Highbrow-lowbrow: Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization) - Hardcover

Remarkably interesting. -- Fredric Paul Smoler "Nation" Levine's lucid, mind-stretching and highly accessible scholarship describes how, by the late nineteenth century, American culture divided into high art and low, two warring camps. We can all appreciate a scholar who bites the process that feeds him. "Highbrow/Lowbrow" sinks its teeth into our smug cultural assumptions and holds on for dear life. -- Carlin Romano "Washington Post Book World" Provides just the kind of balanced, historically informed assessment that can be of immediate value at a time when appeals to eternal truth fly thick and fast. -- Walter Kendrick "Village Voice Literary Supplement" How we Americans came to treat symphony and chamber concerts and operas as if we were going to church is an interesting tale. For a most thorough and informative discussion, please read Lawrence Levine's witty book. -- Willa J. Conrad "Newark Star-Ledger" Levine offers a fascinating account of the nation's evolving artistic tastes and thereby challenges any aesthetic storm trooper who would try to enforce an oversimplified notion of Culture with a capital C...What he proves, compellingly, is that we should be less rigid in our aesthetic judgments. -- Lisa Zeidner "Philadelphia Inquirer" This book provides depth and complexity to a debate that has degenerated into stale polemics. By unearthing a wealth of fascinating details about American culture in the middle and later nineteenth century, Levine shows us how much has changed en route to the twentieth. In particular, he reveals how recently the categories of "high" and "low" culture came into being, and how thoroughly they were shaped by class prejudice and ethnocentric anxiety..."Highbrow/Lowbrow" is absorbing and provocative, clearly a product of humane judgment and mature reflection, and a pleasure to read. -- Jackson Lears "Tikkun"

Looks at the development of a split between serious and popular culture in America and discusses drama, opera, orchestral music, art, and literature