num_pages: 504
description: 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.
language: English
title: The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities
titlecomplete: The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities
genres: Grad School, Material Culture, The United States Of America, Nonfiction, School, 18th Century, American History, Architecture, 19th Century, History
ratings_count: 227
publisher: Vintage