Scholarly but never dusty, this vivid study examines the salacious,
sensuous bachelor lifestyle at the height of its prominence from
1880 to 1920. Chudacoff(History/Brown Univ.) deftly plies
statistics to demonstrate how socioeconomic changes of the mid-19th
century swelled the ranks of urban, unmarried men and forged them
into a class apart with distinct organizations, morality, media,
and myths. Immigration from northern and eastern Europe created a
new paradigm of living arrangements for men in their teens and
twenties, outside the natal home and independent of parental
supervision. Boarding houses and YMCA hotels sprang up to
accommodate the ever-growing ranks of restless, middle-class
bachelors, not socialized enough (and perhaps too insecure) to
establish their own hearth and home. By the 1880s, the
concentration of young single men in America's largest cities had
created enterprises catering to their commercial demands: barber
shops, pool halls, comer saloons, amusement parks, even the bizarre
"taxi dances," where ladies of moderately ill repute sold admirers
the right to a dance. Particularly interesting is Chudacoff's
survey of the popular National Police Gazette, whose randy accounts
of sex crimes, descriptions of sports heroes' exploits, and
advertisements for impotence cures give the reader a whimsical
snapshot of the Victorian bachelor's obsessions. The author also
does a fine job of addressing the related question of homosexual
relations, an almost unsolvable riddle given the paucity of written
evidence of gay intimacy from that time. Overall, the reader comes
away with a clearer idea of the separateness of bachelor life, a
collective alienation difficult to fully imagine in our world of
later marriage and long-term cohabitation. Chudacoff's research and
methodology are admirable, offering a fine mix of evidence,
anecdote, biographical account, and sociological material to
explore all important aspects of his subject. A well-rounded view
of the turn-of-the-century bachelor, particularly valuable to
readers drawn to the cultural landscape of Victorian America.
(Kirkus Reviews)
"What a wonderful book! Who would have expected that a history of
bachelor subculture would illuminate so much of the nation's past?
. . . A major contribution to a hitherto largely unexamined
subject."--Benjamin G. Rader, author of American Sports: From the
Age of Folk Games to the Age of Television
"Being single is typically understood as a stage of life, not a
way of life. Yet in this remarkable study of bachelorhood at the
turn of the last century, Howard Chudacoff explodes our myths about
those errant sons and strange uncles, and reveals a subculture of
masculine resistance--and thus gives bachelorhood its first
history."--Michael Kimmel, author of "Manhood in America: A
Cultural History"
"A century ago they were misfits, pariahs, deviants, vagrants,
even criminal suspects. Today, bachelors evoke images of hedonistic
baby-boomers and Hugh Hefner want-to-bes. Howard Chudacoff strips
those images of their simplicity, convincingly showing bachelorhood
to be not only misunderstood but a hidden and common social custom
in American history. Full of insight and broad vision. . .
."--Timothy J. Gilfoyle, author of "City of Eros: New York City,
Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920"
""The Age of the Bachelor" is an extremely well researched study
of an important subject that had not been previously examined in
any book. Chudacoff has excellent command of the secondary
literature. He masterfully generated quantitative data about
bachelors in three major cities, Boston, Chicago, and San
Francisco, to provide us with a far more accurate accounting of
bachelors than we ever had before. While the book concentrates on
the period from about 1800 to 1930, Chudacoff doesanalyze the
nature of bachelorhood throughout all of American history. He
explains why bachelorhood was so surprisingly widespread, examines
bachelors' domestic lives, the institutions and associations they
participated in, and how the male bachelor subculture influenced
male culture in general. This book is an important contribution to
social and gender history, and it should be widely read. The book
is analytically sound, well-written, with many interesting
anecdotes, and should be of interest to scholars and general
readers alike."--Steven A. Riess, Northeastern Illlinois
University, author of "Sport in Industrial America, 1850-1920"
"This book deals with a distinctive and important topic of broad
interest, and it does so convincingly, engagingly, and clearly. A
truly superior work of scholarship, it is also a pleasure to
read."--E. Anthony Rotundo, Phillips Academy, author of "American
Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the
Modern Era"
""The Age of the Bachelor" adds an important element to the rich
literature of gender, culture, and urban history in the
late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.... The research is
exhaustive. The book is very well written and is blissfully free of
jargon, making it accessible to readers both inside and outside the
field."--Elaine Tyler May, University of Minnesota, author of
"Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit
of Happiness"
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