In Levittown's Shadow: Poverty in America's Wealthiest Postwar Suburb

Named one of the 20 best nonfiction books of 2023 by Publishers Weekly!

There is a familiar narrative about American suburbs: after 1945, white residents left cities for leafy, affluent subdivisions and the prosperity they seemed to embody. In Levittown's Shadow tells us there's more to this story, offering an eye-opening account of diverse, poor residents living and working in those same neighborhoods. Tim Keogh shows how public policies produced both suburban plenty and deprivation--and why ignoring suburban poverty doomed efforts to reduce inequality.

Keogh focuses on the suburbs of Long Island, home to Levittown, often considered the archetypal suburb. Here military contracts subsidized well-paid employment welding airplanes or filing paperwork, while weak labor laws impoverished suburbanites who mowed lawns, built houses, scrubbed kitchen floors, and stocked supermarket shelves. Federal mortgage programs helped some families buy orderly single-family homes and enter the middle class but also underwrote landlord efforts to cram poor families into suburban attics, basements, and sheds. Keogh explores how policymakers ignored suburban inequality, addressing housing segregation between cities and suburbs rather than suburbanites' demands for decent jobs, housing, and schools.

By turning our attention to the suburban poor, Keogh reveals poverty wasn't just an urban problem but a suburban one, too. In Levittown's Shadow deepens our understanding of suburbia's history--and points us toward more effective ways to combat poverty today.

Author: Tim Keogh
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 11/03/2023
Pages: 328
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.42lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.88d
ISBN13: 9780226827735
ISBN10: 0226827739
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Sociology | Urban
- History | United States | 20th Century
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | African American & Black Studies

About the Author
Tim Keogh is assistant professor of history at Queensborough Community College, part of the City University of New York.