America inside out. Life in the USA and Canada as it really is

“Good-by, America, we have been taught to love your forbidden fruits for so long,” the Nautilus Pompilius group sang in the late 80s. Indeed, any abroad, and especially the distant and mysterious America, seemed to the Soviet man, seemed a real paradise on earth.
In the late 90s, the author emigrated and worked in North America for 20 years, chasing an American dream. However, real life in exile turned into a collapse of hopes for a "fairy -tale life." For him. The one saw there radically different from the glossy picture, which Hollywood draws.
What are the real prices and salaries in the USA and Canada? What difficulties do those who go to the West face? Why do American pensioners sell their apartments? How do Canadian truckers rob? How do Canadian students earn? Why do programmers in America become loaders? What is the meaning of the life of ordinary Americans?
Is America really a country of great opportunities?
The vast experience of survival in a different environment laid the basis of the book, which may be warned someone against fatal mistakes and make you think about whether it is so good where we are not?