Self-Made: The Stories That Forged an American Myth

'Self-Made' success is now an American badge of honor that rewards individualist ambitions while it hammers against community obligations. Yet, four centuries ago, our foundational stories actually disparaged ambitious upstarts as dangerous and selfish threats to a healthy society. In Pamela Walker Laird's fascinating history of why and how storytellers forged this American myth, she reveals how the goals for self-improvement evolved from serving the community to supporting individualist dreams of wealth and esteem. Simplistic stories of self-made success and failure emerged that disregarded people's advantages and disadvantages and fostered inequality. Fortunately, Self-Made also recovers long-standing, alternative traditions of self-improvement to serve the common good. These challenges to the myth have offered inspiration, often coming, surprisingly, from Americans associated with self-made success, such as Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, and Horatio Alger. Here are real stories that show that no one lives – no one succeeds or fails – in a vacuum.

Table of Contents:
Preface; A word about words; Introduction: Challenging the myth of self-made success; 1. A new world of ambition and judgment; 2. Self-improvement for the common good in the eighteenth century; 3. Work and merit in a new republic; 4. The politics of self-making in a self-made nation; 5. Forging origins in antebellum stories; 6. Character and money in mid-century; 7. Gilded age heroes; 8. Competing stories of self-help before 1936; 9. Stories against the New Deal; 10. Targeting the common good, 1950–2000; 11. The myth's twenty-first-century victories.

About the Author :
Pamela Walker Laird is Professor Emerita of History at the University of Colorado Denver. Her publications include Pull: Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin, which won the Hagley Prize; and Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing.

Review :
'Pamela Laird exposes the myth of the self-made person. She brings together an unexpected cast of historical actors, from Oliver Cromwell and Booker T. Washington to Kylie Jenner, and in the process she urges readers to reconsider how and why the idea of the self-made individual continues to pervade American society Surprising and brilliant.' Justene Hill Edwards, author of Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank 'Pamela Laird's compelling exploration of four centuries of stories of the self-made man illuminates the past even as it provides lessons for the present. Communal obligations and individualistic dreams, heavenly aspirations and earthly riches, often hidden costs and obvious benefits jostle with each other and capture the reader's attention.' Daniel Horowitz, author of Entertaining Entrepreneurs: Reality TV's Shark Tank and the American Dream in Uncertain Times 'Pamela Laird has written an extraordinary book. At a moment when the fantasy of the lone entrepreneurial genius is more dominant than ever, this beautifully written and deeply researched account helps us to understand how recent the invention of the 'self-made' executive really is – and in so doing, points us to other ways of thinking about economic life with long roots in American culture and politics. Laird shows us a revelatory vision of business as a social world, one driven by stories and by relationships as much as by market research and the bottom line.' Kim Phillips-Fein, author of Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal 'To call someone 'self-made' has almost never been true, nor has it always been a compliment. With great erudition, Pamela Laird documents the evolution of this slippery term over four centuries of the American past. Her enlightening book displays a deep respect for the complexities of the past while offering an urgent critique of present-day inequality.' Seth Rockman, author of Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery