Waking Up Screaming from the American Dream: NPR's Roving Correspondent Reports from the Bumpy Road to Success

The American dream is to score big, declares Garfield in this weave of anecdotes from his syndicated column and National Public Radio stories. Here he presents quirky tales of Americans who have doggedly pursued that dream, however ""utterly futile"" their quest. There's the roving constitutional scholar who collects bars of soap from international hotels and the CEO who moved his Winnebago to Wall Street in an attempt to raid capital at the source. More fun than these entertaining but brief accounts are Garfield's longer pieces, in a couple of which he anatomizes a Washington press conference ignored by the big media as well as an open house conducted by a real estate agent. He also turns a rueful gaze on himself as he recalls his near-miss attempt to launch a syndicated TV quiz show and spends all too much time trying to make his newly purchased vintage house habitable in the face of strange phenomena such as an enormous electric bill (a ""voltergeist""). An engaging, if slight, miscellany. (June)