The Golden Dream: Suburbia in the 1970s

by Stephen Birmingham

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504095624
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	05/14/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	213
Sales rank:	335,077
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Stephen Birmingham (1929–2015) was an American author of more than thirty books. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, he graduated from Williams College in 1953 and taught writing at the University of Cincinnati. Birmingham’s work focuses on the upper class in America. He’s written about the African American elite in Certain People and prominent Jewish society in Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York, The Grandees: The Story of America’s Sephardic Elite, and The Rest of Us: The Rise of America’s Eastern European Jews. His work also encompasses several novels including The Auerbach Will, The LeBaron Secret, Shades of Fortune, and The Rothman Scandal, and other non-fiction titles such as California Rich, The Grandes Dames, and Life at the Dakota: New York’s Most Unusual Address.
 

Table of Contents

The Suburban Dream vii

Southwest and a Mountain State

1 Blood and Money 3

2 The Casual Life 11

3 Wide Streets 19

Midwest

4 Connecticut on Lake Erie 33

5 Company Town 39

6 Small Town 47

7 Pointes and Points 57

South

8 The Country Club Set 67

9 Rules and Regulations 78

East

10 The Rockefellers on the Turnpike 85

11 Troubled Darien 99

12 The Lively Art of Commuting 106

13 Three Ryes 115

14 The Grandeur That Was 122

15 Nil Admirari 131

16 Summer Camps 141

West

17 "A Feeling of Separation" 153

City VS. Suburb

18 The Price of Status 171

19 Swinging 179

20 The Vanishing Living Room and Other Phenomena 186

21 Back to the City? 192

Index 205

Editorial Reviews

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

Anecdotes spiced with humor make this sociological study about the rich in suburbia lots of fun.

Hartford Courant