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Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs
"Astonishingly important.” —Alex Kotlowitz, The Atlantic
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 author Benjamin Herold grew up, then confronts the destructive legacy left behind by white families like his.
Disillusioned braids these human stories together with penetrating local and national history to reveal a vicious cycle undermining the dreams upon which American suburbia was built. 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. But now, sweeping demographic shifts and the dawning realization that endless expansion is no longer feasible are disrupting this pattern, forcing everyday families to confront a truth their communities were designed to The suburban lifestyle dream is a Ponzi scheme whose unraveling threatens us all.
How do we come to terms with this troubled history? How do we build a future in which all children can thrive? Drawing upon his decorated career as an education journalist, Herold explores these pressing debates with expertise and perspective. Then, alongside Bethany Smith—the mother from his old neighborhood, who contributes a powerful epilogue to the book—he offers a hopeful path toward renewal. The result is nothing short of a journalistic masterpiece.
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 author Benjamin Herold grew up, then confronts the destructive legacy left behind by white families like his.
Disillusioned braids these human stories together with penetrating local and national history to reveal a vicious cycle undermining the dreams upon which American suburbia was built. 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. But now, sweeping demographic shifts and the dawning realization that endless expansion is no longer feasible are disrupting this pattern, forcing everyday families to confront a truth their communities were designed to The suburban lifestyle dream is a Ponzi scheme whose unraveling threatens us all.
How do we come to terms with this troubled history? How do we build a future in which all children can thrive? Drawing upon his decorated career as an education journalist, Herold explores these pressing debates with expertise and perspective. Then, alongside Bethany Smith—the mother from his old neighborhood, who contributes a powerful epilogue to the book—he offers a hopeful path toward renewal. The result is nothing short of a journalistic masterpiece.
493 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 23, 2024
235 people are currently reading
6748 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin Herold
1 book31 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 147 reviews
February 23, 2025
Interesting book about families with children living in the suburbs and their attempts to procure a quality education for their kids. I appreciated Benjamin Herold’s analysis of race and white flight in major suburbs outside of Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and more. In particular, his willingness to own up to his own whiteness and to engage in an open and honest conversation with one of the interviewees, Bethany Smith, showed that he wasn’t writing this book just to be extractive or for his own profit. The ending of the book got real real fast given the current US Trump administration’s attack on DEI and the US’s descent into fascism at the hands of the Trump administration… it’s a scary time for kids, especially trans/lgbtq+ kids and kids of color.
The book was a little long though I can understand Herold’s desire to be thorough. It was also focused on education for children and not other elements of living in suburbia. Still, Herold tackles a complex issue that I feel needs to be talked about.
The book was a little long though I can understand Herold’s desire to be thorough. It was also focused on education for children and not other elements of living in suburbia. Still, Herold tackles a complex issue that I feel needs to be talked about.
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.
July 21, 2025
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
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
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
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.
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
February 12, 2024
Best part was the epilogue.
March 30, 2025
6/7. I liked this book a lot. I found it particularly interesting because it is dealing with an issue that is currently happening in my own community (equity and racism issues in the schools and how that affects school performance and resources and the community at large), and because it examines these issues of aging suburbs in a number of different geographic locations. I had read a book previously about the Shaker Heights, OH school system, and found that book fantastic. This book looks at Penn Hills, PA (near Pittsburgh), Lovejoy/Lucas, and to an extent, Plano, Texas (near Dallas), Evanston, IL (near Chicago), Dekalb/Gwinnett Co, GA (near Atlanta) and Compton, CA. I especially liked this because I am familiar with Evanston (my father graduated from this school system) and if I still lived in Chicago there would have been a good chance my kids would be in school in Evanston . Also, although the school system was on the other side of the state, I had previously lived in Pennsylvania and was about to run for school board because there were so many issues happening that did not bode well. I also liked reading about Compton, because I hadn't realized it had once been a suburban area and even George Bush (I and II) had lived there.
Three of the families are Black and dealing with racism in different forms -- both racist systems that treat Black children more harshly and that prevent them from entering gifted programs, but also from larger racism where white families who had benefited from the suburbs, with all new infrastructure but then left when all the infrastructure needed to be replaced. So Black families who moved into these suburbs were left with the bills that their respective cities could not afford.
One family is Mexican -- both parents are undocumented, and that makes me worried about what will happen to this family with the Trump Gestapo. This is a family that is thriving and nothing will be gained by deporting the parents. Their child is actually thriving in the Compton school district, and I was surprised that this district may be the most likely to do well, even though its position is precarious.
