American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century.(Review)

American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century. By Michael Kammen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999) 320 pp. $30.00

If social historians have exercised the right to throw in everything including the kitchen sink, cultural historians have given themselves license to appropriate the results and trace the consequences, by connecting disposable income and consumption patterns to the expression of taste and the cultivation of values. Once affiliated with the history of ideas, cultural history can now annex the studies of how class and status reflect reading, listening, and viewing habits. American Culture, American Tastes blends these two approaches …