ABSTRACT
According to their national myth, all Americans are "middle class," but rarely has such a widely-used term been so poorly defined. These fascinating essays provide much-needed context to the subject of class in America.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|42 pages
Middling Sorts for the New Nation
chapter 2|19 pages
“We Are Not Afraid to Work”
Master Mechanics and the Market, Revolution in the Antebellum North
part 2|32 pages
Morality and Markets in the Nineteenth Century
chapter 3|13 pages
Charitable Calculations
Fancy work, Charity, and the Culture of the Sentimental Market 1830–1880
chapter 4|15 pages
Bringing Up Yankees
The Civil War and the Moral Education of Middle-Class Children
part 3|50 pages
The Cultural Uses of the Spirit
chapter 5|18 pages
Henry Ward Beecher and the “Great Middle Class”
Mass-Marketed Intimacy and Middle-Class Identity
chapter 7|15 pages
Secularization Reconsidered
Chautauqua and the De-Christianization of Middle-Class Authority, 1880–1920
part 4|34 pages
The Middle is Material
chapter 9|15 pages
Public Exposure
Middle-Class Material Culture at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
part 5|49 pages
Business Careers in Modern Tines
chapter 10|12 pages
Obstacles to History?
Modernization and the Lower Middle Class in Chicago, 1900–1940
chapter 12|17 pages
The Rise of the Realtor®
Professionalism, Cender, and Middle-Class Identity, 1908–1950
part 6|45 pages
The Politics of Race and Community
chapter 14|11 pages
The Limits of Democracy in the Suburbs
Constructing the Middle Class through Residential Exclusion
chapter 15|13 pages
Rethinking Middle-Class Populism and Politics in the Postwar Era
Community Activism in Queens
part 7|26 pages
Why Class Continues to Count
chapter 16|11 pages
Propertied of a Different Kind
Bourgeoisie and Lower Middle Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States
