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Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs
Through the stories of five American families, a masterful and timely exploration of how hope, history, and racial denial collide in the suburbs and their schools
Outside Atlanta, a middle-class Black family faces off with a school system seemingly bent on punishing their teenage son. North of Dallas, a conservative white family relocates to an affluent suburban enclave, but can’t escape the changes sweeping the country. On Chicago’s North Shore, a multiracial mom joins an ultraprogressive challenge to the town’s liberal status quo. In Compton, California, whose suburban roots are now barely recognizable, undocumented Hispanic parents place their gifted son’s future in the hands of educators at a remarkable elementary school. And outside Pittsburgh, a Black mother moves to the same street where the author grew up, then confronts the destructive legacy left behind by white families like his.
Education journalist Benjamin Herold braids these human stories together with local and national history to make Disillusioned an astonishing reading experience—and an urgent argument that suburbia and its schools are locked in a devastating cycle that has brought America to a point of crisis. For generations, upwardly mobile white families have extracted opportunity from the nation’s heavily subsidized suburbs, then moved on before the bills for maintenance and repair came due, leaving the mostly Black and Brown families who followed to clean up the ensuing mess. Now, though, rapidly shifting demographics and the reality that endless expansion is no longer feasible are disrupting that pattern. Forced to face truths that their communities were built to avoid, everyday suburban families suddenly find themselves at the center of the nation’s most pressing How do we confront America’s troubled history? How do we build a future in which all children can thrive?
In exploring these questions, Herold pulls back the curtain on suburban public schools and school boards, which he argues are the new ground zero in the fight to revive the country’s faltering promise. Then, alongside Bethany Smith—the mother from his old neighborhood, who contributes a powerful epilogue to the book—Herold offers a path toward renewal. The result is nothing short of a journalistic masterpiece.
Outside Atlanta, a middle-class Black family faces off with a school system seemingly bent on punishing their teenage son. North of Dallas, a conservative white family relocates to an affluent suburban enclave, but can’t escape the changes sweeping the country. On Chicago’s North Shore, a multiracial mom joins an ultraprogressive challenge to the town’s liberal status quo. In Compton, California, whose suburban roots are now barely recognizable, undocumented Hispanic parents place their gifted son’s future in the hands of educators at a remarkable elementary school. And outside Pittsburgh, a Black mother moves to the same street where the author grew up, then confronts the destructive legacy left behind by white families like his.
Education journalist Benjamin Herold braids these human stories together with local and national history to make Disillusioned an astonishing reading experience—and an urgent argument that suburbia and its schools are locked in a devastating cycle that has brought America to a point of crisis. For generations, upwardly mobile white families have extracted opportunity from the nation’s heavily subsidized suburbs, then moved on before the bills for maintenance and repair came due, leaving the mostly Black and Brown families who followed to clean up the ensuing mess. Now, though, rapidly shifting demographics and the reality that endless expansion is no longer feasible are disrupting that pattern. Forced to face truths that their communities were built to avoid, everyday suburban families suddenly find themselves at the center of the nation’s most pressing How do we confront America’s troubled history? How do we build a future in which all children can thrive?
In exploring these questions, Herold pulls back the curtain on suburban public schools and school boards, which he argues are the new ground zero in the fight to revive the country’s faltering promise. Then, alongside Bethany Smith—the mother from his old neighborhood, who contributes a powerful epilogue to the book—Herold offers a path toward renewal. The result is nothing short of a journalistic masterpiece.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published January 23, 2024
About the author
Benjamin Herold
1 book27 followersBenjamin Herold explores America’s beautiful and busted public education system. His award-winning beat reporting, feature writing, and investigative exposés have appeared in Education Week, PBS NewsHour, NPR, the Hechinger Report, Huffington Post, and the Public School Notebook. Herold has a master’s degree in urban education from Temple University in Philadelphia, where he lives with his family. Learn more at www.benjaminherold.com.
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January 24, 2024
This book should be required reading for all of us millennials living in various suburbs and struggling to figure out what we did wrong or why we are struggling so much.
This book gives an overview of the history of American suburbs by focusing on four families and their lives in each of the suburbs. There is Plano/Lovejoy, TX; Gwinnett County, GA; Evanston, IL; and Compton, CA. HE ties it together by focusing on his hometown- Penn Hills, PA, and a family living down the street from his childhood home. Each suburb has a different history, which I found interesting and informative as I put the pieces together. When he added the personal stories, It made them come alive even more. It’s easy to feel like these are your neighbors or HS classmates you watch on FB. Particularly Susan and her gradual descent into extremism, Nika and I shared many commonalities ( down to completing our doctoral comps from UGA during the thick of the pandemic). Each area had its own historical, socioeconomic, and geographical information that made it feel like this covered many of the stories of suburban families. The only place probably missing was a midwest ‘burb, although I think Penn Hills covered a bit of that demographic.
I live in a Metro Atlanta suburb, and I found the historical aspects of Gwinnett and DeKalb counties explained so much about my current hometown that I’m not sure I would have otherwise really understood. I moved here as the county where I was living was growing through what DeKalb and Gwinnett had already gone through, which explains so much.
A big part of this book focuses on the public school system and, again, specifically, the stories of Penn Hill, Lovejoy ISD, and Gwinnett play out so much in my own life it was interesting to get more context behind the more significant issues that are leftovers from previous generations, white flight, and bad decisions.
Most of the book leads up to 2020, and then we get a bit of the aftermath of the pandemic. I felt the book’s real meat was in the first part and found myself skimming through the late 2020/election parts. Maybe because I lived and it is still raw, in many ways, we are still living through these repercussions. I do wish he would have tied the ending a bit more together. This felt like a story, and while I understand why so many of us are in these situations, there were no recommendations or calls for change/action. I would have enjoyed that and thought it would have tied the book together better.
I loved that Bethany wrote the epilogue and felt it was a great ending. Overall, I had so many reactions while reading, but the most important one was realizing that this isn’t a localized issue and just how big of a problem the suburbs face. My current home county is a 3rd ring burb that is struggling, and I am watching as folks are moving to a 4th ring and recreating the same story repeatedly.
This book gives an overview of the history of American suburbs by focusing on four families and their lives in each of the suburbs. There is Plano/Lovejoy, TX; Gwinnett County, GA; Evanston, IL; and Compton, CA. HE ties it together by focusing on his hometown- Penn Hills, PA, and a family living down the street from his childhood home. Each suburb has a different history, which I found interesting and informative as I put the pieces together. When he added the personal stories, It made them come alive even more. It’s easy to feel like these are your neighbors or HS classmates you watch on FB. Particularly Susan and her gradual descent into extremism, Nika and I shared many commonalities ( down to completing our doctoral comps from UGA during the thick of the pandemic). Each area had its own historical, socioeconomic, and geographical information that made it feel like this covered many of the stories of suburban families. The only place probably missing was a midwest ‘burb, although I think Penn Hills covered a bit of that demographic.
I live in a Metro Atlanta suburb, and I found the historical aspects of Gwinnett and DeKalb counties explained so much about my current hometown that I’m not sure I would have otherwise really understood. I moved here as the county where I was living was growing through what DeKalb and Gwinnett had already gone through, which explains so much.
A big part of this book focuses on the public school system and, again, specifically, the stories of Penn Hill, Lovejoy ISD, and Gwinnett play out so much in my own life it was interesting to get more context behind the more significant issues that are leftovers from previous generations, white flight, and bad decisions.
Most of the book leads up to 2020, and then we get a bit of the aftermath of the pandemic. I felt the book’s real meat was in the first part and found myself skimming through the late 2020/election parts. Maybe because I lived and it is still raw, in many ways, we are still living through these repercussions. I do wish he would have tied the ending a bit more together. This felt like a story, and while I understand why so many of us are in these situations, there were no recommendations or calls for change/action. I would have enjoyed that and thought it would have tied the book together better.