The family in the Dallas suburbs are just the classic example of horrible white people, with whom I'm ashamed to share a demographic. These people are terrible and of course they end up as conspiracy-theory believing Trumpers. It didn't seem like the explanation for this was stupidity given the careers they had, so the only explanation is that they're just at the core selfish racist people who are short-sighted and don't care about anyone who isn't exactly like them. They end up having a tantrum and pull their kids out of the well-regarded school district and homeschool them with a religious curriculum.
The section on Dallas was interesting, though. The family had lived in Plano, which had well-regarded suburbs, but it was becoming more diverse so the family headed further out. Interestingly, the author discusses these exurban school districts as being like private schools and having many resources that they put into the school system. Zoning prevents many businesses, and there are no sidewalks allowed. This sounds like a terrible place to live, and I lived in a similar exurb but the schools weren't new and highly regarded. They had been so-so and were getting better. But the issue was that the people who had lived in the rural area resented the newcomers and did not want to pay taxes to pay for schools for the children that they didn't want there in the first place. So it was interesting to see a different philosophy. The author indicates that as the inner ring suburbs that had good school reputations aged, all the infrastructure requirements were creating budget crises. So people were getting the hell out of Dodge so they could live the "suburban dream" that had existed in the 70s and 80s.
This issue was even more acute in the Penn Hills area near Pittsburgh. They had a sewage system that long ago needed significant repairs but this need was ignored, so now there is a huge tax bill to shore up the sewer system. The schools needed more funding, but perhaps because the community was in dire straits, the level of corruption increased at the school board level, leading to ridiculous amounts paid for new school buildings that were larger than necessary and improperly built.
The consistent theme, even more than the racism and equity issues, though, was money. All of the school systems were encountering huge deficits, with the future financial condition looking bleak. This really drives home the need for additional federal funding of schools nationwide and some federal level programs and oversight. But of course, right now we're not only not doing that, but doing the exact opposite.
Three of the families are Black and dealing with racism in different forms -- both racist systems that treat Black children more harshly and that prevent them from entering gifted programs, but also from larger racism where white families who had benefited from the suburbs, with all new infrastructure but then left when all the infrastructure needed to be replaced. So Black families who moved into these suburbs were left with the bills that their respective cities could not afford.
One family is Mexican -- both parents are undocumented, and that makes me worried about what will happen to this family with the Trump Gestapo. This is a family that is thriving and nothing will be gained by deporting the parents. Their child is actually thriving in the Compton school district, and I was surprised that this district may be the most likely to do well, even though its position is precarious.
The family in the Dallas suburbs are just the classic example of horrible white people, with whom I'm ashamed to share a demographic. These people are terrible and of course they end up as conspiracy-theory believing Trumpers. It didn't seem like the explanation for this was stupidity given the careers they had, so the only explanation is that they're just at the core selfish racist people who are short-sighted and don't care about anyone who isn't exactly like them. They end up having a tantrum and pull their kids out of the well-regarded school district and homeschool them with a religious curriculum.
The section on Dallas was interesting, though. The family had lived in Plano, which had well-regarded suburbs, but it was becoming more diverse so the family headed further out. Interestingly, the author discusses these exurban school districts as being like private schools and having many resources that they put into the school system. Zoning prevents many businesses, and there are no sidewalks allowed. This sounds like a terrible place to live, and I lived in a similar exurb but the schools weren't new and highly regarded. They had been so-so and were getting better. But the issue was that the people who had lived in the rural area resented the newcomers and did not want to pay taxes to pay for schools for the children that they didn't want there in the first place. So it was interesting to see a different philosophy. The author indicates that as the inner ring suburbs that had good school reputations aged, all the infrastructure requirements were creating budget crises. So people were getting the hell out of Dodge so they could live the "suburban dream" that had existed in the 70s and 80s.
This issue was even more acute in the Penn Hills area near Pittsburgh. They had a sewage system that long ago needed significant repairs but this need was ignored, so now there is a huge tax bill to shore up the sewer system. The schools needed more funding, but perhaps because the community was in dire straits, the level of corruption increased at the school board level, leading to ridiculous amounts paid for new school buildings that were larger than necessary and improperly built.
The consistent theme, even more than the racism and equity issues, though, was money. All of the school systems were encountering huge deficits, with the future financial condition looking bleak. This really drives home the need for additional federal funding of schools nationwide and some federal level programs and oversight. But of course, right now we're not only not doing that, but doing the exact opposite.
