James Truslow Adams: Difference between revisions

'''James Truslow Adams''' (October 18, 1878 – May 18, 1949)<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Brennan |first1=Elizabeth A. |last2=Clarage |first2=Elizabeth C. |year=1999 |title=Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=63nvmt4HqTEC |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |isbn=9781573561112 |language=en}}</ref> was an [[United States|American]] writer and [[historian]]. He was a freelance author who helped to popularize the latest scholarship about American history and his three-volume history of [[New England]] is well regarded by scholars.<ref>{{Cite book |year=1983 |last=Wilson |first=Clyde N. |title=Dictionary of Literary Biography |publisher=Gale |volume=Volume 17: ''Twentieth-Century American Historians'' |pages=3–8}}</ref> He popularized the phrase "[[American Dream]]" in his 1931 book ''[[The Epic of America]]''.

Adams was born in [[Brooklyn, New York]], to a wealthy family, the son of Elizabeth Harper (née Truslow) and [[stockbroker]] [[William Newton Adams]] Jr.<ref name="auto">{{cite book|title=Who Was Who in American History – the Military|date=1975|publisher=Marquis Who's Who|location=Chicago|isbn=0837932017|page=2}}</ref>

His father had been born in [[Caracas]], [[Venezuela]]. His paternal grandfather, William Newton Adams Sr., was American of [[English Americans|English]] descent with roots in [[Virginia]] and his paternal grandmother, Carmen Michelena de Salias, a Venezuelan of [[Spanish immigration to Venezuela|Spanish descent]] backwith toroots in eighteenth-century [[Gipuzkoa]] in the eighteenth century and a family from [[Seville]].<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kzgrDwAAQBAJ&q=james+truslow+adams+ancestry+spain&pg=PA4 |title=James Truslow Adams: Select Correspondence |isbn=9781351511186 |access-date=September 22, 2020|last1=Nevins|first1=Allan|date=5 July 2017|publisher=Routledge }}</ref> The earliest paternal ancestor was Francis Adams from England, an indentured servant who settled the [[Province of Maryland]] in 1638.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kzgrDwAAQBAJ&q=james+truslow+adams+ancestry+spain&pg=PA4 |title=James Truslow Adams: Select Correspondence|isbn=9781351511186|access-date=January 8, 2020|last1=Nevins|first1=Allan|date=5 July 2017|publisher=Routledge }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eEgBAAAAMAAJ&q=James+Truslow+Adams+venezuelan+grandmother |title=James Truslow Adams: historian of the American dream |via=Google Books |access-date=January 8, 2020|last1=Nevins|first1=Allan |year=1968|publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=9780252724527 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZRAMAQAAIAAJ&q=James+Truslow+Adams+venezuelan+grandmother |title=Opinions and attitudes in the twentieth century |via=Google Books |access-date=2012-11-26|last1=Morgan |first1=Stewart S. |last2=Thomas |first2=William Henry |year=1938}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9YseAQAAMAAJ&q=Elizabeth+Harper+(Truslow)+and+William+Newton+Adams,+Jr. |title=The New England Historical and Genealogical Register |via=Google Books |access-date=2012-11-26|year=1949 }}</ref>

However, Adams felt the American Dream was in peril during the 1920s and 30s. He complained that "money making and material improvements . . . mere extensions of the material basis of existence", had gained ascendancy, becoming "goods in themselves . . . [mimicking] the aspects of moral virtues." The original American Dream had always been about "quality and spiritual values": "The American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, although that has doubtless counted heavily. It has been much more than that." He warned that "in our struggle to 'make a living'" we were neglecting "to live". ''The Epic of America'' was his attempt to save a "priceless heritage", and sustain the distinctly American understanding of progress in humane and moral terms. The true American Dream was of "a genuine individual search and striving for the abiding values of life", and for the "common man to rise to full stature" in the free realms of "communal spiritual and intellectual life."<ref>James Truslow Adams, ''The Epic of America'' (1931; repr., New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1941), 405, 406, 412, 415 (italics in original). For a discussion of Adams as the originator of the term American Dream, see James Cullen, ''The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 7, 191. See also Benjamin Hunnicutt, ''[[Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream]]'', (Philadelphia, Temple Press, 2013).</ref>

A quote from one of Adams' essays "There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live" is widely misattributed to [[John Adams]]. The quote is part of an essay by Adams entitled "To 'Be' or to 'Do': A Note on American Education" which appeared in the June, 1929 issue of ''Forum''. The essay is very critical of American education, both in school and at the university level, and explores the role of American culture and class-consciousness in forming that system of education.

* {{cite book|author=James Truslow Adams|title=The Founding of New England|url=https://archive.org/details/foundingnewengl03adamgoog|year=1921|publisher=Atlantic Monthly Press|pages=[https://archive.org/details/foundingnewengl03adamgoog/page/n25 3]–}}; [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73933 Gutenberg]. [[Pulitzer Prize for History]]<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/foundingofneweng010190mbp|title=The Founding Of New England|last=James Truslow Adams|date=1949-01-01|publisher=An Atlantic Monthly Press Book}}</ref>

* ''The Record of America'' (1935)