I loved that Bethany wrote the epilogue and felt it was a great ending. Overall, I had so many reactions while reading, but the most important one was realizing that this isn’t a localized issue and just how big of a problem the suburbs face. My current home county is a 3rd ring burb that is struggling, and I am watching as folks are moving to a 4th ring and recreating the same story repeatedly.
January 30, 2024
Less about the “unraveling“ of suburbs, and more just about schools, and how various families interact with their suburban school districts, and attempting to get their children education.
This is 500 pages of sort of whingeing about challenges families face when trying to get their kids an education
This is 500 pages of sort of whingeing about challenges families face when trying to get their kids an education
May 10, 2024
Lots of this is great! In Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs, author Benjamin Herold uses a far-flung ensemble of characters to theorize about the failed migration patterns of suburbia. As a regional planner, migration studies enthusiast, and decades-long suburbanite, this concept was right up my alley!
I loved Herold’s reflections on the short shelf-lives of suburban neighborhoods, and how the “slash and burn” pattern of suburban development is very similar to a Ponzi scheme. Basically, the argument is that in attempt to keep taxes low even with services high, suburban municipalities rely on one-time government subsidies and bond issuances for infrastructure build-out. These unsustainable funding sources ultimately result in a backlog of deferred maintenance that is passed onto the second or third generation of residents. Given regional development patterns, it also “just so happens” that these preceding generations of suburbanites are more likely to be Black, Brown, and/or working-class than their predecessors. This trend of Black residents being “left with the bag” for suburban dysfunction is reminiscent of Saidiya Hartman’s burdened individuality, and of many familial experiences I’ve seen over the years. We are talking about areas that are targeted not just for subpar and delayed public investments, but also about places where Black residents are targets for discriminatory private-sector schemes like subprime mortgages. To that point, I would have loved more coverage about how the disastrous municipal finance in suburbs is mirrored by equally disastrous predation from the finance industry. There is another reason people are moving through these towns so haphazardly, and it has less to do with the sewer bills than you’d expect!!
I was also glad that Herold profiled “tiers” of suburbs, as well as some neighborhoods within Pittsburgh’s city limits. The decision to expand this storytelling along financially distressed inner-ring suburbs of Pittsburgh and Los Angeles (Penn Hills and Compton), growth-dependent Dallas exurbs (Lucas), and secession-minded suburbs in Gwinnett County. This decision to highlight the full range of disillusion reminds me of a central point we discussed in planning school—that residential choices in one part of a metropolitan region necessitate conditions in another part. Herold gets this when he notes that “America’s suburbs have long promised a brighter future to those willing to forget its past…we can always start over somewhere new, find freedom further out on the frontier, stay forever a step ahead of history.” This concept that you can always make your own fortune at someone else’s expense, or that you can always move to more opportunities with the assurance that someone will come behind to clean up your mess, is a flawed theory at the center of suburban migration patterns. The colonial, extractive engagement that Americans have come to expect from their hometowns necessitates the continued “slash and burn” regional development trends that Herold notes are truly not working for anyone. As long as enough people engage with suburbs and similar geographies with all entitlement and very little commitment, we will be in trouble! These patterns result in a situation where people who can afford to demand better from their governments won’t stick around (like the Texas family), and that people who deserve better from their governments won’t get it (like the Compton and Pittsburgh families.)
This review is getting long, but I do want to share a warning note for planning-adjacent people who might be interested in reading this one. While there is certainly lots of content for us to enjoy in this story, the majority of Herold’s book is actually focusing on education as the key metric of suburban municipal decline. There is lots of intrigue here: the decades-long histories of school district formations across each region, thoughtful analysis of their attendance-dependent fiscal policies, and compassionate explanations of why some Black parents are hopping from school to school in attempts to avoid the punitive treatment of their students. Herold is understanding of these threats, but also shows how both Black and White parents in his research use school hopping as another form of geographic entitlement. I found some of this content to be impressive, but I did think it was a bit limiting in some ways for the overall scope of the story. By focusing so much on the families’ experiences with schools, and not selecting a single suburban resident who was an empty nester or childless adult, the book hinged most of its argument about municipal failure on schooling success (or lack thereof.) All of this is understandable, and a fair direction in which to take a book. However, it just was not the dynamic that spoke the most to me specifically.
Even with the emphasis on schooling, Herold still makes time for other concepts. I especially enjoyed his exploration of the magical thinking (read: delusion) of suburban councilmembers and bureaucrats, along with the magical thinking (read: entitlement) of suburban parents. I particularly found this to be most irritating with the mom from Evanston, Illinois—I think her name was Lauren? Hard to keep track of the names in an audiobook. One concept I wished he did find a bit more space for is understanding how the disillusion of migrating suburbanites and the “slash and burn” development patterns are still alive and well in the cities. Gentrification is turning some city neighborhoods into elite suburbs, with equally demanding parents and equally concerning municipal finance strategies to appease them. I get that every book can’t do every thing, but I would have loved a good segment on how we are currently seeing unsustainable patterns of both outward AND inward expansion. Without acknowledging this, I think some books like this can become too easily used to demonize suburban sprawl and congratulate “returns to the city”, without addressing the broader problems that cause each migration trend to be problematic.
To conclude, I would definitely recommend this book! It offers really interesting municipal histories, and also can help us all think about how our hometowns can become places that we don’t just extract from, but also meaningfully contribute to.
I loved Herold’s reflections on the short shelf-lives of suburban neighborhoods, and how the “slash and burn” pattern of suburban development is very similar to a Ponzi scheme. Basically, the argument is that in attempt to keep taxes low even with services high, suburban municipalities rely on one-time government subsidies and bond issuances for infrastructure build-out. These unsustainable funding sources ultimately result in a backlog of deferred maintenance that is passed onto the second or third generation of residents. Given regional development patterns, it also “just so happens” that these preceding generations of suburbanites are more likely to be Black, Brown, and/or working-class than their predecessors. This trend of Black residents being “left with the bag” for suburban dysfunction is reminiscent of Saidiya Hartman’s burdened individuality, and of many familial experiences I’ve seen over the years. We are talking about areas that are targeted not just for subpar and delayed public investments, but also about places where Black residents are targets for discriminatory private-sector schemes like subprime mortgages. To that point, I would have loved more coverage about how the disastrous municipal finance in suburbs is mirrored by equally disastrous predation from the finance industry. There is another reason people are moving through these towns so haphazardly, and it has less to do with the sewer bills than you’d expect!!
I was also glad that Herold profiled “tiers” of suburbs, as well as some neighborhoods within Pittsburgh’s city limits. The decision to expand this storytelling along financially distressed inner-ring suburbs of Pittsburgh and Los Angeles (Penn Hills and Compton), growth-dependent Dallas exurbs (Lucas), and secession-minded suburbs in Gwinnett County. This decision to highlight the full range of disillusion reminds me of a central point we discussed in planning school—that residential choices in one part of a metropolitan region necessitate conditions in another part. Herold gets this when he notes that “America’s suburbs have long promised a brighter future to those willing to forget its past…we can always start over somewhere new, find freedom further out on the frontier, stay forever a step ahead of history.” This concept that you can always make your own fortune at someone else’s expense, or that you can always move to more opportunities with the assurance that someone will come behind to clean up your mess, is a flawed theory at the center of suburban migration patterns. The colonial, extractive engagement that Americans have come to expect from their hometowns necessitates the continued “slash and burn” regional development trends that Herold notes are truly not working for anyone. As long as enough people engage with suburbs and similar geographies with all entitlement and very little commitment, we will be in trouble! These patterns result in a situation where people who can afford to demand better from their governments won’t stick around (like the Texas family), and that people who deserve better from their governments won’t get it (like the Compton and Pittsburgh families.)
