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Adams coined the term "[[American Dream]]" in his 1931 book ''[[The Epic of America]]''.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=paIpt-vBVR8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%2522American+Dream%2522+James+Truslow+Adams#v=onepage|title=The Epic of America|last=Adams|first=James Truslow|date=2012-05-01|publisher=Transaction Publishers|isbn=9781412847018|page=xii|language=en}}</ref><ref name="jstordailydreamingup">{{cite news |last1=Wills |first1=Matthew |title=James Truslow Adams: Dreaming up the American Dream |url=https://daily.jstor.org/james-truslow-adams-dreaming-american-dream/ |accessdate=March 29, 2019 |work=JSTOR Daily |date=May 18, 2015}}</ref> His American Dream is "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yM96DK4ELZkC|title=The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation|last=Cullen|first=Jim|date=2004-01-01|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780195173253|language=en}}</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>
===Two educations===
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