The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities
- ISBN-10
- 0307761606
- ISBN-13
- 9780307761606
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 528
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2011-09-21
- Publisher
- Vintage
- Author
- Richard Lyman Bushman
Description
This lively and authoritative volume makes clear that the quest for taste and manners in America has been essential to the serious pursuit of a democratic culture. Spanning the material world from mansions and silverware to etiquette books, city planning, and sentimental novels, Richard L. Bushman shows how a set of values originating in aristocratic court culture gradually permeated almost every stratum of American society and served to prevent the hardening of class consciousness. A work of immense and richly nuanced learning, The Refinement of America newly illuminates every facet of both our artifacts and our values.
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