| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Suburban Alchemy: 1960s New Towns and the Transformation of the American Dream. By Nicholas Dagen Bloom. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001. x, 333 pp. Cloth, $70.00, ISBN 0-8142-0874-6. Paper, $27.95, ISBN 0-8142-5075-0.)

The American suburbs, where the majority of Americans have lived since 1970, should permit one to examine authentic American behavior. Earlier studies of suburbia, however, have generally studied everything but suburbanites. The critics' urbanized views of the subject have filtered the narrative and made the suburbs affluent, homogenized, and middle class without sufficiently interpreting the historical meaning of those words. Suburban Alchemy makes a substantive contribution to a new kind of history; the author assumes that the bedrock force of community building is resident initiative, particularly when focused on priorities of civic action, social consciousness, and cultural enhancement. The heart of this comparative narrative lies in the political force of cultural institutions, especially those directed by activist women. . . .

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