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

The author analyzes the autobiographical expressions of famous entrepreneurs, from Andrew Carnegie to Ross Perot, alongside more marginal ones, such as Oprah Winfrey and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to examine how mainstream society was and is shaped by the cultures of subordinate groups. He looks at the link between self-making and nation-building and reveals the origins of a persistent myth of the "American dream" .