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The Refinement of America : Persons, Houses, Cities - Richard Lyman Bushman

The Refinement of America

Persons, Houses, Cities

By: Richard Lyman Bushman

Paperback | 31 August 1993 | Edition Number 1

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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.
Industry Reviews
"This important study . . . offers a promising framework for understanding American life."-- The New York Times Book Review"From an astonishing array of sources Bushman has pieced together an extraordinarily rich and readable account of the spread of gentility over a century and a half. . . . This is a remarkable book about a subject that is presently emerging as one of the most significant in the history not only of early America but of all early modern Western societies."-- Gordon S. Wood, author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution"The scope of this book is enormous. . . . Bushman is a skilled researcher, and he has combed the archives of historical museums for his evidence, which he arranges neatly and intelligently."--Los Angeles Times Book Review"One of the most skillful and sensitive accounts in a fresh field . . . The Refinement of America will fundamentally alter the way we think about the genesis of American civilization."-- Michael Kammen, Cornell University

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