“Our country is a nation on the make,” according to historian Walter McDougall. He says we’re builders, dreamers, go-getters, inventers and organizers, so much so that "hustling" has become an indelible part of the American character and American history. He means it in all senses of the word, even going back as far as colonists's first arrival on American soil.
McDougal joined NHPR's Laura Knoy on "The Exchange" this week in 2004 to discuss the founding of the country. “The English colonists, who couldn’t make it in England or who dreamed of getting rich in America and the new world," he says, "brought with them a culture that was already hustling, that was already market oriented that was already capitalist.”
Liberty, the thirteen colonies and the art of the hustle. McDougall’s book Freedom Just Around the Corner gives the story of the creation of America. A story of Puritans, Quakers, and Cavaliers with different ideals yet coming together with a common goal of freedom and figuring a way to hustle themselves to independence.
