| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A Nation of Realtors®: A Cultural History of the Twentieth-Century American Middle Class. By Jeffrey M. Hornstein. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. xii, 252 pp. Cloth, $79.95, ISBN 0-8223-3528-X. Paper, $22.95, ISBN 0-8223-3540-9.)

George Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis's 1922 satirical portrait of the twentieth-century urban real estate salesman, created a distrustful public image of the manipulative, profit-centered, pious civic huckster. Buyer beware of the damage done by the fast-buck broker: "shark," "speculator," or "curbstone" in the slang of the trade. Smart and flip, Babbitt knew the cash value of boosting his occupational repute by comparing his knowledge and practices to those of a physician or engineer. "We ought to insist that folks call us 'realtors' and not 'real-estate' men," he whined; "Sounds more like a reg'lar profession" (Babbitt, p. 157). The term "realtor"—a jargon brand name adopted in 1916 by the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB)—became the centerpiece of the trade association's professionalizing project: monopolize the gate, set down educational standards, license expertise, publish a code of ethics, lobby for favorable legislation and zoning, and, especially, promote public trust in the service mission of a moral business occupation. Realtors were capitalists in the lucrative enterprise of developing, packaging, and marketing a core commodity in the American consumer economy. The new road to professional respectability was not without its potholes of self-interest and sinkholes of race and gender bias.

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