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.
| ISBN | 9780679744146 |
| Autor(a) | Bushman, Richard Lyman |
| Editora | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Ano de edição | 1993 |
| Páginas | 528 |
| Acabamento | Brochura |