Project Gutenberg 2025-05-04 Public domain in the USA. 219 Adams, James Truslow 1878 1949 Our business civilization : $b some aspects of American culture $aunknown :$bAlbert & Charles Boni, $c1929. Bob Taylor, Carla Foust, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) "Our Business Civilization: Some Aspects of American Culture" by James Truslow Adams is a collection of cultural essays written in the late 1920s. The book explores specific facets—especially the more troubling—of American society, focusing on the pervasive influence of business ideals on national culture. Rather than presenting a complete overview, Adams concentrates on examining how business values shape America’s social, ethical, and intellectual life. The opening of the book, including the preface and initial chapters, clarifies that the essays are revised versions of previously published magazine pieces, intentionally focusing on what the author sees as problematic tendencies within American society. Adams introduces the notion that, unlike European nations with multiple sources of social authority, America’s cultural life has become overwhelmingly dominated by business men and their pursuit of profit. He systematically contrasts this with countries like England, where older institutions—aristocracy, the church, and the professions—still mitigate the influence of commerce. The early chapters critically analyze the consequences of this business-centric civilization, such as narrowed social values, increased materialism, erosion of traditional professions, escalating costs of living, and dissolving ethical standards. Adams contends that while business has brought certain material benefits, the dominance of its ideals has undermined broader cultural and spiritual well-being, fostering a society more concerned with profit, consumption, and external badges of success than with intellectual or artistic pursuits. (This is an automatically generated summary.) https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.32106000562451 20230419032941adams 1929 US Reading ease score: 53.2 (10th to 12th grade). Somewhat difficult to read. en National characteristics, American United States -- Civilization -- 1918-1945 United States -- Social conditions -- 1918-1932 E151 Text Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches Category: American Literature Category: Sociology 522090 2025-06-30T06:03:46.253364 text/html 496762 2025-05-04T10:38:58 text/html 391910 2025-06-30T06:03:52.508349 application/epub+zip 387882 2025-06-30T06:03:47.602395 application/epub+zip 323724 2025-06-30T06:03:46.868375 application/epub+zip 526179 2025-06-30T06:03:56.617857 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 485458 2025-06-30T06:03:51.988395 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 482916 2025-06-30T06:03:45.731399 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 462958 2025-05-04T10:38:58 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 16778 2025-06-30T06:03:56.756327 application/rdf+xml 9970 2025-06-30T06:03:47.070368 image/jpeg 2006 2025-06-30T06:03:46.968357 image/jpeg 372926 2025-06-30T06:03:46.301399 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia