Cracked Foundations - (Politics and Culture in Modern America) by Michael Glass (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

How debt and speculation financed the suburban American dream and led to today's inequalities

In the popular imagination, the suburbs are synonymous with the "American Dream" of upward mobility and economic security. After World War II, white families rushed into newly built suburbs, where they accumulated wealth through homeownership and enjoyed access to superior public schools. In this revelatory new account of postwar suburbanization, historian Michael R. Glass exposes the myth of uniform suburban prosperity. Focusing on the archetypal suburbs of Long Island, Cracked Foundations uncovers a hidden landscape of debt and speculation.

Glass shows how suburbanites were not guaranteed decent housing and high-quality education but instead had to obtain these necessities in the marketplace using home mortgages and municipal bonds. These debt instruments created financial strains for families, distributed resources unevenly across suburbs, and codified racial segregation. Most important, debt transformed housing and education into commodities, turning homes and schools into engines of capital accumulation. The resulting pressures made life increasingly precarious, even for those privileged suburbanites who resided in all-white communities. For people of color denied the same privileges, suburbs became places where predatory loans extracted wealth and credit rating agencies punished children in the poorest school districts. Long Islanders challenged these inequalities over several decades, demanding affordable housing, school desegregation, tax equity, and school-funding equalization. Yet the unequal circumstances created by the mortgages and bonds remain very much in place, even today.

Cracked Foundations not only transforms our understanding of housing, education, and inequality but also highlights how contemporary issues like the affordable housing crisis and school segregation have their origins in the postwar golden age of capitalism.

Review Quotes

"Cracked Foundations does the near impossible--it breaks new ground with a surprising history about the suburban boom in the United States after World War II. It is a history we all assume to know about American suburbs: little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same, housing the quintessential white nuclear family. But in tearing the mask off the conventional history of America's golden age, an underbelly of rising debt, tax burdens, struggling schools, and insecurity is revealed. With painstaking research, refreshing insights, and smart arguments, this book makes an extraordinary contribution."-- "Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership"

"Cracked Foundations will forever change the way we think about postwar suburbs. Michael R. Glass masterfully shows how suburban housing and school finance programs were designed by and for developers and financiers, not for middle-class families. These families assumed heavy debt and their aspirations toward financial security remained dependent on a highly volatile market--one that promised much more than it delivered and generated its own set of insecurities and inequities. This is an extraordinary book that not only deeply enriches and transforms our understanding of housing, education, and inequality in postwar suburbs (and beyond) but that is also well-crafted, boldly argued, and beautifully written."-- "Andrew W. Kahrl, author of The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America"

"Michael R. Glass has done remarkable historical legwork in excavating the inner history of Levittown, transforming the way we understand this most iconic of suburbs. Cracked Foundations demolishes the myth of suburban security, asking us to look anew at post-World War II American history. A brilliant scholarly accomplishment."-- "Kim Phillips-Fein, author of Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics"

About the Author

Michael R. Glass is Assistant Professor of History at Boston College.