Made in America: Self-Styled Success from Horatio Alger to Oprah Winfrey

Made in America

Self-Styled Success from Horatio Alger to Oprah Winfrey

Jeffrey Louis Decker

$32.00 paper
ISBN: 0-8166-3021-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-3021-9

The first look at self-made men and women from a multicultural perspective.

Made in America presents the first look at self-made men and women from a multicultural perspective. Jeffrey Louis Decker discusses the emergence of self-starters like Andrew Carnegie, Booker T. Washington, Madam C. J. Walker, and Lee Iacocca in relation to the changing consumer markets of the twentieth century.

Decker locates the new breed of entrepreneurs within the changing rhetoric of personal success, which shifted its emphasis over the past century from religious "character" to psychological "personality" to celebrity "image." The book concludes by surveying the life stories of enterprising celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Decker analyzes the autobiographical expressions of famous entrepreneurs, from Carnegie to Ross Perot, alongside more marginal ones in order to examine how mainstream society shapes and is shaped by the cultures of subordinate groups. In addition, he looks at the link between self-making and nation-building, and in doing so discovers the origins of another pervasive myth: the "American dream."

Underlying Decker's study are these questions: What happened to the myth of self-making in America? If it is dead, what caused its demise? If it lives on, what form has it taken? Written in a lucid and engaging style, Made in America uncovers the richness, complexity, and diversity of self-styled success in our time. By bringing gender, race, and ethnicity to bear on the myth of the "self-made man," this book provides a timely and fascinating reexamination of a traditional area of inquiry in American cultural studies.

"Bringing to light many newly discovered facts about the lives of his subjects, Decker makes important connections between self-making and nation-building and expands this discussion to include the changing identity of the figure of the self-made man within and beyond boundaries of gender, race, and even physical existence itself. Lucid and engaging, this is one of those rare academic books that addresses both specialists and general readers." —Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside

"In this concise yet comprehensive study, Jeffrey Decker shows how stories about material success provide the central subtext for much of American autobiography and fiction. Moral pluck produces market luck in these narratives; their promises of self-reliance, moral uplift, and material abundance seem to provide a unifying common ground for an otherwise fragmented and diverse society. Yet Decker demonstrates the ways in which promises of universal inclusion mask practices of differentiated exclusion, and he raises probing and profound questions about the perils of disguising normative power as moral behavior." —George Lipsitz, author of Time Passages

Jeffrey Louis Decker was an Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard University, and currently teaches American studies and American literature at the University of California, Los Angeles

200 pages | 5 7/8 x 9 | 1997
Table of Contents

Introduction:

The Rise of the Self-Made Man and the Triumph of U.S. Nationalism
From Character to Personality to Image
Multicultural Narratives of Uplift in Twentieth-Century America

Class Mobility

Moral Luck and the Horatio Alger Formula: Andrew Carnegie
Hard Luck: John McLuckie
The Limits of Luck: James J. Davis

Gender Stability

Troubling the Horatio Alger Formula: Tattered Tom
True Womanhood in the Market: Harriet Hubbard Ayer
Domesticating Business: The "Emma McChesney" Trilogy

Racial Segregation

The Political Economy of a Lynch Mob: Tom Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart
Free Enterprise: Booker T. Washington
Working Wonders: Madam C. J. Walker

Immigrant Aspirations

Out of America: Marcus Garvey
From Steerage to Self-Culture: Mary Antin
Oriental Yankees: Younghill Kang

Individual Enterprise in the Postfrontier Nation

Not-Quite-White Enterprise in the Tribal Twenties: The Great Gatsby
Inventing the American Dream in the Great Depression: The Epic of America

The Ends of Self-Making

Image Incorporated: Howard Hughes, Lee Iacocca, and Ross Perot
Downsizing: Susan Powter and Oprah Winfrey

Epilogue: The Return of the Self-Made Man



Made in America *Self-Styled Success from Horatio Alger to Oprah Winfrey* Jeffrey Louis Decker		$32.00 paper ISBN: 0-8166-3021-6 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-3021-9
The first look at self-made men and women from a multicultural perspective. Made in America presents the first look at self-made men and women from a multicultural perspective. Jeffrey Louis Decker discusses the emergence of self-starters like Andrew Carnegie, Booker T. Washington, Madam C. J. Walker, and Lee Iacocca in relation to the changing consumer markets of the twentieth century. Decker locates the new breed of entrepreneurs within the changing rhetoric of personal success, which shifted its emphasis over the past century from religious "character" to psychological "personality" to celebrity "image." The book concludes by surveying the life stories of enterprising celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Decker analyzes the autobiographical expressions of famous entrepreneurs, from Carnegie to Ross Perot, alongside more marginal ones in order to examine how mainstream society shapes and is shaped by the cultures of subordinate groups. In addition, he looks at the link between self-making and nation-building, and in doing so discovers the origins of another pervasive myth: the "American dream." Underlying Decker's study are these questions: What happened to the myth of self-making in America? If it is dead, what caused its demise? If it lives on, what form has it taken? Written in a lucid and engaging style, Made in America uncovers the richness, complexity, and diversity of self-styled success in our time. By bringing gender, race, and ethnicity to bear on the myth of the "self-made man," this book provides a timely and fascinating reexamination of a traditional area of inquiry in American cultural studies. "Bringing to light many newly discovered facts about the lives of his subjects, Decker makes important connections between self-making and nation-building and expands this discussion to include the changing identity of the figure of the self-made man within and beyond boundaries of gender, race, and even physical existence itself. Lucid and engaging, this is one of those rare academic books that addresses both specialists and general readers." —Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside "In this concise yet comprehensive study, Jeffrey Decker shows how stories about material success provide the central subtext for much of American autobiography and fiction. Moral pluck produces market luck in these narratives; their promises of self-reliance, moral uplift, and material abundance seem to provide a unifying common ground for an otherwise fragmented and diverse society. Yet Decker demonstrates the ways in which promises of universal inclusion mask practices of differentiated exclusion, and he raises probing and profound questions about the perils of disguising normative power as moral behavior." —George Lipsitz, author of Time Passages Jeffrey Louis Decker was an Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard University, and currently teaches American studies and American literature at the University of California, Los Angeles 200 pages \| 5 7/8 x 9 \| 1997 Table of Contents Introduction: The Rise of the Self-Made Man and the Triumph of U.S. Nationalism From Character to Personality to Image Multicultural Narratives of Uplift in Twentieth-Century America Class Mobility Moral Luck and the Horatio Alger Formula: Andrew Carnegie Hard Luck: John McLuckie The Limits of Luck: James J. Davis Gender Stability Troubling the Horatio Alger Formula: Tattered Tom True Womanhood in the Market: Harriet Hubbard Ayer Domesticating Business: The "Emma McChesney" Trilogy Racial Segregation The Political Economy of a Lynch Mob: Tom Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart Free Enterprise: Booker T. Washington Working Wonders: Madam C. J. Walker Immigrant Aspirations Out of America: Marcus Garvey From Steerage to Self-Culture: Mary Antin Oriental Yankees: Younghill Kang Individual Enterprise in the Postfrontier Nation Not-Quite-White Enterprise in the Tribal Twenties: The Great Gatsby Inventing the American Dream in the Great Depression: The Epic of America The Ends of Self-Making Image Incorporated: Howard Hughes, Lee Iacocca, and Ross Perot Downsizing: Susan Powter and Oprah Winfrey Epilogue: The Return of the Self-Made Man