The Golden Dream

The #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Our Crowd offers an anecdote-filled tour of the most exclusive suburbs of 1970s America.

In this charming and insightful inquiry, Stephen Birmingham investigates the nesting habits, enjoyments, and frustrations of American suburban life in the seventies. He explores the social organism that is the American suburb—from Scottsdale, Arizona, to New York’s Westchester County, along with the tawny suburbs surrounding the mighty industrial cities that fringe the Great Lakes.

Birmingham spoke with householders great and small, gleaning their private views of the suburban experience. Almost all of them arrived in the suburbs with a dream. The reality they found was often less than they envisioned. Along with swimming pools and manicured lawns come soaring property taxes, status contests, and old-world prejudices colliding with new neighbors.

“Gossipy, chatty [Stephen Birmingham] thrusts his line into the waters of suburban social life, catching a lot of trivia about country clubs and trends.” —The Christian Science Monitor