The Real American Dream

A Meditation on Hope

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by Andrew Delbanco

Harvard University Press

Due/Published September 2000, 160 pages, paper

ISBN 0674003837

New in paper (F00)

Delbanco searches out the symbols and stories by which Americans have reached for something beyond worldly desire. A spiritual history ranging from the first English settlements to the present day, the book is also a meditation on hope. Delbanco tells of the God of Protestant Christianity, who exerted immense force over the language, institutions, and customs of the culture for nearly 200 years. He describes the falling away of this God and the rise of the idea of a sacred nation-state. And, finally, he speaks of our own moment, when symbols of nationalism are in decline, leaving us with nothing to satisfy the longing for transcendence once sustained by God and nation.

From the Christian story that expressed the earliest Puritan yearnings to the New Age spirituality, apocalyptic environmentalism, and multicultural search for ancestral roots that divert our own, The Real American Dream evokes the rhythm of American history. It shows how Americans have organized their days and ordered their lives-and ultimately created a culture-to make sense of the pain, desire, pleasure, and fear that are the stuff of human experience. In a time of cultural crisis, when the old stories seem to be faltering, this book offers a lesson in the remaking of the American dream.

"[Andrew Delbanco] is one of America's most acute and perceptive cultural critics. . . . his simplified sketch of our country's attempts to find sustaining narratives serves his purposes well."--Richard Rorty, The New York Times Book Review