| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Culture of Conversation. By Peter Gibian. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xii, 398 pp. $74.95, ISBN 0-521-56026-8.)

A recent addition to the prestigious series Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, this book argues that Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) played a key role in an American 'Culture of Conversation.' Peter Gibian's learned study shows the flaws in the critical view of Holmes as a wholesome minor poet. Gibian resituates Holmes's work in antebellum culture and, in doing so, revises the description of the culture itself. 1

While scholars have focused on the importance of oratory in the antebellum period, Gibian proposes a different model for American culture, suggesting that many American authors found 2

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