Edward Digby Baltzell

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 “What makes Baltzell’s analysis of the evolution of the American elite superior to the accounts of earlier writers . . . is that he exposes the connections between high social status and political and economic power.”―Dennis H. Wrong, Commentary

Based on the biographies of some three hundred people in each city, this book shows how such distinguished Boston families as the Adamses, Cabots, Lowells, and Peabodys have produced many generations of men and women who have made major contributions to the intellectual, educational, and political life of their state and nation. At the same time, comparable Philadelphia families such as the Biddles, Cadwaladers, Ingersolls, and Drexels have contributed far fewer leaders to their state and nation. From the days of Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Girard down to the present, what leadership there has been in Philadelphia has largely been provided by self-made men, often, like Franklin, born outside Pennsylvania. Baltzell traces the differences in class authority and leadership in these two cites to the contrasting values of the Puritan founders of the Bay Colony and the Quaker founders of the City of Brotherly Love. While Puritans placed great value on the "calling" or devotion to one's chosen vocation, Quakers have always placed more emphasis on being a good person than on being a good judge or statesman. Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia presents a provocative view of two contrasting upper classes and also reflects the author's larger concern with the conflicting values of hierarchy and egalitarianism in American history.

This proper Philadelphia story starts with the city's golden age at the close of the eighteenth century. It is a classic study of an American business aristocracy of colonial stock with Protestant affiliations as well as an analysis of how fabulously wealthy nineteenth-century family founders in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, supported various exclusive institutions that in the course of the twentieth century produced a national upper-class way of life. But as that way of life became an end of itself, instead of an effort to consolidate power and control, the upper-class outlived its function; this, argues Baltzell, is precisely what took place in the Philadelphia class system. Philadelphia Gentlemen emphasizes that class is largely a matter of family, whereas an elite is largely a matter of individual achievement. The emphasis in Philadelphia on old classes, in contrast to the emphasis in New York and Boston on individual achievement and elite striving, helps to explain the dramatically different outcomes of ruling class domination in major centers of the Eastern Establishment. In emphasizing class membership or family prestige, the dynamics of industrial and urban life passed by rather than through Philadelphia. As a result in the race for urban preeminence, Philadelphia lost precious time and eventually lost the struggle for ruling preeminence as such. When the book initially appeared, it was hailed by The New York Times as "a very, very important book." Writing in the pages of the American Sociological Review , Seymour Martin Lipset noted that " Philadelphia Gentlemen says important things about class and power in America, and says them in ways that will interest and fascinate both sociologists and laymen." And in the American Historical Review , Baltzell's book was identified simply as "a gold mine of information." In short, for sociologists, historians, and those concerned with issues of culture and the economy, this is indeed a classic of modern social science.

In this history of men's lawn tennis, the author traces the careers of a privileged Anglo-American elite, against a setting of public schools, clubs and country mansions. He relates tales of Wimbledon, Newport and the Davis Cup, and includes the names of many famous amateur players.

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. This loss of power and authority has been the focus of the work of E. Digby Baltzell, whose 1964 work, The Protestant Establishment, analyzed the fate and function of a predominantly Anglo-Saxon and Protestant upper class in an ethnically and religiously heterogeneous democracy. After 27 years, Baltzell's theory of the structure and function of the establishment remains unique in the literature of class stratification and authority.Baltzell views an open and authoritative establishment as a necessary and desirable part of the process of securing responsible leaders in a democratic society. Such an establishment is the product of upper-class institutions that are open to talented individuals of varying ethnic and social backgrounds. The values of upper-class tradition include an aristocratic ethos emphasizing the duty to lead, as opposed to the snobbish ethos of caste that emphasizes only the right to privilege. Baltzell regards this as a protector of freedom in modern democratic societies, guaranteeing rules of fair play in contests of power and opinion.As Baltzell points out, historically, the alternatives to rule by establishments have been, rule by functionaries and demogogues, neither of which has proven satisfactory in protecting freedoms. As against Marxists, who see hegemony as a social evil, Baltzell, following Tocqueville, sees it as necessary to the well-being of society. Hegemonic establishments give coherence to the social spheres of greatest contest. They do not eliminate conflict, but prevent it from ripping society apart.Baltzell's work provides uncommon insight into the relationship of social class and personal power in contemporary America. This book will be of inte

Judgment and Sensibility is the second volume of the collected essays of E. Digby Baltzell, one of the keenest observers and analysts of America's upper classes since Thorstein Veblen. Spanning four decades of writing, these essays cover a wide range of topics, including contemporary politics, democratic elitism, Puritanism, Judaism, higher education, urbanization, and the U.S. Supreme Court, among others.