The American Idea of Success

The standard work on the history of the idea of success. "Doing your own thing" has always meant for most Americans becoming what society most respected – a success. But if money was what one worked so hard for, making money was not a philosophy to live by. The book moves beyond a definition of success to examine what has been the philosophy of achievement for middle-class Americans. Focusing on business success, which most Americans have pursued, the history takes us back to the founding of American Civilization to explain the heritage of the idea of success. Puritan-Protestant clergymen assured the colonists that God wanted them to be productive in the new land, to make money by hard work, perseverance, and thrift. They justified the successful man by depicting him as the steward of God giving away a part of his money. The amount of money a successful man made also became an index of his service to the community. However, making money was not supposed to be the final goal in life. That goal was to 'true success,' a higher aim above and beyond money. The character ethic, in both its religious and secular interpretations, dominated the idea of success until the 1930s. Through the life and thought of the apostles of success, the book carries the historical narrative forward. Benjamin Franklin and Horatio Alger, Jr., Russell Conwell and Elbert Hubbard, Bruce Barton and B.C. Forbes spoke for middle-class, popular thought during their own times. Relating the success idea to other values and the conditions of American life, I suggest a variety of reasons why Americans were ambitious to get ahead, including an evaluation of the importance of the mother in instilling a need for achievement. Since the 1930s the personality ethic has dominated the success idea. In the world of Dale Carnegie, one gets ahead by manipulating the responses of other people. In recent decades Norman Vincent Peale's power of positive thinking has been influential. The history reaches back a century to examine the roots of this major philosophical construct of achievement--the mind power ethic. The closing chapters explore both the critics and the consequences of the drive to get ahead in American life. Beginning with the chapter on "The Failure of Success," the narrative weaves together a tapestry of American values about achievement from Henry David Thoreau to today's New Romantics. With challenges to prevailing viewpoints about happiness and leisure in America, I point out that both political liberals and conservatives have shared similar values about success but have differed about the reality of the American Dream. In the final chapter the story comes full circle and returns to the problem of definition. We come to understand ourselves and American culture better by being made aware of our ambivalent feelings about success. I have found the final meaning of success in a number of dilemmas that the United States has endured and that every American must live with who chooses to confront life in the 1990s. About the Author:

Richard M. Huber is a magna cum laude graduate in history from Princeton with a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale.