Read "The Refinement of America Persons, Houses, Cities" by Richard Lyman Bushman available from Rakuten Kobo. A work of immense and richly nuanced learning, The Refinement of America newly illuminates every facet of both our artifacts and our values. Classifications Dewey Decimal Class 973 Library of … this book explains why. I don't see how he could cover anything else, he gets to: fancy houses in eighteenth century Delaware, courtesy books, grand staircases and gardens, the fancifying of the old stodgy New England meetinghouses, the ambivalent embrace of the American parlor...the list goes on. Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2012. A very entertaining book that goes into a lot of interesting depth about the role manners and material culture played among ambitious Americans in the colonial period. of refinement to their own purposes, both before and after the Revolution. This edition was published in 1992 by Knopf, Distributed by Random House in New York. 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. . xiii). 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. Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video! Richard Bushman argues that what we today call manners in America resulted from our forefathers imitating Italian Renaissance court fashion and etiquette. By examining the changes from one generation to the next, Bushman is able to show the push toward gentility and gentrification among a rising middle class of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing on the material culture of 18th and 19th century American city planning, architecture, fashions and luxury objects Bushman traces its progressive diffusion from the colonial elite into the middle class of the early republic. Please try again. eISBN-13: 9780307761606. eBook Features. It also makes strong connections to how many of these objects/styles/modes of thought derived from European practices. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. an aristocratic culture of gentility shaped early American society and capitalism. 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. Free shipping for many products! . Spanning the material world from mansions and silverware to etiquette refinement in American English (rɪˈfainmənt) noun. So the book offered a unique bridge from the past to the present. Start by marking “The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities” as Want to Read: Error rating book. Richard Lyman Bushman obtained a Ph.D. from Harvard and published widely in early American social and cultural history before completing his most well-known work, Historiography of the American Revolution, 1607-1800 (nonfiction), 32 Historical Romance Series to Binge-Read after 'Bridgerton'. Finally, Bushman writes, “The refinement of America involved the capture of aristocratic culture for use in republican society. I learned a lot about the culture of the American elite through the mid-19th century, and how that is reflected in their possessions, houses, and city development. Woodward editorship. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. EMBED. Refinement held out the hope of elevation from ordinary existence into an exalted society of superior beings” (pg. offers a promising framework for understanding American life. I found this interesting: I enjoyed this one so much that I chose to apply Bushman's main thesis to the settlement of Maine for one of my final papers. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published