| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Drinking the Waters: Creating an American Leisure Class at Nineteenth-Century Mineral Springs. By Thomas A. Chambers. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002. xxii, 282 pp. $39.95, ISBN 1-58834-068-6.)

Thomas A. Chambers's book on spas covers Saratoga Springs and the Virginia springs, of which White Sulphur Springs is paramount. His focus is on the period from the Revolution to the Civil War. Uniquely, Chambers argues that these two spas created a leisure class that became a national aristocracy, overcoming the sectionalism prevalent before the Civil War. It was an "effort to create a coherent upper class" built on "leisure activities, class consciousness, and the temporary unity developed for a few weeks at the springs" (p. xvii). The conspicuous consumption of those at the springs and their social display led to cosmopolitan sophistication unattainable elsewhere. This is a new approach for resort history; it is more akin to Richard Bushman's The Refinement of America (1992) because the spread of gentility is featured, though Chambers never partakes of Bushman's interest in material culture. Chambers presents his argument with chapters entitled "Commercializing Leisure," "Selling the Setting," "The Democratization of American Medicine," "Society of Fashion," "Love for Sale," and "Drinking the Same Waters." "Love for Sale," for example, while having a provocative title, is about neither love nor marriage, but about the rituals of flirtation, which provided a way of negotiating between men and women over relationships, status, and intimacy.

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