Christopher Whalen

entitled to a national agenda and personal lifestyle that is beyond our current income, a tendency that goes back to the earliest days of the United States. This book examines this apparent conflict by telling the history of the nation from a political and financial perspective, and with an emphasis on the portions of the narrative prior to the past decade of economic boom and bust. Events such as the Gold Rush of the 1840s, the Civil War, the creation of the Federal Reserve System, and the two World Wars, are examined in the context of the changing definition of the aspirations of a nation, what we shall call the American Dream.