The Century That Stammered

There are fine books which do not, in the end, quite come together. Gilbert Seldes' The Stammering Century should probably be included in that number. Originally

published in 1928 and recently reissued in the New York Review of Books Classics series, it is an entertaining work, gathering a rich collection of characters and episodes from the 19th century and weaving them into a history of the development—or rather the "steady decay"—of perfectionism as a major current in American culture.