A short history of rudeness : manners, morals, and misbehavior in modern America / Mark Caldwell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Caldwell, Mark.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Etiquette--United States--History.

Etiquette.

History.

United States--Social life and customs.

United States.

Manners and customs.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

14 unnumbered pages, 274 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

[First Picador USA edition].

Place of Publication:

New York : Picador USA, [1999]

Summary:

On The Floor Of The House, A. U. S. representative urges Congress to "tell the president to shove his veto pen up his deficit." Angry Americans routinely spew abuse and obscenities in Internet chatrooms. And a student in Massachusetts provokes an outcry when he shows up to class wearing a T-shirt that reads Coed Naked Band: Do It To The Rhythm. What accounts for this apparent epidemic toward incivility? And why do so many of us care about it?

In his thought-provoking new book, literary/social critic Mark Caldwell gives us a history of the demise of manners and charts the triumphant progress of rudeness in America. The perceived breakdown of civility has in recent years become a national obsession, and our modern climate of boorishness has cultivated a host of etiquette watchdogs, like Miss Manners and Martha Stewart, who defend us against an onslaught of nastiness.

But Caldwell demonstrates that the foundations of etiquette actually began to erode several centuries ago with the blurring of class lines and the emergence of a new middle class. Touching on aspects of both our public and private lives, including work, family, and sex, he examines how the rules of behavior inevitably change and explains why, no matter how hard we try, we can never return to a golden era of civilized manners and mores.

Contents:

pt. 1. Public life. Colonel Mann and Mrs. Post: manners, morals, and class in modern America

Manners in motion: the rise of mobility and the breakdown of public behavior

Manners from nine to five: etiquette and power in the American workplace

Bride, groom, and corpse: rituals and rites of passage

Virtual rudeness: mass media, mass communications, mass mannerlessness

pt. 2. Private life. Mr. Bok and Martha: the triumph of lifestyle

The lady in the boutique and the man in the g-string: etiquette, race, and gender

From Jean-Jacques to Dr. Spock: parents, children, and discipline

Co-ed naked neo-Victorianism: manners and sex in the Nineties

Manners for the Millennium.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0312204329

0965041506

OCLC:

41090627