The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Modern History) - Softcover

Blumin, Stuart M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521376122 ISBN 13: 9780521376129

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2010

Synopsis

This book traces the emergence of the recongnizable 'middle class' from the 1760–1900.

About this title

Review

"...[Blumin] approaches a wide range of questions, always ina stimulating manner, with a richness and density of illustration." M.J. Daunton, Journal of Urban History

"Stuart Blumin's book is the most important effort to date to bring the question of middle-class formation into the critical caldron of social change in early 19th-century America in the seaboard cities. The best of his evidence is from Philadelphia, whose social history he has mined with diligence and ingenuity. (There are appropriate comparisons with New York and Boston.)" Daniel T. Rodgers, The New Republic

"Blumin's book is a singular combination of massive synthesis, innovative methodology, and imaginative interpretation....Blumin's conceptualization of class is convincing and technically skillful in its implementation." David A. Gerber, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

"Historians have used the category ['middle class'] both to describe and explain social relations, but the criteria for class membership has remained vague. Stuart Blumin makes an admirable intervention into this fuzziness in his extended exploration of different facets of 'increasingly distinctive class experiences' in antebellum cities." Labor History

Book Description

This book traces the emergence of a recognizable and self-aware 'middle class' between the era of the American Revolution and the end of the nineteenth-century. The author focuses on the development of the middle class in larger American cities, particularly Philadelphia and New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521376122
• ISBN 13: 9780521376129
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448