Making Long Island: A History of Growth and the American Dream

by Lawrence R. Samuel

Discover the history of the development of Long Island and its intimate relationship with New York City. Beginning in the Roaring Twenties, Wall Street money looked eastward to Nassau and Suffolk counties looking generate wealth from a land boom. After the Great Depression and World War II, Long Island was the site of the creation of the quintessential postwar American suburb, Levittown. Levittown and its spinoff suburban communities served as a primary symbol of the American dream through affordable home ownership for the predominately White middle class and established a core attribute of the national mythology. Starting in the 1960s, the dream began to dissolve, as the postwar economic engine ran out of steam and Long Island became as much urban as suburban. Author Lawrence R. Samuel charts how the island evolved over the decades and largely detached itself from New York City to become a self-sustaining entity with its own challenges, exclusions and triumphs.

192 pages, Paperback

Published October 2, 2023

About the author

Lawrence R. Samuel is the founder of Culture Planning LLC, a Miami– and New York–based resource offering cultural insight to Fortune 500 organizations. He is the author of The End of the Innocence: The 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair, Future: A Recent History, Rich: The Rise and Fall of American Wealth Culture, Freud on Madison Avenue: Motivation Research and Subliminal Advertising in America, Supernatural America: A Cultural History, and a number of other books.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having lived in the area years ago, the chapters dealing with Levittown were of particular interest.

[Cathryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has only a 57.12% success rate (4 correct out of 7 mentions) of listing the name of the town BAY SHORE. WHICH IS ALWAYS TWO WORDS. Yes, I kept track. Doing so kept me awake whilst reading this book.

Time-jumps within chapters were confusing. For example, one chapter started out mentioning that President Kennedy was moving into the White House but the next paragraph it was 1966...? Things like this happened in every chapter. After a while, I just learned to roll with it.

Most of the book is taken from Newsday newspaper articles over the decades. Scanning the bibliography at the end it might as well just stated one big word: NEWSDAY.

Entire book was a bit dull and left a feeling of doom for those of us (unlike the author) still living on Long Island. It's not perfect, but it's really not THAT bad, dude.