Download or read book Philadelphia Gentlemen written by E. Digby Baltzell and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-01 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a classic study of Philadelphia’s business aristocracy of colonial stock with Protestant affiliations. It is also an analysis of how fabulously wealthy nineteenth-century family founders produced a national upper-class way of life. But as that way of life came to an end, the upper-class outlived its function; this, argues E. Digby Baltzell, is precisely what took place in the Philadelphia class system. For sociologists, historians, and those concerned with issues of culture and the economy, this is indeed a classic of modern social science.