Old World - The Slow Death of the American Dream, The New Land of Opportunity, and The Quiet Economic Miracle; The Making of the Modern Age - Space, Time, and Modernity, Creating the Individual, Inventing the Ideology of Property, and Forging Capitalist Markets and Nation-States; The Coming Global Era - Network Commerce in a GLobalized Economy, The ""United States"" of Europe, Government Without a Center, Romancing the Civil Society, The Immigrant Dilemma, Unity in Diversity, Waging Peace, A Second Enlightenment, and Universalizing the European Dream; Notes; Bibliography; and Index."

Full Product Details

9781585423453

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Reviews

Rifkin is one of the leading big-picture thinkers of our day....Rifkin has also helped to define a new niche for the public intellectual as a gatherer of our vast but fragmented reserves of knowledge. His writing focuses less on what he knows than on what the culture knows. At a time when so many people in key places find it hard to 'connect the dots, ' Rifkin has turned this critical function into an art.

Author Information

"One of the most popular social thinkers of our time, Jeremy Rifkin is the bestselling author of ""The European Dream,"" ""The Hydrogen Economy,"" ""The Age of Access,"" ""The Biotech Century,"" and ""The End of Work."" A fellow at the Wharton School's Executive Education Program, he is president of The Foundation on Economic Trends in Bethesda, MD."

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