This review is getting long, but I do want to share a warning note for planning-adjacent people who might be interested in reading this one. While there is certainly lots of content for us to enjoy in this story, the majority of Herold’s book is actually focusing on education as the key metric of suburban municipal decline. There is lots of intrigue here: the decades-long histories of school district formations across each region, thoughtful analysis of their attendance-dependent fiscal policies, and compassionate explanations of why some Black parents are hopping from school to school in attempts to avoid the punitive treatment of their students. Herold is understanding of these threats, but also shows how both Black and White parents in his research use school hopping as another form of geographic entitlement. I found some of this content to be impressive, but I did think it was a bit limiting in some ways for the overall scope of the story. By focusing so much on the families’ experiences with schools, and not selecting a single suburban resident who was an empty nester or childless adult, the book hinged most of its argument about municipal failure on schooling success (or lack thereof.) All of this is understandable, and a fair direction in which to take a book. However, it just was not the dynamic that spoke the most to me specifically.
Even with the emphasis on schooling, Herold still makes time for other concepts. I especially enjoyed his exploration of the magical thinking (read: delusion) of suburban councilmembers and bureaucrats, along with the magical thinking (read: entitlement) of suburban parents. I particularly found this to be most irritating with the mom from Evanston, Illinois—I think her name was Lauren? Hard to keep track of the names in an audiobook. One concept I wished he did find a bit more space for is understanding how the disillusion of migrating suburbanites and the “slash and burn” development patterns are still alive and well in the cities. Gentrification is turning some city neighborhoods into elite suburbs, with equally demanding parents and equally concerning municipal finance strategies to appease them. I get that every book can’t do every thing, but I would have loved a good segment on how we are currently seeing unsustainable patterns of both outward AND inward expansion. Without acknowledging this, I think some books like this can become too easily used to demonize suburban sprawl and congratulate “returns to the city”, without addressing the broader problems that cause each migration trend to be problematic.
To conclude, I would definitely recommend this book! It offers really interesting municipal histories, and also can help us all think about how our hometowns can become places that we don’t just extract from, but also meaningfully contribute to.
January 30, 2024
Rating: 3.5
Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Group for the eARC! Compelling book, not as dry/academic as I was worried it might be. As someone who studied sociology and has a large interest in that area, I found this book really insightful!
Herold interviews 5 families throughout the US: Evanston, Chicago, IL; Plano/Lovejoy, Dallas, TX; Penn Hills, Pittsburgh,PA; Compton, LA, CA; Gwinnett County, Atlanta, GA. With the family in Pen Hills, he also writes about his own experiences as he grew up in the same suburb but had a different viewpoint as his white family left behind Penn Hills and left a lot of issues for the Black Families, like the Smiths, to deal with.
It shows that all suburbs are affected by similar issues specifically regarding education and it’s not just one county/state dealing with it. Since Herold is an education journalist it does mainly focus on the schooling issues in the suburbs rather than giving a fuller picture including economics, jobs, housing, etc. so in this way the book isn’t exactly what I expected/hoped for.
I enjoyed that he not only shares each family’s personal experiences/issues but also the history of the suburbs. Not surprisingly a lot of the problems and dwindling of the “American dream” in suburbia is due to racism, white flight, equality/income gaps.
Intrigued to learn that most suburbs were built post WW2 and they were at the center of desegregation since they were built for middle-class white families to escape the cities (which were majority Black and Brown).
I had zero sympathy for the Becker family in Texas who kept claiming they weren’t moving suburbs because of the more Black and Brown families moving in because they were “color blind.” The Smiths were racist and a prime example of why suburbs and public schools fall apart.
By the third chapter from them, I started skipping their POV. I found myself clenching my jaw and getting furious with the anti vaccine, growth hormone, “we’re colorblind and I’m terrified for my white sons” conservative stuff she was spewing. I couldn’t stand hearing about how “things used to be” from them and decided it wasn’t worth my time or energy to read that hateful nonsense. And on top of that, she thought she could “cure” her kids AHDH with vitamins/food restrictions and no vaccines?! So on top of being racist they’re also ableist.
I started skimming other chapters a little by the last third of the book. In giving us a glimpse at each family, I appreciate Herold trying to draw a full picture of their lives but there were a lot of tedious, overly descriptive details. I didn’t need the full algebra lessons or minute details of a school board member’s college experience. Also didn’t help that it was 2020 COVID/election stuff which I lived through so I didn’t want to read about it 😭
I was also frustrated that such a clearly well-researched book had the author using the term Indian when he meant Native American.
The first third of the book was insightful and captivating. I was really enjoying it by the last two thirds I was often bored or confused why he was sharing certain things. Overall an informative read I’d recommend for anyone interested in the issues and decline in American public schools (not so much suburbs/urban planning like I was expecting).
Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Group for the eARC! Compelling book, not as dry/academic as I was worried it might be. As someone who studied sociology and has a large interest in that area, I found this book really insightful!
Herold interviews 5 families throughout the US: Evanston, Chicago, IL; Plano/Lovejoy, Dallas, TX; Penn Hills, Pittsburgh,PA; Compton, LA, CA; Gwinnett County, Atlanta, GA. With the family in Pen Hills, he also writes about his own experiences as he grew up in the same suburb but had a different viewpoint as his white family left behind Penn Hills and left a lot of issues for the Black Families, like the Smiths, to deal with.
It shows that all suburbs are affected by similar issues specifically regarding education and it’s not just one county/state dealing with it. Since Herold is an education journalist it does mainly focus on the schooling issues in the suburbs rather than giving a fuller picture including economics, jobs, housing, etc. so in this way the book isn’t exactly what I expected/hoped for.
I enjoyed that he not only shares each family’s personal experiences/issues but also the history of the suburbs. Not surprisingly a lot of the problems and dwindling of the “American dream” in suburbia is due to racism, white flight, equality/income gaps.
Intrigued to learn that most suburbs were built post WW2 and they were at the center of desegregation since they were built for middle-class white families to escape the cities (which were majority Black and Brown).
I had zero sympathy for the Becker family in Texas who kept claiming they weren’t moving suburbs because of the more Black and Brown families moving in because they were “color blind.” The Smiths were racist and a prime example of why suburbs and public schools fall apart.
By the third chapter from them, I started skipping their POV. I found myself clenching my jaw and getting furious with the anti vaccine, growth hormone, “we’re colorblind and I’m terrified for my white sons” conservative stuff she was spewing. I couldn’t stand hearing about how “things used to be” from them and decided it wasn’t worth my time or energy to read that hateful nonsense. And on top of that, she thought she could “cure” her kids AHDH with vitamins/food restrictions and no vaccines?! So on top of being racist they’re also ableist.
I started skimming other chapters a little by the last third of the book. In giving us a glimpse at each family, I appreciate Herold trying to draw a full picture of their lives but there were a lot of tedious, overly descriptive details. I didn’t need the full algebra lessons or minute details of a school board member’s college experience. Also didn’t help that it was 2020 COVID/election stuff which I lived through so I didn’t want to read about it 😭
I was also frustrated that such a clearly well-researched book had the author using the term Indian when he meant Native American.
The first third of the book was insightful and captivating. I was really enjoying it by the last two thirds I was often bored or confused why he was sharing certain things. Overall an informative read I’d recommend for anyone interested in the issues and decline in American public schools (not so much suburbs/urban planning like I was expecting).
January 30, 2024
I live in a suburb (in fact, it’s mentioned in this book-Allen, TX) and I’ve seen the dynamics mentioned here play out. The “don’t raise my taxes” but “give me all the amenities” white libertarianism, the empty nesters whose kids benefited immensely from the school district now openly opposing building maintenance bonds, the apoplectic opposition to dense housing and public transportation etc. Ironically, our district closed two elementary schools last year (well, actually repurposed one to meet the state’s new mandate for full day preschool) due to declining enrollment. We are definitely looking at more closures in the next year. Our issue is in part driven by demographics (couples having fewer or forgoing children), but the cost of our housing also means that young families are getting pushed ever farther out into the exurbs. This book is a very worthwhile read
February 12, 2024
Best part was the epilogue.
