| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 216 words from this article are provided below; about 443 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820–1865. By Frank J. Byrne. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. x, 297 pp. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-8131-2404-9.)
In this carefully argued monograph, Frank J. Byrne has made a valuable contribution to a long-neglected but recently burgeoning literature on an important topic: merchants in the antebellum and Confederate South. Byrne has also given an auspicious boost to a promising new series, New Directions in Southern History, edited by Peter S. Carmichael, Michele Gillespie, and William A. Link, and published by the University Press of Kentucky. This volume is deeply grounded in the correspondence and business records of southern merchant families and deserves the serious attention of all scholars of nineteenth-century southern history.	1
Byrne's well-rounded study of southern merchants examines not only their business practices but also their social standing, their family life, their world view, their relationship with other social classes, and, ultimately, how their roles changed over time, especially during the upheaval of civil war. What Byrne gains in breadth by addressing many topics related to merchant life, he sacrifices in depth of examination. Each of the topics he covers in a chapter could sustain a book-length study, but Byrne's work presents a holistic picture of merchant life in the mature slaveholding South.	. . .

There are about 443 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.