Product Description: Social research efforts are often more concerned with basic social processes or patterns than with the dynamic relationship between social processes and social institutions. In this classic collection, contributors posit generalizations drawn from contemporary sociology...read more

Product Description: In the latter half of the twentieth century, The American upper class has become less like an aristocracy governing and guiding the nation and more like a caste, a privileged and closed body whose contribution to national leadership has steadily declined...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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This classic account of the traditional upper class in America traces its origins, lifestyles, and political and social attitudes from the time of Theodore Roosevelt to that of John F. Kennedy. Sociologist E. Digby Baltzell describes the problems of exclusion and prejudice within the community of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (or WASPs, an acronym he coined) and predicts with amazing accuracy what will happen when this inbred group is forced to share privilege and power with talented members of minority groups. "The book may actually hold more interest today than when it was first published. New generations of readers can resonate all the more to this masterly and beautifully written work that provides sociological understanding of its engrossing subject."-Robert K. Merton, Columbia University "The documentation and illustration in the book make it valuable as social history, quite apart from any theoretical hypothesis. As such, it sketches the rise of the WASP penchant for country clubs, patriotic societies and genealogy. It traces the history of anti-Semitism in America. It describes the intellectual conflict between Social Darwinism and the environmental social science founded half a century ago by men like John Dewey, Charles A. Beard, Thorstein Veblen, Franz Boas and Frederick Jackson Turner. In short, The Protestant Establishment is a wide-ranging, intelligent and provocative book."-Alvin Toffler, New York Times Book Review "The Protestant Establishment has many virtues that lift it above the level we have come to expect in works of contemporary social and cultural analysis. It is clearly and convincingly written."-H. Stuart Hughes, New York Review of Books

Explores the distinct differences between the Boston Brahmin and the Proper Philadelphian