The American dream, a term first used by a Depression-era historian named James Truslow Adams, is all about upward mobility. Any US citizen, if they work hard, should be able to not only succeed, but rise above the station of their parents.
In The Epic of America, published in 1931, Adams acknowledged that the ongoing economic crisis threatened a dream that, for most people through the country’s history, seemed attainable. But he also ended on a note of optimism — quoting a Russian immigrant called Mary Antin, who credited the country’s public library system with elevating her from being a child who knew no English to a writer who published her first book as a teenager. As Antin herself put it, “mine is the shining future”.
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