We need a hundred more books on the subject of the American myth of rugged independence. This is such an important and well argued book. Highly recommended.

Thank you to Net Galley and Ecco for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This was an illuminating read about the self-made myth. She breaks the subject down but touching upon how we came to the myth of bootstrapping/the self-made man and statistics around generational wealth, privilege, inequalities in gender, and racism especially seen during the pandemic), how the myth hurts us all and how we can improve America through helping others and having interconnection through volunteering, community and throwing away this myth for better understanding and empathy.

Bootstrapped focuses on how the American obsession with self-reliance has permeated our culture with toxic, unrealistic expectations. I fully agree with the author's premise, but still learned a bit about US history. The takeaways are pretty partisan, leaning to progressive ideology, so this may turn some people off if they share different views. I really liked the call to action at the end and ways we can help and build community.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC. All thoughts are my own.

Great book, well written and yet easy to read and comprehend. I think this is one of those books everyone should read!

This is a similar book to Sarah Smarsh's Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth. Quart explores the bootstrap analogy and dissects cultural examples of the American Dream such as the Horatio Alger story and transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau.

https://forward.com/culture/542219/alissa-quart-bootstrapped-rand-thoreau-emerson-american-dream/

Living upstate and away from her people at the onset of the pandemic, Alissa Quart found community in a Passover zoom Seder. In the face of a contemporary plague, finding thoughtful company to discuss ancient and modern hardships was a natural move for a “Jewish social justice crusader.” After all, no one wants to face unforeseeable calamities alone.

In her new book, Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream, Quart lays bare the laughable linguistic roots of the term “bootstrapped” and its dangerous contemporary sociological ramifications.

I have been conditioned over the years to believe I have to take care of myself, because no one else is going to do it, but that’s never the really the whole story.

Bootstrapped looks at our culture of self-made folks who “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” but even those millionaires and billionaires who claim complete self-reliance on their way to the top had some help from someone, and more often than not, it’s a wealthy daddy…

It goes further to explore how we might end this myth and promote interdependence, whether we have means and influence or none at all. It was aggravating at times in the way any critical look is at our broken system is, but it also is uplifting, showing those who are working outside the system that won’t take care of us to build community and how we might help. Definitely recommend.

Alissa Quart’s Bootstrapped is an insightful analysis of class in America. Quart challenges many of the aspects that have just become ingrained parts of American culture: side hustles, soliciting donations online for unexpected expenses, and the difficulty of using the social safety net. Throughout, Quart includes specific stories of people overburdened by side hustles and struggling to grapple with the cost of living. This book strikes a good balance between the experiences of real people and more academic analysis, while also ending with promising ideas for how these problems can be solved. I will definitely be reading more of Alyssa Quart’s work.

Thanks to Ecco and NetGalley for the free eARC for my honest review.

Bootstrapped is an essential and timely investigation into the American myth of the "self made man." Alissa Quart brilliantly exposes the toxic effects that America's puritanical fetishization of "independence" has had on all of us. Perhaps more importantly, she provides inspiring examples of anti-bootstrapping communities and organizations that reveal how recognizing and embracing our essential inter-dependence as humans can lead us all towards a better future. I will be discussing the book at an event at Spotty Dog Books in Hudson, NY next Friday, March 31st.

Thanks to Ecco Press and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.

This was a fantastic sorbet between the meaty chapters of Malcolm Harris' Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World and the well-meaning but not-my-thing meandering of Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. This NAILS where we get the American image of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps from, why that's not something that actually happens, and small things we can do to bring ourselves together as a collective in a way I devoured in a day and a half.

Bootstrapped by Alissa Quart

Wow what a book I find books like this work for me when they get me to think deeply and then if what is being written puts a fire in my belly. This book delivered in waking me up and paying more attention to the terms what people are using today to exploit vulnerable people. It always angers me when you see someone like Elon Musk who has billions of dollars criticize people who need help but in turn he has his hand out from the government asking for assistance for his companies. I like how Mrs.Quart wrote this book she wrote it in simple terms using really easy stories to follow along so that anyone can fully understand the point of the book. For me personally I see some things being pushed in the Veterans Administration hospitals using meditation as a way to deal with pain and not to say that it should not be an option but making people feel bad when it does not work. I get frustrated when I am told by pain management that my knee injections should stop and using meditation and other ways to manage pain. For me I think this pushes people to the edge and suicide becomes the final result hence high rates of suicide in veterans. I know I am drifting away a bit but the book spoke to me and made me think about my own life where I feel like this feeling of failure and what it does to each of us.