March 4, 2024
As i was reading this, it was just in addition to making me angry, it also was really, really sad. I think everyone should read it. And when you do, you need to *not* view this as a ‘people are just trying to get the best education’ for their kids. Because there is more to it than that. If it was just “people trying to get the best education” you wouldn’t see a lot of what is happening.
I picked this up after hearing an ig live with the author and Michael Harriott (go read his book if you haven’t AND follow him on socials. You might learn something) and i am glad i did.
There is so much going on in how systemically clear America has fought to keep things comfortable for themselves all the while not embracing those who could *actually* assist in that as well as making things better for EVERYONE. A lot of the rot that keeps happening with structural stuff where someone comes in, neglects, then flees when the cost to repair the neglect is *just slightly north of well if we had done this before, we wouldn’t be here, totally reminds me how the US government goes to other countries “in the name of democracy / freedom for all” to “fix stuff” but instead makes things worse and then turns around as says “look at all that ish that country is in” not even truly cognizant of the damage created and left to be fixed by others.
It also highlights further for me the notion of those with the funds to fix things, generally won’t, but those who truly do not will give what they can to make things better. Mainly because they recognize it is all they have and they need to do what they can to make it work because “America” has demonstrated it won’t as a collective do something about it.
One day, it would be nice to see clear America wake up to the damage they have caused and continue to cause (by standing by being all “wasn’t me”) and starts working for the collective instead of the clear collective, but only if you are a particular type in the clear collective.
(And yes, i am using clear to refer to ⚪️ people. Socials has a habit of censoring that as if it is an actual slur instead of a fact. And as a black woman, i can say definitively after having dealt with so many clear on a regular basis, the amount of hit dogs who will read this book and immediately start is entertaining).
I picked this up after hearing an ig live with the author and Michael Harriott (go read his book if you haven’t AND follow him on socials. You might learn something) and i am glad i did.
There is so much going on in how systemically clear America has fought to keep things comfortable for themselves all the while not embracing those who could *actually* assist in that as well as making things better for EVERYONE. A lot of the rot that keeps happening with structural stuff where someone comes in, neglects, then flees when the cost to repair the neglect is *just slightly north of well if we had done this before, we wouldn’t be here, totally reminds me how the US government goes to other countries “in the name of democracy / freedom for all” to “fix stuff” but instead makes things worse and then turns around as says “look at all that ish that country is in” not even truly cognizant of the damage created and left to be fixed by others.
It also highlights further for me the notion of those with the funds to fix things, generally won’t, but those who truly do not will give what they can to make things better. Mainly because they recognize it is all they have and they need to do what they can to make it work because “America” has demonstrated it won’t as a collective do something about it.
One day, it would be nice to see clear America wake up to the damage they have caused and continue to cause (by standing by being all “wasn’t me”) and starts working for the collective instead of the clear collective, but only if you are a particular type in the clear collective.
(And yes, i am using clear to refer to ⚪️ people. Socials has a habit of censoring that as if it is an actual slur instead of a fact. And as a black woman, i can say definitively after having dealt with so many clear on a regular basis, the amount of hit dogs who will read this book and immediately start is entertaining).
February 24, 2024
Zoning laws; local government structures and their interactions with county, state, and federal institutions; fiscal management; municipal structures for police, fire, medical, and recreation; or the impact of economic policies and globalization all seem like interesting facets to explore in where the US’s suburbs stand today. This book barely touches on any of these. It focus instead almost exclusively on schooling and uses school districts as a proxy for suburban cities (which even missed the mark more for me since where I live school districts don’t map to municipal boundaries)
Books that use personal stories to help color he narrative and help paint the social picture the author is trying to make are some of my favorites- like The Warmth of Other Suns, Evicted, or Invisible Child. This book falls far short of those, focusing almost exclusion the highly characterized personal story of the five families involved and rarely tying those stories to a broader argument. There’s a whole section on the pandemic that doesn’t feel specific to suburban schooling at all. When we are introduced to new people, the author’s description of them makes it very clear whether we are supposed to like them or not before we know anything more than their name and title. It’s written to induce rage, lukewarm some crappy Instagram feed, but is over the top. The author is often fully present in the story, too, which felt self-aggrandizing. There were a few bright spots, especially the too-brief discussion on slash and burn style development and the epilogue (not penned by the author) but not enough to be redeeming.
Books that use personal stories to help color he narrative and help paint the social picture the author is trying to make are some of my favorites- like The Warmth of Other Suns, Evicted, or Invisible Child. This book falls far short of those, focusing almost exclusion the highly characterized personal story of the five families involved and rarely tying those stories to a broader argument. There’s a whole section on the pandemic that doesn’t feel specific to suburban schooling at all. When we are introduced to new people, the author’s description of them makes it very clear whether we are supposed to like them or not before we know anything more than their name and title. It’s written to induce rage, lukewarm some crappy Instagram feed, but is over the top. The author is often fully present in the story, too, which felt self-aggrandizing. There were a few bright spots, especially the too-brief discussion on slash and burn style development and the epilogue (not penned by the author) but not enough to be redeeming.
August 6, 2024
Disillusioned invites comparison with journalistic masterpieces by Isabelle Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns) and David Maraniss (They Marched Into Sunlight)..
The writing in Disillusioned is better than Maraniss and equal to Wilkerson. Page by page, sentence by sentence the book is beautiful. This was really pleasure-reading and I looked forward to spending time with it.
And the last chapter: wow!
Given its title (The Unraveling of America's Suburbs) a question I had the whole time was "Are all of the suburbs unraveling? Everywhere?".
Judge for yourself, but, I think Herold chose so wisely that every metropolitan area in America maps well onto one or more of his five models. He cast his net beautifully: Chicago/Evanston, Pittsburgh/Penn Hills, Atlanta/DeKalb/Gwinnet, Dallas/Plano/Lucas.
His depiction works as long as you are analyzing a cityspace where there are well-to-do people trying to evade The Other, with schools and geography.
And my city Madison, Wisconsin, follows this model. Spatially, Madison is inverted, like Rio De Janero's model: our good stuff (the water features) are all in the middle, so we force the favellas to the outside. Maybe the Evanston model seems to fit most closely for us. But we have some suburbs, Sun Prairie, Middleton, Veroqua, and Verona.
Great book: this exceeded my expectations.
The writing in Disillusioned is better than Maraniss and equal to Wilkerson. Page by page, sentence by sentence the book is beautiful. This was really pleasure-reading and I looked forward to spending time with it.
And the last chapter: wow!
Given its title (The Unraveling of America's Suburbs) a question I had the whole time was "Are all of the suburbs unraveling? Everywhere?".
Judge for yourself, but, I think Herold chose so wisely that every metropolitan area in America maps well onto one or more of his five models. He cast his net beautifully: Chicago/Evanston, Pittsburgh/Penn Hills, Atlanta/DeKalb/Gwinnet, Dallas/Plano/Lucas.
His depiction works as long as you are analyzing a cityspace where there are well-to-do people trying to evade The Other, with schools and geography.
And my city Madison, Wisconsin, follows this model. Spatially, Madison is inverted, like Rio De Janero's model: our good stuff (the water features) are all in the middle, so we force the favellas to the outside. Maybe the Evanston model seems to fit most closely for us. But we have some suburbs, Sun Prairie, Middleton, Veroqua, and Verona.
Great book: this exceeded my expectations.
February 22, 2024
Incredibly long on diagnosis but woefully short on potential fixes.
March 29, 2024
I wish I knew Benjamin Herold was an education reporter before picking this book up. It wasn't what I expected and, in my opinion, was too focused on education. That topic is already reported on a lot, so why not explore other areas of American family life in the suburbs? There's definitely some engaging and thought-provoking material here, but it's overshadowed by the repetition. I also disagree with the organization of the material.
