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Bluegrass Renaissance: The History and Culture Central Kentucky, 1792-1852. Edited by James C. Kiotter and Daniel Rowland. (Lexington: University Press Kentucky, 2012. Pp. vi, 371. $40.00, ISBN 978-0-8131-3607-3.) During its heyday as the Athens the West, Lexington, Kentucky, was a surprisingly sophisticated and genteel world, characterized by lively academic and scientific life, fashionable European concerts and operas, and, course, horses and horse racing. Slaveholding aristocrats started colleges to demonstrate their wealth, learning, and status. Elite women participated in a cult republican motherhood and had their portraits painted by the proteges Gilbert Stuart, while their husbands commissioned buildings by the avant-garde architect the U.S. Capitol. This world was not an isolated frontier outpost but a place vitally connected to nationally significant trends and ideas, influencing and influenced by politics, culture, and ideas both to the east and the west. In short. Lexington was a cultural powerhouse, and the essays in this book go a long way toward showing its significance in antebellum America, particularly at the level elite culture. Most the essays give a celebratory account a cultural golden age, and many are extremely lively. Maryjean Wall explains the rise Kentucky as horse country. John R. Thelin examines the proliferation colleges in antebellum central Kentucky and highlights the fascinating story Transylvania University, which became a great center learning that rivaled East Coast institutions in enrollment and famous alumni. Matthew F. Clarke contributes a provocative essay about Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, a scientist at Transylvania who made a career studying the archaeology and natural history the American continent. His life's work gained wide attention as part of a larger movement to codify, by the methods and techniques science, a national identity (p. 222). Meanwhile, Transylvania University president Horace Holley fought with sectarian religious leaders to institute liberal learning at the school, as Tom Eblen and Mollie Eblen show. Readers with an interest in Transylvania University or higher education in the South should not ignore this book. Three very strong essays focus on the sophisticated artistic world Lexington. While readers might expect provincial artists, vernacular folk art, or frontier utilitarianism to have dominated culture in Kentucky in the antebellum period, Lexington was a mecca refinement and nationally known figures. Benjamin Henry Latrobe made important designs in Lexington, and his students continued to design buildings in Kentucky after his time. As Nikos Pappas shows, Lexington had an opera and hosted impressive musical performances as early as the 1790s, much earlier in its history than did Boston. And portrait painters like Oliver Frazer and Matthew Harris Jouette were far more than regional artists; they belonged to an elite world highly skilled and important painters, including the most famous painters in the nation. Kentucky also had political influence well beyond its borders. In the collection's best essay, Mark V. …
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