Pamela Walker Laird is Professor Emerita of History at the University of Colorado Denver. Her publications include Pull: Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin, which won the Hagley Prize; and Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing.

'Pamela Laird exposes the myth of the self-made person. She brings together an unexpected cast of historical actors, from Oliver Cromwell and Booker T. Washington to Kylie Jenner, and in the process she urges readers to reconsider how and why the idea of the self-made individual continues to pervade American society Surprising and brilliant.' Justene Hill Edwards, author of Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank

• 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.

Pamela Walker Laird is Professor Emerita of History at the University of Colorado Denver. Her publications include Pull: Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin, which won the Hagley Prize; and Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing.

'Pamela Laird exposes the myth of the self-made person. She brings together an unexpected cast of historical actors, from Oliver Cromwell and Booker T. Washington to Kylie Jenner, and in the process she urges readers to reconsider how and why the idea of the self-made individual continues to pervade American society Surprising and brilliant.' Justene Hill Edwards, author of Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank

• 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.