January 23, 2024
DISSAPOINTED
The whole book is about the problems families have with their children's schools. I expected more discussion about economic issues
The whole book is about the problems families have with their children's schools. I expected more discussion about economic issues
Read
April 25, 2024This is a truly remarkable book, and research project. History, ethnography, philosophy, psychology, etiology — it sweeps from large scale patterns to the intimate scale of individual lives and hopes, and the entanglements between them. A wild ride.
Highlights:
* Within a couple pages I was already tearing up at the sweetness and care of some of the families and educators
* As I got deeper, it was clear what a special document it was
* On page 359 I decided Ben Herold might be the only white person in America who actually took 2020 seriously
* When I hit page 403 and hyperobjects I was flooded with that incredible feeling you get when someone is talking about something that shapes so much but is never explained or acknowledged. It makes you feel so much less crazy
* Cried at the ending passage
* Loved the beautiful epilogue — she should have a cover credit for it in the reprint 🙏
* Teared up again at the love letter to Philly in the notes, a prose poem that I hope no one from here misses
I was particularly grateful to read this just after finishing The Roots of Educational Inequality” by Erika Kitzmiller, a powerful book that looked at many related issues through the lens of one now-closed city school. That one sent me spiraling into hopelessness, to see so starkly how the promise of public education has never, ever been realized or evenly accessible to children across races and ethnicities.
The problems are no less daunting here, but the human stories at the book’s heart ground us in why it matters so much to keep trying to build schools and a system of public education that supports every child so they can develop as full, vibrant people who have the lives they and their parents dream of for them and help knit this broken society back together. And for those of us involved in that work, it was valuable to see different strategies and approaches (as well as moments of opportunity, obstacles, limits and consequences that can shape the arc of progress) of those trying to lead or improve our schools as they play out over time.
[And if anyone who sees this wants to get plugged in to education justice advocacy, send a note ❤️]
Highlights:
* Within a couple pages I was already tearing up at the sweetness and care of some of the families and educators
* As I got deeper, it was clear what a special document it was
* On page 359 I decided Ben Herold might be the only white person in America who actually took 2020 seriously
* When I hit page 403 and hyperobjects I was flooded with that incredible feeling you get when someone is talking about something that shapes so much but is never explained or acknowledged. It makes you feel so much less crazy
* Cried at the ending passage
* Loved the beautiful epilogue — she should have a cover credit for it in the reprint 🙏
* Teared up again at the love letter to Philly in the notes, a prose poem that I hope no one from here misses
I was particularly grateful to read this just after finishing The Roots of Educational Inequality” by Erika Kitzmiller, a powerful book that looked at many related issues through the lens of one now-closed city school. That one sent me spiraling into hopelessness, to see so starkly how the promise of public education has never, ever been realized or evenly accessible to children across races and ethnicities.
The problems are no less daunting here, but the human stories at the book’s heart ground us in why it matters so much to keep trying to build schools and a system of public education that supports every child so they can develop as full, vibrant people who have the lives they and their parents dream of for them and help knit this broken society back together. And for those of us involved in that work, it was valuable to see different strategies and approaches (as well as moments of opportunity, obstacles, limits and consequences that can shape the arc of progress) of those trying to lead or improve our schools as they play out over time.
[And if anyone who sees this wants to get plugged in to education justice advocacy, send a note ❤️]
February 11, 2024
Benjamin Herold studied the history of 5 suburb neighborhoods across the US - Compton outside of LA, Evanston outside of Chicago, Penn Hills outside Pittsburgh, Gwinnett County outside Atlanta, and Lovejoy outside Dallas. He has stats and demographics and contemporary events to document the initial promise these neighborhoods held and then their subsequent fall. He also interviews 5 families and follows their experiences in these areas for a 4 year period. The book is made personal in this way and often does not read like non-fiction. 2 of the families are headed by single parents, 2 are upwardly mobile, high achieving dual parent households and 1 is a struggling immigrant family.
I recently read two other non fiction titles about the US education system - The Teachers: A Year Inside America's Most Vulnerable, Important Profession by Alexandra Robbins and The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession by Dana Goldstein. My interest stems from my daughter's profession as a middle grade teacher. I valued both of these previous books as well.
In reading Disillusioned I was often reflecting on what it meant to my children attending public schools in Montgomery County, MD. We were known for our excellent school system and our student population and housing market reflected the same circumstances as these neighborhoods depicted in Herold's book. Our children's elementary school was brand new and primarily white when it opened two blocks down from our home close to 30 years ago. In 2023, the enrollment is 94.8% minority and 5.2% white. The school needs repair and is overcrowded with multiple trailer classrooms surrounding the main building. Home prices have not been affected as much as the suburbs the book illustrates though.
This is a thought provoking read. I borrowed the book from the library on my Libby app and was initially intimidated when it loaded as it was over 800 pages long. This was inaccurate as the book has a lengthy section of footnotes and references. I read it rather quickly. Highly recommend. I especially loved the epilogue by the single mother in Pittsburgh. Kudos to Benjamin Herold for asking her to write it!
I recently read two other non fiction titles about the US education system - The Teachers: A Year Inside America's Most Vulnerable, Important Profession by Alexandra Robbins and The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession by Dana Goldstein. My interest stems from my daughter's profession as a middle grade teacher. I valued both of these previous books as well.
In reading Disillusioned I was often reflecting on what it meant to my children attending public schools in Montgomery County, MD. We were known for our excellent school system and our student population and housing market reflected the same circumstances as these neighborhoods depicted in Herold's book. Our children's elementary school was brand new and primarily white when it opened two blocks down from our home close to 30 years ago. In 2023, the enrollment is 94.8% minority and 5.2% white. The school needs repair and is overcrowded with multiple trailer classrooms surrounding the main building. Home prices have not been affected as much as the suburbs the book illustrates though.
This is a thought provoking read. I borrowed the book from the library on my Libby app and was initially intimidated when it loaded as it was over 800 pages long. This was inaccurate as the book has a lengthy section of footnotes and references. I read it rather quickly. Highly recommend. I especially loved the epilogue by the single mother in Pittsburgh. Kudos to Benjamin Herold for asking her to write it!
September 11, 2024
I thought this book was fascinating! It examines at length the connection between suburbs and public schools. It also touches on issues like underinvestment in communities of color, political polarization, and how easy it is for people to get swept into conspiracy theorists (I need a check-up on that woman from Texas ASAP). It was hard to keep track of the characters at first (I was listening to the audiobook) but eventually I got the hang of it.
February 12, 2024
Mixed feelings about this one. It seemed to be well-researched and well-written, but as some other reviews mention, it's stronger before 2020, covid, the election, etc. Maybe because we aren't really past all of that stuff yet and so it's hard to draw conclusions about it. I found the Becker family to be deeply unsympathetic. I did not understand the interpersonal drama between the author and Bethany toward the end of the book and I thought it was weird that the author kept making a point that he was guilty (of...being a kid in the suburbs? Pretty sure you don't have much choice in that when you're an actual child, but okay) and that "every white child in the suburbs" feels guilty and empty inside when they realize racism exists (what?!). Maybe this is his own experience, but I don't think he speaks for every white person who grew up in a suburb. I thought the book was strongest when the author was drawing parallels between all these places and where they were in the "life cycle" of a suburb - Compton hitting rock bottom and now trying to claw its way back up, and DeKalb and Penn Hills falling further and further but not at rock bottom yet, and Lovejoy at the beginning of the cycle, still drawing in a large tax base. I wish the conclusion had been stronger (present at all? lol) but again I understand that we are not quite past all the events covered at the end, so it's difficult to tie it all up neatly.
Read
March 4, 2024DNF. Okay. 10% through and I was falling asleep. I can't rate this, because while this may be an important read to many people, it just wasn't the book that I thought it would be. I'm sure that the research done was thorough and that each case study was handled with care. That being said... it's time for a nap.
