Tracing the story of The American Dream: Success Stories, Horatio Alger and a Nation of ‘Hustlers, Episode 5 of The American Tapestry Project analyzes the tension between two stories: our Jeffersonian sense of ourselves as yeoman farmers living in small towns versus the reality that we live in Alexander Hamilton’s world of high finance, manufacturing and entrepreneurial zeal.

In addition to such famous success stories as John D. Rockefeller and Jeff Bezos, we’ll also encounter African-American entrepreneurs Annie Malone and Pennsylvanian Stephen Smith. We’ll examine the American-created self-improvement industry beginning with Benjamin Franklin proceeding through Dale Carnegie to Joel Osteen and the success-gospel.

If Americans hustle, in the sense of work hard, which they do, some are also “hustlers” who know how to cut a corner. We’ll meet P.T. Barnum and Tom Thumb, William Thompson – the original Confidence-Man who gave us the expression “Con-Man” – and we’ll ask “Why is The Godfather so enduringly popular? It’s all here in Episode 5: The American Dream: Success Stories, Horatio Alger and a Nation of ‘Hustlers’.

Ver todos los episodios