This is such a good book and I recommend everyone to read it to enlighten each of us to more of the truth. I am a believer of if you are going to make children starve then when the Elon Musk's of the world should not get a dime of money from the government if his business cannot meet payroll they should fail. If the system is fair then all should be able to thrive and have real opportunity most people want just basic stuff a house, a vehicle to drive and enough to live to support family. The system within capitalism is broken and making people feel guilty for problems that are not their fault and making people feel guilty for failing is just unAmerican. Thank you for waking me up and getting my emotions stirred.

Thank you to Netgalley and Alisa Quart for a free copy of Boostrapped for an honest review. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Alissa Quart
Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream
Ecco
March 14, 2023

Alissa Quart’s Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream (Ecco, 2023) invites readers to consider the history, ideology, and contemporary political rhetoric behind the American phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

Citing the past two decades of increasing polarization of the Democrat and Republican parties in conjunction with the Covid-19 pandemic, Quart launches a thorough journalistic exploration questioning many citizens' dogged belief that their personal wealth, familial health, and place in society are entirely self-made.

Historical and literary perspectives via the lens of Horatio Alger stories, Little House on the Prairie, and Thoreau’s Walden question the meaning and development of individualism, self-determination, and bootstrap ideology. Modern-day healthcare horror stories, bankruptcy, and GoFundMe pleas, as examined by Quart, offer morbid juxtaposition to universal healthcare programs working around much of the world.

Readers familiar with or fans of Quart’s Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America, Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America, and Andrea Elliot’s Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City will find similar, though newly comprised, universal themes in Bootstrapped.

Thank you to Alissa Quart, NetGalley, and Ecco for the digital ARC.

The myth of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" was always a cruel joke, but the last decades have been especially brutal, worse because so many have believed it was our fault and not the system. Alissa Quart is here to change that, from outlining the history of our exploitation to offering solutions for a more equitable society. Quart explodes some of the founding myths of our so-caller meritocracy, showing the ways it was always a rigged game based in fiction. Many remember learning about Horatio Alger stories in school, about their hard-working heroes, but how many of us knew that Alger was a pedophile whose heroes owed more to catching the eye of wealthy older men than to their labor? Quart exposes the hollowness of capitalist ideology in thoughtful, electric prose well backed by research. Like many millennials, all I could say while reading was an emphatic THIS!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this review copy.
I have heard lots of buzz about this one, and I am glad I could read it. It doesn't quite match the buzz, though. The basic argument--that we need to give up on the rugged individualist thing in our culture and learn to cooperate, and learn that everyone poor doesn't suck and everyone rich isn't a morally superior person--is spot on. But the arguments were weakened by snark and just left me feeling uncomfortable. The discussion about Little House on the Prairie--an area I do know a lot about--left me frustrated because one section said that a whole long list of things were in the book Little House on the Prairie--but I know for certain that some of those items occurred in Little House in the Big Woods, some in The House On Plum Creek, and some in the TV show and not in the book at all--which makes me leerier of the other information. Perhaps it suffered from my reading a similar book at the same time that I liked better. So, good argument, execution imperfect.

Would love to have all of my students and truthfully most people I know read this. The book does a phenomenal job of reflecting on the impossible dream capitalism has sold us in America and offers ideas on how to resist these false ideologies. Very well written and researched.

This is a self-help book that has a front of being political science. Some of the narrative and language used was too casual for my taste and reminded me of that book "the subtle art of not giving a f*ck". There were many, many personal stories of people but I found that I skimmed alot. Just saying something is bootstrapped, doesn't make it so. I believe the author needed a stronger argument and tighter text to make this successful to a wider audience.

We've all heard some variation on The American Dream: if you work hard, you will succeed in getting that big job, that big income, that big house, etc. etc. This ideal relies on what Quart calls "bootstrapping" -- the belief that individual effort and self-reliance are what you need to gain material success (and if you don't succeed, it's clearly your own fault). And it is, as Quart reveals over and over in this book, a big fat LIE.

Quart runs the journalism nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project and understands income inequality inside and out, and she shows in this book just how damaging that inequality is in American society and psyches (especially given how that inequality increased throughout the pandemic). The bootstrapping narrative has undergirded American discourse through the days of Benjamin Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, Horatio Alger, Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, up to present day, and it has successfully turned most people's attention away from the flawed social safety net and toward "uplifting" personal stories that claim all you need is grit, hustle, or to lean in.