February 20, 2024
I think this is a brilliant exploration of one of americas most fundamental problems which will shape all of our futures
March 2, 2024
I was excited and surprised to find this book. While I don’t personally know Benjamin Herold, I was a frequent reader of his articles from the Notebook when I taught in Philadelphia. His articles were something I looked forward to one a weekly basis. They provided useful insight into what was happening in other schools across the district and shared some concerns about issues related to equity and access to education that many students, teachers and families faced. Likewise, I really enjoyed his work for Education Week and his focus on how technology is used further (or in some cases limit) learning. Additionally, many people talked about Ben’s writing in other places I worked, whether it was the Philadelphia Writing Project or Temple; his work was always held in high regard since he frequently chronicled the reality of what teachers, students and families experienced in Philadelphia schools. Thus, his new and important book Disillusioned shouldn’t come as a surprise, except I wasn’t aware that this book was in progress until it popped up on a recommendation. I had to double check the author’s bio because Benjamin Herold sounded familiar, and sure enough, it was the same Ben Herold I had read. This book not only follows some of the same interests that Ben’s journalism also tracked—issues of access, equity, technology, but also seeks to examine these issues on a broader scale across various areas and communities in America. By doing this, his work sews together a narrative of the different hopes and expectations that people place in schools, and how the limited contributions over time (if any at all) have come due. Schools are something that we all experience in different ways, and as a teacher and a parent, I really appreciated how Herold presents the various schools across America (Dallas, Atlanta, Pittsburg, Evansville, and Compton). Herold’s portrayal of the families and the challenges they face help to show the various struggles and expectations that they all have for schools, as well as to illuminate the kind of opportunity hoarding (I appreciate learning this new term) that has somewhat decimated some public schools. Interestingly, Herold also sets up this narrative with some useful history tracking the development of suburbia and white flight from urban areas. More importantly, his analysis also examines how this movement and the opportunity hoarding that frequently occurs with newly developed areas leads to the system being tapped and sometimes left empty, allowing new communities to move in, but ultimately left to manage the problems and not experience the same kinds of benefits. This was told most importantly through the experiences and epilogue of Bethany Smith, the mother of Jackson from Penn Hills, where Herold is originally from. I really appreciated her epilogue and how she was able to find her voice and teach Herold about his privilege. Herold’s book is an important entry into a field of books that examine how social events are both reflected in and transformed by schools. As I was reading, I was thinking a lot about the book Home Advantage by Annette Lareau. While it is not exactly the same, it was interesting to read about the different expectations and experiences of these different families, and to see how they had different advantages and opportunities based on where they lived. Notably, Herold shares how the students who were upwardly mobile often still experienced barriers in schools, whether it was through the kind of surveillance of their behavior, a disengaging curriculum, or backlash towards diversity. Furthermore, the book also takes place at the start of the pandemic, and reading these sections took me back to a fraught time with my own children’s schooling. I really appreciated Herold’s ability to share these experiences of different families and learn more about the challenges that they faced of whether to keep their kids at home or send them to school with a virulent virus all around. While I can imagine that there are many parents and families who won’t want to read about the issues that schools face, I think that this book is so important for many people to read—whether they work in education or have their children in schools. It helps to remind us that public education is a right, but that it is also dependent on contributions from the community, not only financial contributions from taxes, but also a willingness to engage and challenge the kinds of systems that set up barriers for many families. It also reminds me that I need to check my own privileges and recognize that my experiences are not the same as everyone else, and that I should be willing to advocate for others who want change or to improve their experiences. I highly recommend this book to many people since public education is something that we all come into contact with, even if our children are not enrolled in public schools.
March 25, 2024
Very well written, very depressing. History is cyclical.
May 11, 2024
This book mainly taught me how much I underestimate the causal relationship between parental anxiety and injustice.
May 14, 2024
This is a well researched book with qualitative research quality. It is about five American families showing the never ending struggles of suburban life with the betrayals of the American dream.
Herold clearly shows how these families are affected by segregation, white flight, lack of emotional security and struggles encountered through the education systems. The dream of suburban life is shattered because of racial inequity.
I wish I had more time to spend with this new release but others have requested it at my library which is promising.
Herold clearly shows how these families are affected by segregation, white flight, lack of emotional security and struggles encountered through the education systems. The dream of suburban life is shattered because of racial inequity.
I wish I had more time to spend with this new release but others have requested it at my library which is promising.
April 23, 2024
Not buying it.
Not sure whether it’s my white privilege, my Long (Island) history in the suburbs, my teaching stint in Bertie County NC or my travail in the Triple City Area as IBM Endicott, Singer Link and GE collapsed but not all problems are caused by racism and the majority of the problems faced by these families educating their kids are the same everywhere.
First world problems all.
Not sure whether it’s my white privilege, my Long (Island) history in the suburbs, my teaching stint in Bertie County NC or my travail in the Triple City Area as IBM Endicott, Singer Link and GE collapsed but not all problems are caused by racism and the majority of the problems faced by these families educating their kids are the same everywhere.
First world problems all.
April 7, 2024
I would rate this book lower for readability (boring with too many details) but I have gone with an average rating for the thorough reporting. The author described how suburbs were built for segregation and white privilege then when they begin to be integrated white families move further out again. White flight to the suburbs drove up debt and bonds for services such as sewage and schools. He followed families outside Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh. The communities prioritized policing to address nonexistent crime then ran to exurbs when POC arrived since these families eventually reached middle class status. These over-leveraged communities were left with debt and crumbling infrastructure. He compared the process to slash and burn agriculture, building amenities for residents while raising debt for future communities to pay, fleeing by the time infrastructure was crumbling and finances dire. I thought that too much of his emphasis was on school systems and he didn’t pay enough attention to solutions and policy recommendations. The five cases got too overwhelming to follow. I would have liked more about issues other than schools and less focus on the details of each family.
June 15, 2024
I learned about this book from a tweet that linked to a review. I no longer remember who wrote the review, or even who tweeted or retweeted the review into my timeline. I saw that Disillusioned was a look at the history and continued legacy of America’s suburbs as shown by the following of five different families in five different American cities. I was in.
The book is divided into four parts. Part One is an introduction to each of the five families and the states and cities in which their stories take place. In Part Two, Herold looks at the history of the suburb in America from its birth following the Second World War, telling the specific history of each of the cities at issue. Part Three looks at the state of things in those suburbs in the two years preceding the life-altering pandemic of COVID-19 in the Spring of 2020. Part Four looks at when all the crises came to a head with the pandemic. The book ends with a kind of summary of lessons learned and points to signs of hope for the future. Each part is cut up into 6 chapters, one chapter per family, plus an extra chapter to tie all the threads together and point to the next part.
The real power of the of the book, and the real reward—at least for me—is the first half of the book. It’s in the first half that Herold dives into the way the suburb was born to and idealized by white Americans as a way of maintaining segregation in the name of safety and purity. He goes way beyond redlining to the politics and finances behind suburban governing bodies. The communities would be funded by government loans and quickly pumped up with borrowed money. The promise to the early-comers was of course low taxes and great, new infrastructure, from roads to schools to parks. To keep taxes low, however, the townships and cities couldn’t put any money away to pay for the day when interests ballooned, when all the physical infrastructure would need repairs about the same time, and when all the local areas had been developed so that growth and new taxes dollars would stagnate. About that time, the value of the properties would be falling, or at least not rising, and non-white people would begin to move in. Seeing the signs of faltering prosperity, and often seeing the very presence of non-white neighbors as that sign, white flight would establish another suburb farther out, like rings in a tree, built brand new with borrowed money, and the whole thing would start again. Those who have moved in to an older area, say 20 or 30 years after its foundation, found themselves responsible for all the debt that was coming due and all the new infrastructure costs that were needed now. School systems would be running million dollars in the red, yearly, and the new residents needed to find a way to balance books. Charles Marohn calls our system “the development version of slash-and-burn agriculture. . . . We build a place, we use up the resources, and when the returns start diminishing, we move on, leaving a geographic time bomb in our wake.”
