| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Domesticating the West: The Re-creation of the Nineteenth-Century American Middle Class. By Brenda K. Jackson. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. xvi, 180 pp. $50.00, ISBN 0-8032-2602-0.)
The relatively new study of the American middle class suffers from a lack of definition. Who was part of the middle class? What did being middle class entail? Answers are vague and elusive, which makes the concept difficult to quantify. Still, the study of the "middling sorts" is crucial to understanding nineteenth-century American history, and many historians are contributing to fill the gap.	1
One of these scholars is Brenda K. Jackson, assistant professor of history at Belmont University. Jackson uses one couple, Thomas and Elizabeth Tannatt, to trace the movement of the middle class westward to the Inland Empire of eastern Washington. Using a biographical narrative, she illustrates that many middle-class Americans moved west after the Civil War to bolster their position, which was slipping in the East due to diminished opportunities. The Tannatts sought position through heavy involvement in community boosterism and local benevolent efforts, as did others in the period.	. . .

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