The Epic of America

What does America promise its people-and how did that promise develop? In The Epic of America, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James Truslow Adams tells the sweeping story of the United States while examining the ideas, ambitions, conflicts, and contradictions that shaped the American character. Moving from the colonial era and the Revolution through westward expansion, the Civil War, industrialization, immigration, and the emergence of modern America, Adams presents national history as the continuing struggle to turn an ideal of opportunity and individual dignity into reality.

First published in 1931, The Epic of America gave enduring expression to the idea Adams called the "American Dream." For Adams, that dream meant far more than material success: it was the belief that life should be richer and fuller for everyone and that opportunity should not be determined solely by social class or the accident of birth. Writing during the Great Depression, he looked backward across centuries of American experience to ask where that ideal came from, how it had changed, and whether the nation could continue to fulfill it.

Both a broad narrative of American history and an examination of the ideas behind it, The Epic of America remains a fascinating portrait of the United States at a pivotal moment in its development. Adams's account offers modern readers the historical context behind one of the most enduring phrases in American culture and an opportunity to reconsider the meaning, origins, and evolution of the American Dream.