Full name: The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities

Author: Richard L. Bushman Year: 1992 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Non Fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780679744146 0679744142

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. Similar books: America at 1750 by Richard Hofstadter I Wish I'd Been There by Byron Hollinshead The Search for Order: 1877-1920 by Robert H. Wiebe 1831 by Louis P. Masur The Year of Decision: 1846 by Bernard DeVoto The Cycles of American History by Arthur Meier Schlesinger Dead Wake by Erik Larson One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson Six Frigates by Ian W. Toll 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer The History of Jihad by Robert Spencer Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck The History of Surfing by Matt Warshaw Washington's Immortals by Patrick K. O'Donnell American Gun by Chris Kyle No Way Out by Mitch Weiss Swords and Swordsmen by Mike Loades Dress in Anglo-Saxon England by Gale R. Owen-Crocker