Home Title Index Topic Index Sources Directory News Releases Sources Calendar

American Dreams: Lost and Found

Terkel, Studs
Publisher:  Ballantine Books, New York, USA
Year Published:  1981  
Pages:  515pp   ISBN:  0-345-29736-9
Resource Type:  Book

Interviews with 100 Americans who relate their dreams, disappointments, aspirations and experiences.

Abstract:  In this work, Studs Terkel interviews a hundred Americans and discovers their dreams, disappointments, aspirations and experiences. He covers a vast variety of people in different fields of life, including a former beauty queen, a politician, a fruit picker, a former Klu Klux Klan member, an attorney, an actor and many more. The interviews are written in the form of short narratives and are quite varied and interesting. The people interviewed range from well known public figures, like Arnold Shwarzenegger, to ordinary, unknown members of society, like a Manhattan bellhop.

[Abstract by Nabeeha Chaudhary]



Table of Contents

Introduction
Prologue

Part I: Onward and Upward
1. The Boss
2. The Hired Gun, The Travellin' Lady, The Wanderin' Kid, and The Indian
3. Fantasia
4. True Believer

Part II: O Canaan Land
5. Arriving: Then
6. Generations: First and Second
7. Arriving: Now
8. Going and Coming

Part III: In the Country
9. Stirrings in the Field
10. Them
11. Girl of the Golden West
12. Sowing on the Mountain
13. The Diploma

Part IV: In the City
14. Neighbourhood Boy
15. Neighbourhood Familiar
16. Alone
17. Stirrings in the Neighbourhood

Part V: Dreams: Public and Private
18. Visions
19. Winning
20. Gathering and Letting Go
21. Mother and Son

Part VI: They Also Serve…
22. Politics
23. John and Karl
24. A Homily on Duty
25. Editor and Publisher

Part VII: The Young: Spectators and Gladiators
26. The Girl Next-Door
27. The Graduates
28. The Girl Across the Tracks
29. Family Portraits
30. A Certain Smile
31. Touching Thirty

Epilogues:
The Woods
The Train

Topics
Sources-journalists use the sources website to find you


AlterLinks
c/o Sources


© 2025.