This book holds classical liberalism responsible for an American concept of beauty that centers upon women, wilderness, and machines. For each of the three beauty components, a cultural entrepreneur supremely sensitive to liberalism's survival agenda is introduced. P.T. Barnum's exhibition of Jenny Lind is a masterful combination of female elegance and female potency in the subsistence realm. John Muir's Yosemite Valley is surely exquisite, but only after a rigorous liberal education prepares for its experience. And Harley Earl's 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air is a dreamy expressionist sculpture, but...