Ralph H. Gabriel, Yale University
"A notable achievement . . . definitive. An extraordinary illumination of a very important aspect of American culture."
Publishers Weekly
From Ben Franklin's pragmatic materialism to Dale Carnegie's advice on how to manipulate people, American pundits and hucksters have promoted the idea of success and the money and status it brings. Huber's iconoclastic history of this country's literature of success, first published in 1971, traces the shift from a "character ethic" of ambition and self-reliance to a "personality ethic" of self-packaging and personal leverage. In separate chapters covering the McGuffey Reader, Horatio Alger's novels, the autosuggestion of Emile Coue, keeping up with the Joneses and Norman Vincent Peale, Huber documents the tension between our worship of the bitch-goddess success and our feeling that success ought to mean more than the mere possession of objects. In a foreword, Huber notes that women, like men, increasingly tend to measure self-worth by occupational achievement. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. Paperback edition.
David W. Hirst, Princeton University
Even more relevant today than when first published, Richard Huber's book, now extended to address the young achievers of today, is a veritable tract for the times. . . . In a searching, sweeping analysis of what success has meant to Americans from the very beginning, the author offers many insights into the nature of the American character and calls upon each of us once again to question where we are going and why.
Josh Getlin - Journalist
Richard Huber's book should be required reading for anybody who wants to know what makes Americans tick, and the values they embrace on the road to success. In a fascinating historical narrative, he shows how capitalism and spiritual values have been intertwined since before the revolution. Today's bestseller lists are topheavy with writers who promise a spiritual path to financial riches, but Huber's great contribution is to show how old an idea this really is in America, and his research is extraordinary. In some cases, the same language describing "positive thinking" today can be found in historical tracts over 100 years old. All in all, a worthy contribution to the literature and a splendid look at American economic and intellectual history.
Author’s Description
"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 '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 first decade of the new century.
