From the publisher’s description:
With keen insight and subtle humor, John F. Kasson explores the history and politics of etiquette from America’s colonial times through the nineteenth century. He describes the transformation of our notion of "gentility," once considered a birthright to some, and the development of etiquette as a middle-class response to the new urban and industrial economy and to the excesses of democratic society.
Kasson, John F. (NHC Fellow, 1980–81; 2009–10). Rudeness & Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1990. ISBN 0809034700.