This book offers an insightful look at the origins of the myth of individualism and how it has promoted the idea of inequality as status quo, and it will have you rethinking many of your own long-held beliefs or assumptions. Quart goes on to examine the burdens that the American Dream places on people, from the lack of assistance in paying medical bills or caring for children to the ongoing grind of hustle culture and the gig economy. The last section of the book presents suggestions for how to turn from the bootstrapping ideal to mutual aid and interdependence within our communities. (It would have been especially helpful to list ideas for pressuring lawmakers to change laws in order to help eradicate inequality, but I do recognize that that is a major, multifaceted endeavor.)

An absolutely vital read for those wanting to understand how we can combat the inequality that affects more and more of us every year -- and how we can create a supportive social safety net that catches everyone.

4.5 stars rounded up

Thank you, Ecco/HarperCollins and NetGalley, for providing an eARC of this book. Opinions expressed here are solely my own.

Wow, okay. This was everything I wanted it to be and more. This book holds nothing back while diving into the toxic "self-reliance" that characterizes American culture. I loved how this book started with the history of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" and how it started off as a joke. A literal joke because it's physically impossible. I love hearing true U.S. history accounts and I learned so much in the first few chapters alone. Not to mention the rest of this phenomenal book.

Quart tackles hefty concepts/myths like "grit" and being "self-made" with grace. All of the topics touched on I could relate to on a personal level. Coming from a lower middle-class family I truly believed that if I worked hard enough, I could overcome any barrier in life. The day I turned 16 I got my first job and ended up having two jobs through the rest of my high school career. I worked myself ragged for the majority of my life, only to still feel like a failure when I was living paycheck to paycheck. This book definitely relieved some serious shame that was ingrained in me since a child. I loved how Quart really confronted the hypocrisy of the ultra-rich and the danger of a capitalist mindset. The personal accounts further proved her point and showed just how detrimental it is to whole-heartedly believe that you're not hindered by oppressive systems, you just simply are not talented or capable enough to achieve what America deems a success.

Despite all the heavy topics, this book still ended on a positive, uplifting note. Change is possible and one of the most beneficial routes to it is mutual aide and general empathy. Highly, highly recommend. There's a lot of people who would probably never pick this up but really need to...Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

The idea of “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” has always been infuriating to me. America’s obsession with individualism sits on a throne of lies and erodes the interdependence infrastructure that helps people thrive. So you might have guessed that I really enjoyed this book, and you would be right.

Starting with an examination of the origin stories of the “self-made” myth (anyone who has suffered through an American literature class will be happy to see Thoreau’s Walden pond experience dismantled) and moving through the negative effects this mindset has on individuals and society as a whole this book is a birds-eye view of how this is hurting us. The second half of the book highlights collective actions and organizations that are making inroads where the bootstrapped policy of our legislature has failed. Most of which will be pretty familiar to anyone with previous exposure to left-leaning political ideas.

The examples of how the "bootstrapping" ideology has failed us and the consequences of that failure in this book are numerous and depressingly familiar with corporate mindfulness, gofundme for healthcare costs, and hustle porn. This all aggregates to a boring dystopia. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about how our self-made myths are hurting us and how together we could find our way out.

Thank you NetGalley and Ecco Press for an advanced reader copy.

A fantastic book if you want to learn more about the American myth of “pulling yourself up by the Bootstraps” and how it is so pervasive, yet entirely unrealistic in our society. No one is saying not to work hard, but to commend someone for doing it all themselves, with literally no help from anyone, is false and actually harms the people who don’t get recognition. No one can exist without help from someone (Parents? Teachers? Doctors?) and the myth undercuts the need for the government to take responsibility to create BASIC systems like healthcare for the general population. It’s also a convenient myth in order to blame people for their lot in life when they fail or when the odds are completely stacked against them. The author goes through many ways in which we have to “bootstrap” ourselves in America, including GoFundMes, the Con of the Side Hustle (when it used to just be called having multiple jobs…) and Mutual Aid, with many more chapters that examine our flawed systems.

One note - a number of times the author listed the title of book used for research and used the word "entitled" instead of "titled" and it is just something to note as I know a lot of people use "entitled" when they mean "titled."