bootstraps, damon runyon, johnny appleseed, ring lardner, meritocracy, hagiography, theodore dreiser, frank capra, lincoln steffens, oliver wendell holmes, florenz ziegfeld, rugged individualism, melvil dewey, bildungsroman, autobiographer, hardscrabble, sharecropper, william saroyan, robert benchley, fictionalization, arthur schlesinger, dreiser, dickensian, cassius marcellus clay, emancipator, runyonesque, fabulist, upton sinclair, johnsonian, everyman, karl menninger, sam goldwyn, barthelme, louis auchincloss, fable, ralph waldo emerson, phillis wheatley, niccolo machiavelli, creed, walter lippmann, winsor mccay, clarence darrow, autodidact, langston hughes, truthy, picaresque, tin pan alley, huckster, social darwinism, commager, idealist, robber baron, thomas alva edison, pachuco, apocryphal, epigram, stemwinder, impecunious, socialism, striver, harlem renaissance, mythmaker, bernard malamud, mencken, americanism, owen wister, isaac asimov, hooverville, alexis de tocqueville, john dos passos, archetype, alexander woollcott, dreamer, corn pone, rugged individualist, herman melville, aleichem, groucho marx, teleplay, william randolph hearst, sentimentalized, epigraphs, popularizer, reinhold niebuhr, wilkins micawber, hustler, audie murphy, saul bellow, objectivist, booboisie, mythic, platitude, jacksonian, fictional, micawber, abraham maslow, ayn rand, david riesman, nonracist, bootblack, buncombe, ubermensch