THE AMERICAN DREAM has long loomed as the guiding promise of life in the United States. Seeds of the idea can be seen in the country’s founding documents, but the phrase itself first emerged just under 100 years ago. In 1931, historian James Truslow Adams popularized the term in his book The Epic of America to describe a society of opportunity for all, regardless of social class. Today, the American dream seems more a mythic ideal than lived reality.