The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities

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.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 08/31/1993
ISBN: 9780679744146
Pages: 528
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.10w x 1.00d