The Refinement of America
Persons, Houses, Cities| By: | Richard Lyman Bushman |
| Publisher: | Random House Digital Inc. |
| Print ISBN: | 9780679744146 |
| eText ISBN: | 9780307761606 |
| Edition: | 0 |
| Format: | Reflowable |
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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.