Karen Halttunen draws a vivid picture of the social and cultural development of the upwardly mobile middle class, basing her study on a survey of the conduct manuals and fashion magazines of mid-nineteenth-century America. "An ingenious book: original, inventive, resourceful, and exciting. ... This book adds immeasurably to the current work on sentimental culture and American cultural history and brings to its task an inquisitive, fresh, and intelligent perspective. ... Essential reading for historians, literary critics, feminists, and cultural commentators who wish to study mid-nineteenth-century American culture and its relation to contemporary values."--Dianne F. Sadoff, American Quarterly "A compelling and beautifully developed study. ... Halttunen provides us with a subtle book that gently unfolds from her mastery of the subject and intelligent prose."--Paula S. Fass, Journal of Social History "Halttunen has done her homework--the research has been tremendous, the notes and bibliography are impressive, and the text is peppered with hundreds of quotes--and gives some real insight into an area of American culture and history where we might have never bothered to look."--John Hopkins, Times Literary Supplement "The kind of imaginative history that opens up new questions, that challenges conventional historical understanding, and demonstrates how provocative and exciting cultural history can be."--William R. Leach, The New England Quarterly "A stunning contribution to American cultural history."--Alan Trachtenberg
... This book adds immeasurably to the current work on sentimental culture and American cultural history and brings to its task an inquisitive, fresh, and intelligent perspective. ..
Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, 190–98; Kasson, Rudeness and Civility, 109–10; for a prehistory of this relationship between antitheatricality and social mobility, see Agnew, Worlds Apart, 40, 61.
However, even life has been expressed in cash terms.” Even in unextraordinary transactions, money is frequently tendered for kindness or service. A Swiss guide is offered money to search for the hero's body in Frank Hunter's Peril, ...
In this gripping and brilliantly reported book, Ron Suskind tells the story of what happened next, as Wall Street struggled to save itself while a man with little experience and soaring rhetoric emerged from obscurity to usher in “a new ...
Based on conversations with hundreds of Americans, this volume reveals the self-understanding of Americans as a people and as a nation "The contemporary benchmark from which to look back and look forward in the continuing inquiry about ...
I also came to know some of its leading practitioners — inspiring individuals like E. P. Thompson , Eric Hobsbawm , and George Rude ... I vividly recall taking part in Hobsbawm's pathbreaking monthly seminar on labor history ...
Discusses ritual events we regard as family traditions and how they must be open to perpetual revision so we can satisfy our human needs and changing circumstances.
In Manliness and Morality : Middle - Class Masculinity in Britain and America , 1880-1940 , edited by J. A. Mangan and James Walvin , 123–34 . New York : St. Martin's Press , 1987 . Ramirez , Bruno . When Workers Fight : The Politics of ...
Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-century United States Lori D. Ginzberg ... the American Historical Society and Library of Congress J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship , and the American Council of Learned Societies for the ...
Quoted from Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, 30. 30. John Angell James, The Young Man From Home, 94-95; for similar comments about youth possessing a roving disposition, see Muzzey, Young Man's Friend, 4, 47; Todd, ...