Self-Made
The Stories That Forged an American Myth

Reveals how ambitious Americans forged the myth of self-made success into a tool that rewards individualism and promotes inequality.

Pamela Walker Laird (Author)

9781108833899, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 October 2025

360 pages
23.5 x 16.3 x 2.6 cm, 0.66 kg

'To call someone 'self-made' has almost never been true, nor has it always been a compliment. With great erudition, Pamela Laird documents the evolution of this slippery term over four centuries of the American past. Her enlightening book displays a deep respect for the complexities of the past while offering an urgent critique of present-day inequality.' Seth Rockman, author of Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery

'Self-Made' success is now an American badge of honor that rewards individualist ambitions while it hammers against community obligations. Yet, four centuries ago, our foundational stories actually disparaged ambitious upstarts as dangerous and selfish threats to a healthy society. In Pamela Walker Laird's fascinating history of why and how storytellers forged this American myth, she reveals how the goals for self-improvement evolved from serving the community to supporting individualist dreams of wealth and esteem. Simplistic stories of self-made success and failure emerged that disregarded people's advantages and disadvantages and fostered inequality. Fortunately, Self-Made also recovers long-standing, alternative traditions of self-improvement to serve the common good. These challenges to the myth have offered inspiration, often coming, surprisingly, from Americans associated with self-made success, such as Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, and Horatio Alger. Here are real stories that show that no one lives – no one succeeds or fails – in a vacuum.

Preface
A word about words
Introduction: Challenging the myth of self-made success
1. A new world of ambition and judgment
2. Self-improvement for the common good in the eighteenth century
3. Work and merit in a new republic
4. The politics of self-making in a self-made nation
5. Forging origins in antebellum stories
6. Character and money in mid-century
7. Gilded age heroes
8. Competing stories of self-help before 1936
9. Stories against the New Deal
10. Targeting the common good, 1950–2000
11. The myth's twenty-first-century victories.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK]