Thanks to his family's wealth, Donald Trump was already earning more annually when he was a toddler than many of us will ever dream of. Kylie Jenner grew up in a mansion. On television. Yet both have calculatedly peddled their images — like plenty of the born rich do — as industrious, self-made success stories. Why? Because America loves a good story of someone picking themselves up by their bootstraps. But it's all a myth. It's more than a myth — it's a joke.
In Alissa Quart's "Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream," the author of "Squeezed" and "Branded" explores the roots of our obsession with individualistic success; unpacks how it's helped give rise to everything from Trumpism, hustle culture and crowdfunding as ad hoc healthcare; and explains how the zeal for autonomy has undercut our humane impulse to interdependence.
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