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Free Time

The Forgotten American Dream

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Free Time

By: Benjamin Hunnicutt
Narrated by: Donald H. Beckwith
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About this listen

Has the "American Dream" become an unrealistic utopian fantasy, or have we simply forgotten what we are working for? In his topical audiobook, Free Time, Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt examines the way that progress, once defined as more of the good things in life as well as more free time to enjoy them, has come to be understood only as economic growth and more work, forevermore. Hunnicutt provides an incisive intellectual, cultural, and political history of the original "American Dream" from the colonial days to the present.

Taking his cue from Walt Whitman's "higher progress," he follows the traces of that dream, cataloguing the myriad voices that prepared for and lived in an opening "realm of freedom." Free Time reminds Americans of the forgotten, best part of the "American Dream" - that more and more of our lives might be lived freely, with an enriching family life, with more time to enjoy nature, friendship, and the adventures of the mind and of the spirit. Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt is a Professor of Leisure Studies at the University of Iowa.

He is also the author of Kellogg's Six-Hour Day and Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (both Temple).

©2013 Temple University (P)2014 Redwood Audiobooks
Americas Economics Sociology United States Dream

Critic reviews

"I had a hard time putting Free Time down." (John Buell, author of Politics, Religion, and Culture in an Anxious Age)
" Free Time is a unique contribution to labor history." (Francis Ryan, author of AFSCME's Philadelphia Story)
"Offers a chronological description of the developments that have, over time, stymied our pursuit of the 'American Dream.' Hunnicutt's tenacious, years-long dedication to this topic is impressive." ( Library Journal)
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