OurKids_TheAmericanDreaminCrisis

Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster eBook. Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Simon & Schuster. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP or visit us online to sign up at eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com Contents Chapter 1 THE AMERICAN DREAM: MYTHS AND REALITIES Chapter 2 FAMILIES Chapter 3 PARENTING Chapter 4 SCHOOLING Chapter 5 COMMUNITY Chapter 6 WHAT IS TO BE DONE? The Stories of Our Kids JENNIFER M. SILVA and ROBERT D. PUTNAM Acknowledgments About the Author Notes Index Rosemary, for remembrance Chapter 1 THE AMERICAN DREAM: MYTHS AND REALITIES I went back to Ohio, but my city was gone. 1 If I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities in the world. In the particular is contained the universal. 2 MY HOMETOWN WAS, IN THE 1950s, a passable embodiment of the American Dream, a place that offered decent opportunity for all the kids in town, whatever their background. A half century later, however, life in Port Clinton, Ohio, is a split-screen American nightmare, a community in which kids from the wrong side of the tracks th......