Herold doesn’t shy away from the racism at the root of the American system. In fact, the story is very much one of his own awakening and his own reckoning. And times, I liked that personal presence, and at other times it felt intrusive. The book originates from his thoughts about his own neighborhood in Pittsburgh, and of course, he is spending time with and interviewing these five families, so he is necessarily part of the story. When his presence feels necessary for honesty and clarity, it is greatly appreciated. At other times, his presence feels like he is trying to make amends, or to let us know how far he has progressed on his path, and it feels indulgent and problematic. One of the people whose story he is telling gives him considerable push back as she becomes nervous that he is telling her story through his eyes, a white man speaking to a white audience in which she is the object, not a subject, and an object of pity or head-shaking or who-knows-what. In telling about this confrontation, Herold walks a difficult line because he wants us to understand his ah-ha moments in the conversations, but to do so makes it all so much about himself, even as he attempts to give the woman control of her own narrative. I’m sure for some readers, those moments are very enjoyable. For me, I just wanted to learn what he had to tell me about the world, not about himself.
Telling the story of the American suburb from five different perspectives, in five different cities, is an effective way to show that this is truly throughout America, not some localized issue. I was worried that I would lose track of so many narrative threads, but it was not as difficult as I anticipated, in large part because even if some of the details get lost, the main threads themselves are memorable. I do wish that I took notes while reading the book, because even though it has an index, most of what I want to find again, I now can’t. For example, Herold lists out six illusions that white American tend to hold about the suburbs and about America itself. Each illusion is listed as it’s relevant, which is good for making the point, but bad for finding the points later. If I could find them now, I would list all six for you here, but alas.
The last half of the book was interesting, but less focused and less powerful. Seeing how the pandemic brought every social ill to the surface and upset everything was good to see, but it’s almost too much in the present. The narratives peter out, spread, grow wild. We, and Herold, are too close to it all to see it clearly or draw useful conclusions. It’s not that I’d recommend stopping after Part II, it’s just that I found I was less compelled to read and instead read more as a conscious decision to move through the book.
That said, the first half of the book alone is worth the reading. It covers a vital history and analysis of a lived system that I have not encountered before. My copy is from the library, but I will likely get myself a copy for the sake of referencing and re-reading those parts that shine so brightly.
The book is divided into four parts. Part One is an introduction to each of the five families and the states and cities in which their stories take place. In Part Two, Herold looks at the history of the suburb in America from its birth following the Second World War, telling the specific history of each of the cities at issue. Part Three looks at the state of things in those suburbs in the two years preceding the life-altering pandemic of COVID-19 in the Spring of 2020. Part Four looks at when all the crises came to a head with the pandemic. The book ends with a kind of summary of lessons learned and points to signs of hope for the future. Each part is cut up into 6 chapters, one chapter per family, plus an extra chapter to tie all the threads together and point to the next part.
The real power of the of the book, and the real reward—at least for me—is the first half of the book. It’s in the first half that Herold dives into the way the suburb was born to and idealized by white Americans as a way of maintaining segregation in the name of safety and purity. He goes way beyond redlining to the politics and finances behind suburban governing bodies. The communities would be funded by government loans and quickly pumped up with borrowed money. The promise to the early-comers was of course low taxes and great, new infrastructure, from roads to schools to parks. To keep taxes low, however, the townships and cities couldn’t put any money away to pay for the day when interests ballooned, when all the physical infrastructure would need repairs about the same time, and when all the local areas had been developed so that growth and new taxes dollars would stagnate. About that time, the value of the properties would be falling, or at least not rising, and non-white people would begin to move in. Seeing the signs of faltering prosperity, and often seeing the very presence of non-white neighbors as that sign, white flight would establish another suburb farther out, like rings in a tree, built brand new with borrowed money, and the whole thing would start again. Those who have moved in to an older area, say 20 or 30 years after its foundation, found themselves responsible for all the debt that was coming due and all the new infrastructure costs that were needed now. School systems would be running million dollars in the red, yearly, and the new residents needed to find a way to balance books. Charles Marohn calls our system “the development version of slash-and-burn agriculture. . . . We build a place, we use up the resources, and when the returns start diminishing, we move on, leaving a geographic time bomb in our wake.”
Herold doesn’t shy away from the racism at the root of the American system. In fact, the story is very much one of his own awakening and his own reckoning. And times, I liked that personal presence, and at other times it felt intrusive. The book originates from his thoughts about his own neighborhood in Pittsburgh, and of course, he is spending time with and interviewing these five families, so he is necessarily part of the story. When his presence feels necessary for honesty and clarity, it is greatly appreciated. At other times, his presence feels like he is trying to make amends, or to let us know how far he has progressed on his path, and it feels indulgent and problematic. One of the people whose story he is telling gives him considerable push back as she becomes nervous that he is telling her story through his eyes, a white man speaking to a white audience in which she is the object, not a subject, and an object of pity or head-shaking or who-knows-what. In telling about this confrontation, Herold walks a difficult line because he wants us to understand his ah-ha moments in the conversations, but to do so makes it all so much about himself, even as he attempts to give the woman control of her own narrative. I’m sure for some readers, those moments are very enjoyable. For me, I just wanted to learn what he had to tell me about the world, not about himself.
Telling the story of the American suburb from five different perspectives, in five different cities, is an effective way to show that this is truly throughout America, not some localized issue. I was worried that I would lose track of so many narrative threads, but it was not as difficult as I anticipated, in large part because even if some of the details get lost, the main threads themselves are memorable. I do wish that I took notes while reading the book, because even though it has an index, most of what I want to find again, I now can’t. For example, Herold lists out six illusions that white American tend to hold about the suburbs and about America itself. Each illusion is listed as it’s relevant, which is good for making the point, but bad for finding the points later. If I could find them now, I would list all six for you here, but alas.
The last half of the book was interesting, but less focused and less powerful. Seeing how the pandemic brought every social ill to the surface and upset everything was good to see, but it’s almost too much in the present. The narratives peter out, spread, grow wild. We, and Herold, are too close to it all to see it clearly or draw useful conclusions. It’s not that I’d recommend stopping after Part II, it’s just that I found I was less compelled to read and instead read more as a conscious decision to move through the book.
That said, the first half of the book alone is worth the reading. It covers a vital history and analysis of a lived system that I have not encountered before. My copy is from the library, but I will likely get myself a copy for the sake of referencing and re-reading those parts that shine so brightly.
February 26, 2024
In the era of dismantling public education it is important to understand why students of color and low SES families get the short end of the stick. Good quality education is a right and not a handout as neoconservatives see it. Public education is not socialism it is the bedrock of our repsemtstive democracy and future of our nation.
August 25, 2024
As others have said—this isn’t about the suburbs. It’s about schools. Not that it isn’t interesting but it’s a bit misleading.
Also, your heart goes out to some of the families that he profiled (CA, PA and IL) and maybe they should have been the focus. The others are portrayed as struggling with their schools but have obvious affluence—wealth and advantages that would make such a huge difference to the other families, and you see it reflected in their “issues”.
Like, Really? Unprovoked, your kid puts glue in another student’s hair and we’re supposed to feel sympathetic?
Also, your heart goes out to some of the families that he profiled (CA, PA and IL) and maybe they should have been the focus. The others are portrayed as struggling with their schools but have obvious affluence—wealth and advantages that would make such a huge difference to the other families, and you see it reflected in their “issues”.
Like, Really? Unprovoked, your kid puts glue in another student’s hair and we’re supposed to feel sympathetic?
