At a moment in which America seems simultaneously more closed and more open to change than ever before, Sons and Daughters of Self-Made Men: Improvising Gender, Place, Nation in American Literature re-examines a defining national discourse. Exploring the dilemmas of U.S. subjects positioned as inheritors-and thus as children-of the archetypal self-made Founder/Father, the author offers a critical re-evaluation of the trope of self-making as...