Description
Book SynopsisSince the 1920s, the United States has seen a dramatic reversal in living patterns, with a majority of Americans now residing in suburbs. This mass emigration from cities is one of the most fundamental social and geographical transformations in recent US history. Suburbanization has not only produced a distinct physical environmentit has become a major defining force in the construction of twentieth-century American culture.
Employing over 200 primary sources, illustrations, and critical essays, The Suburb Reader documents the rise of North American suburbanization from the 1700s through the present day. Through thematically organized chapters it explores multiple facets of suburbia's creation and addresses its indelible impact on the shaping of gender and family ideologies, politics, race relations, technology, design, and public policy. Becky Nicolaides' and Andrew Wiese's concise commentaries introduce the selections and contextualize the major themes of ea
Trade Review
The Suburb Reader is the essential guide to the history of the world’s first suburban nation. Nicolaides and Wiese have assembled an extraordinary collection of documents, illustrations, and maps, augmented with well-chosen essays by field-defining scholars. I can’t wait to teach this book.
—Thomas J. Sugrue, Kahn Professor of History and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
This fabulous collection brings together richly textured documents and classic scholarly essays to illuminate how the United States became a suburban nation. Ideally suited for students, scholars, and general readers, the book includes multiple views of the suburbs—pro and con—and delves deeply into issues of race, class, gender, and politics. The Suburb Reader enriches our understanding not only of suburbia, but of America itself.
—Elaine Tyler May, author of Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era
Table of ContentsPart I: The Emergence of Suburbia 1750-1940
Chapter 1. The Transnational Origins of the Elite Suburb
Chapter 2. Family and Gender in the Making of Suburbia
Chapter 3. Technology and Decentralization
Chapter 4. Economic and Class Diversity on the Early Suburban Fringe
Chapter 5. The Politics of Early Suburbia
Chapter 6. Imagining Suburbia: Visions and Plans from the Turn of the Century
Chapter 7. The Other Suburbanites: class, racial, & ethnic diversity in early suburbia
Chapter 8. The Tools of Exclusion: From Local Initiatives to Federal Policy
Part II: Postwar Suburbia 1940-1970
Chapter 9. Postwar America: Suburban Apotheosis
Chapter 10. Culture Wars: Polarized Constructions of Suburban Life
Chapter 11.Postwar Suburbs and the Construction of Race
Chapter 12. The City-Suburb Divide
Part III: Recent Suburbia, 1970 to the Present
Chapter 13. The Political Culture of Suburbia
Chapter 14. Suburban Transformations Since 1970
Chapter 15. Economic and Class Transformations
Chapter 16. Our Town: Enduring Exclusion in Recent Suburbia
Chapter 17. The Future of Suburbia
