Overview

This history of success in the United States illustrates the degree to which personal and professional accomplishments have determined overall life satisfaction. Beyond serving as a guide to the past, present, and future of success in America, especially that found in the business world, this book poses a provocative argument: the standard practice of employing outer-directed measures of success, notably wealth, power, and fame, has worked to the psychological disadvantage of many Americans. More specifically, it shows that a comparative and competitive view of success has made a significant number of individuals feel less successful than if more inner-directed measures were used. Ironically then, the traditional model of success in the United States has been largely a failure. This work offers historians, practitioners, and general readers of non-fiction a blueprint for how to adopt a more meaningful and positive model of success in their everyday lives.

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9781527552111

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Lawrence R. Samuel is an independent scholar who blogs for psychologytoday.com. He holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota, and was a Smithsonian Institution Fellow. His previous books include Brought to You By: Postwar Television Advertising and the American Dream (2002); Future: A Recent History (2009); Freud on Madison Avenue: Motivation Research and Subliminal Advertising in America (2010); The American Dream: A Cultural History (2012); and Shrink: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in America (2013). He is also the author of The American Middle Class: A Cultural History (2013); Remembering America: How We Have Told Our Past (2015); The American Way of Life: A Cultural History (2017); and Aging in America: A Cultural History (2017).

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