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The Refinement of America

Persons, Houses, Cities

Author Richard Lyman Bushman
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Paperback
$27.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Aug 31, 1993 | 528 Pages | 9780679744146
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The Refinement of America is an exciting and original analysis of how the concern for stylishness, taste, beauty, and politeness that began to be felt in America after 1700 changed the nation's future development as a society and culture.  Bushman shows that the visions of a more elegant life both complemented and competed with other American values associated with evangelical religion, republicanism, capitalism, and the work ethic.  He argues that gentility gained strength from collaboration with liberal capitalism, but in a way that blunted class conflict. The combination of capitalism, republicanism, and gentility prevented the hardening of class consciousness: instead there emerged a belief in the right of every citizen to membership in the middle class.
© Jeanne Daniels
Richard Lyman Bushman, Gouverneur Morris Professor of History, Emeritus, at Columbia University, grew up in Portland, Oregon, and earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University. He has also taught at Brigham Young University, Boston University, and the University of Delaware. His From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690—1765 won the Bancroft Prize in 1967. His other books include Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (1984), winner of the Evans Biography Award; King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (1985); and The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (1992). A practicing Mormon, he lives in New York City with his wife, Claudia. View titles by Richard Lyman Bushman

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The Refinement of America is an exciting and original analysis of how the concern for stylishness, taste, beauty, and politeness that began to be felt in America after 1700 changed the nation's future development as a society and culture.  Bushman shows that the visions of a more elegant life both complemented and competed with other American values associated with evangelical religion, republicanism, capitalism, and the work ethic.  He argues that gentility gained strength from collaboration with liberal capitalism, but in a way that blunted class conflict. The combination of capitalism, republicanism, and gentility prevented the hardening of class consciousness: instead there emerged a belief in the right of every citizen to membership in the middle class.

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© Jeanne Daniels
Richard Lyman Bushman, Gouverneur Morris Professor of History, Emeritus, at Columbia University, grew up in Portland, Oregon, and earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University. He has also taught at Brigham Young University, Boston University, and the University of Delaware. His From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690—1765 won the Bancroft Prize in 1967. His other books include Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (1984), winner of the Evans Biography Award; King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (1985); and The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (1992). A practicing Mormon, he lives in New York City with his wife, Claudia. View titles by Richard Lyman Bushman

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