April 21, 2024
Engaging book that looks at the troubles suburbs have put upon themselves as they are settled by people (usually white and well off) escaping urban areas and then deteriorate as these same people move further out in later years. The author does this by shadowing five families from five very different areas of the country. The COVID lockdown came in the middle of his project, and I am sure that changed its direction.
The book focuses much more on schools, school systems, and school politics than you might think from the title and book jacket. Of course, the suburbs are inextricably linked to the schools. However, I already know a lot about K12 education, especially in urban areas, and I would have liked more of the discussion of many of the things I do not know much about, such as the failure to plan forward for infrastructure in most suburbs and how even very wealthy suburbs can have financial problems because they don't plan, don't allow enough develoment, or don't want to impose taxes until a problem becomes an emergency.
Right after I finished this book, I had a discussion with someone who works on budget issues for my state, New York. We talked about the crippling cost of housing here because enough new housing isn't being built. He said that a big part of the reason housing is cheaper in Texas than even in my Rust Belt city in New York is because they have very few zoning laws, so housing and apartments go up everywhere. There are downsides to this, such as housing being built on wetlands that are increasingly subject to severe flooding, but the upside is that housing is more affordable. I would have liked a little more exploration of that, especially since the family based in Texas did move to a town with building restrictions. That was part of the district's problem - since they did not allow industry or retail and houses had to be on at least an acre, there was little way to increase revenue, especially when the town declined in popularity during the pandemic.
It is very clear from the book how racism, whether conscious or unintended, has led to some of the problems faced in older suburbs today. I knew white people fled Southern cities when school desegregation started, but it was startly to see how quickly. During the 1970s, the Dallas schools lost 50% of their white students during the decade - 52,000! The book also outlined many less blatant ways racism still affects students, such as authorities in Plano, Texas saying that Mexican-American high schoolers were "kingpings" in a drug cartel when the town was hit by an heroin epidemic that affected all races equally. The Mexican-American students received hefty sentences while the white students received light or no sentences. I was suprised to learn that at the start of World War II, 20% of Black Americans lived in suburbs, but were pushed further and further into more limited areas. I wish we could spread this message more easily to the public in practical ways that show the problems it leaves for everyone, but it seems that everything even hinting at something like this is considered too "woke" or CRT. But if we acknowledged it and then moved to make changes rather than just feel guilty or angry about it, we could fix a lot of things.
The author did a decent job at stating what the featured families were feeling without putting too much of his own judgement into it. I think that may be due to the influence of Bethany, one of the mothers outlined in the story. At one point I was thinking to myself, "I wonder how the Texas family feels about being portrayed negatively." And then I realized that I was putting my own judgement and feelings into what I read. I was intepreting it as negative, but the author was merely reflecting back what he heard, although I am sure my opinion was swayed by which pieces he chose to tell.
There are a lot of endnotes, some of which point to likely denser and more academic takes on the topic. I will be looking at those, but the storytelling style of this book was a good way to get people interested in the topic and understand how the issues around suburbanization affect real people.
One quote on a topic I want to learn more about:
"Even back in 1924, when Congress had responded to concerns about waning Anglo-Saxon dominance by imposing a quota system that favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe while banning entry from darker skinned nations, Mexico had been exempted. During the decadest hat followed, there were periodic backlashes, one of whic led to a major repatriation campaign. By World War II however, American companies were back to recruiting, and Congress was back to mostly helping them, now via the Bracero Program, which granted temporary work visas to as many as half a million Mexican migrants a year. . . " For generations the US has been depending on Mexican Americans to do a lot of our labor, but not really admitting it or liking it.
The book also helped me understand why so many declining areas depend on fees to meet their budgets. Basically, they did not adequately maintain their infrastructure because they wanted to keep taxes low. As towns decline, property values go down, and towns have trouble collecting taxes, while their problems become more and more expensive due to deferred maintenance. They try to make up the gap by imposing horrendous fees, fines, and court summons costs, all of which fall on the poorest people.
The book focuses much more on schools, school systems, and school politics than you might think from the title and book jacket. Of course, the suburbs are inextricably linked to the schools. However, I already know a lot about K12 education, especially in urban areas, and I would have liked more of the discussion of many of the things I do not know much about, such as the failure to plan forward for infrastructure in most suburbs and how even very wealthy suburbs can have financial problems because they don't plan, don't allow enough develoment, or don't want to impose taxes until a problem becomes an emergency.
Right after I finished this book, I had a discussion with someone who works on budget issues for my state, New York. We talked about the crippling cost of housing here because enough new housing isn't being built. He said that a big part of the reason housing is cheaper in Texas than even in my Rust Belt city in New York is because they have very few zoning laws, so housing and apartments go up everywhere. There are downsides to this, such as housing being built on wetlands that are increasingly subject to severe flooding, but the upside is that housing is more affordable. I would have liked a little more exploration of that, especially since the family based in Texas did move to a town with building restrictions. That was part of the district's problem - since they did not allow industry or retail and houses had to be on at least an acre, there was little way to increase revenue, especially when the town declined in popularity during the pandemic.
It is very clear from the book how racism, whether conscious or unintended, has led to some of the problems faced in older suburbs today. I knew white people fled Southern cities when school desegregation started, but it was startly to see how quickly. During the 1970s, the Dallas schools lost 50% of their white students during the decade - 52,000! The book also outlined many less blatant ways racism still affects students, such as authorities in Plano, Texas saying that Mexican-American high schoolers were "kingpings" in a drug cartel when the town was hit by an heroin epidemic that affected all races equally. The Mexican-American students received hefty sentences while the white students received light or no sentences. I was suprised to learn that at the start of World War II, 20% of Black Americans lived in suburbs, but were pushed further and further into more limited areas. I wish we could spread this message more easily to the public in practical ways that show the problems it leaves for everyone, but it seems that everything even hinting at something like this is considered too "woke" or CRT. But if we acknowledged it and then moved to make changes rather than just feel guilty or angry about it, we could fix a lot of things.
The author did a decent job at stating what the featured families were feeling without putting too much of his own judgement into it. I think that may be due to the influence of Bethany, one of the mothers outlined in the story. At one point I was thinking to myself, "I wonder how the Texas family feels about being portrayed negatively." And then I realized that I was putting my own judgement and feelings into what I read. I was intepreting it as negative, but the author was merely reflecting back what he heard, although I am sure my opinion was swayed by which pieces he chose to tell.
There are a lot of endnotes, some of which point to likely denser and more academic takes on the topic. I will be looking at those, but the storytelling style of this book was a good way to get people interested in the topic and understand how the issues around suburbanization affect real people.
One quote on a topic I want to learn more about:
"Even back in 1924, when Congress had responded to concerns about waning Anglo-Saxon dominance by imposing a quota system that favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe while banning entry from darker skinned nations, Mexico had been exempted. During the decadest hat followed, there were periodic backlashes, one of whic led to a major repatriation campaign. By World War II however, American companies were back to recruiting, and Congress was back to mostly helping them, now via the Bracero Program, which granted temporary work visas to as many as half a million Mexican migrants a year. . . " For generations the US has been depending on Mexican Americans to do a lot of our labor, but not really admitting it or liking it.
The book also helped me understand why so many declining areas depend on fees to meet their budgets. Basically, they did not adequately maintain their infrastructure because they wanted to keep taxes low. As towns decline, property values go down, and towns have trouble collecting taxes, while their problems become more and more expensive due to deferred maintenance. They try to make up the gap by imposing horrendous fees, fines, and court summons costs, all of which fall on the poorest people.
May 19, 2024
Interesting and thought-provoking. This idea that the suburbs is where the American dream and American history collide is really compelling. And I really liked the author’s approach of looking at it from the lens of a bunch of different families living in all different parts of the US, who are still somehow all grappling with the same pressures and tensions. Prompted a lot of self-reflection, not least because it coincided with my own move to the suburbs.
March 1, 2024
4 stars but I would give the epilogue 5.
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