"The "Businessman's Revival" was a religious revival among white, middle-class Protestants that unfolded in the wake of the 1857 market crash. Delving into the religious history of Boston in the 1850s, John Corrigan uses the revival as a focal point for addressing many aspects of American culture, such as gender roles and family life, the history of the theater and public spectacle, education, boyculture, and, especially, ideas about emotion during this period.".

"This written narrative recovers the emotional experiences of individuals from a wide array of little-used sources, including diaries, journals, correspondence, and public records. From such sources, Corrigan discovers that for these Protestants the expression of emotion was a matter of transaction. They saw emotion as a commodity and conceptualized relations between people, and between individuals and God, as transactions of emotion governed by contract.

Religion became a business relation with God - with prayer as its legal tender. Entering this relationship, they were conducting the "business of the heart.""--BOOK JACKET.