Word: epstein
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AMBITION: THE SECRET PASSION by Joseph Epstein; Dutton; 312 pages...
...Epstein suggests that this age of sub-compact expectations has other causes...
...Joseph Epstein, editor of the American Scholar and a member of North western's English department, defines ambition as the fuel of achievement. Ben Franklin was an OPEC of success in the 18th century. Pierre du Pont never ran dry; neither did John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Joseph Kennedy or Henry R. Luce. Epstein tips his mortarboard to these classic American gogetters. In a series of biographical sketches, he admires their energy and single-mindedness and the uncomplicated relish they took in pursuing knowledge, wealth and power. He understands the influences that gave their ambitions strength and direction...
These verities are now riddled with doubts, uncertainty principles and tough tax laws. Today, Epstein argues, business success is looked down on as a bit tacky. In England and America, he says, it is fashionable to think small, though not necessarily to live that way. There is now an odor of hypocrisy in the air, notes Epstein, particularly among "authors of books deploring affluence who regularly call their editors for up-to-the-minute royalty statements; Marxist professors with two Volvos in the driveways of their summer homes. Esquire, whose pages spill over with advertisements for cars, clothes, travel...
...game for many no longer seems worth the effort; careers and families are no longer standard equipment but options. Epstein goes further: "All this suggests a people that has lost its way, its energy, its dreams-in a word, its ambition...