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.
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.
December 7, 2024
I liked this a lot in the beginning, although it took me awhile to keep the families and towns straight. But after about 2/3 it just started to feel tedious to me, with too many details of the families’ lives. The epilogue was very good.
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!
February 22, 2024
Incredibly long on diagnosis but woefully short on potential fixes.
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.
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 8, 2025
With anything that I read, especially non-fiction, the goal is to learn something new. Sometimes those facts can be very hard to digest, and what you thought you knew can be flipped on its head. The simple fact is that all children in schools need to be disciplined the same way; the color of their skin shouldn’t have any impact on what kind of punishment they receive. Money and wealth don’t make everything better. All children learn differently. Maybe, with all this chaos we have in our world, something beautiful and new can be made of the American dream. And lastly, we shouldn’t stereotype people. Those are simple truths that should be easy to understand and something that everyone should just know. Sadly, that’s not the case, and we can even see that in this book. Now let’s dive into what was hard to understand.
The suburbs are not what they appear to be on the outside. We’ve always been told that if you work hard, you’ll do well, but it’s hard to accept that this isn’t always true. You can try your hardest in life, but things don’t always play out correctly or as you planned. The author makes a great point that a lot of American history consists of broken promises. This country was founded on the principle of everybody being treated equally, but this book shows how, in public schools, that isn’t always the case for people of color and people with disabilities. They’re not treated as equals to their white peers. There was a system on which the suburbs were built, and many people don’t dig deeper to see why things are the way they are. That is the goal of the book: to show you where all these issues came from and hopefully how we can fix them.
Let’s talk about my personal preferences regarding the book. I definitely prefer just hearing the stories of these families and how they approach their children’s education, but there’s a lot of discussion about money, politics, and history. I understand we need to have that background knowledge to know why these people are in the situations they are in, but it was a lot for me to take in, as I don’t understand how much of that works. That’s why I would really recommend this book to people with children who are in school or about to start school so they can have an understanding of the American schooling system. This was an extremely eye-opening book. I do think the blurb is a little misleading, as it talks about the suburbs when I believe this book is really dissecting the impact that 2020 had on public schools.
The suburbs are not what they appear to be on the outside. We’ve always been told that if you work hard, you’ll do well, but it’s hard to accept that this isn’t always true. You can try your hardest in life, but things don’t always play out correctly or as you planned. The author makes a great point that a lot of American history consists of broken promises. This country was founded on the principle of everybody being treated equally, but this book shows how, in public schools, that isn’t always the case for people of color and people with disabilities. They’re not treated as equals to their white peers. There was a system on which the suburbs were built, and many people don’t dig deeper to see why things are the way they are. That is the goal of the book: to show you where all these issues came from and hopefully how we can fix them.
Let’s talk about my personal preferences regarding the book. I definitely prefer just hearing the stories of these families and how they approach their children’s education, but there’s a lot of discussion about money, politics, and history. I understand we need to have that background knowledge to know why these people are in the situations they are in, but it was a lot for me to take in, as I don’t understand how much of that works. That’s why I would really recommend this book to people with children who are in school or about to start school so they can have an understanding of the American schooling system. This was an extremely eye-opening book. I do think the blurb is a little misleading, as it talks about the suburbs when I believe this book is really dissecting the impact that 2020 had on public schools.
January 10, 2025
Books about big social and political issues tend to run the spectrum from “There Might be hope” to “We’re Fucked”, and Disillusioned is pretty far into the later category.
This book is mostly about the struggles and divisions facing suburban school districts around the country. I’m glad to see a book that gets how important school systems are to communities, and this book does a great job of highlighting exactly how schools amplify ongoing social debates.
Some of the best content of this book is on racism and race relations, making clear how racist systems hurt everyone. Some of the families featured have values and beliefs not remotely aligned with mine, but I think Herold does a good job of understanding the human motivations behind everyone’s actions.
Lot’s of interesting food for thought here, but it is largely not an uplifting read.
I loved this quote towards the end “There has always been an American Dream that turns the fragments and shards of what came before into something beautiful and new”
This book is mostly about the struggles and divisions facing suburban school districts around the country. I’m glad to see a book that gets how important school systems are to communities, and this book does a great job of highlighting exactly how schools amplify ongoing social debates.
Some of the best content of this book is on racism and race relations, making clear how racist systems hurt everyone. Some of the families featured have values and beliefs not remotely aligned with mine, but I think Herold does a good job of understanding the human motivations behind everyone’s actions.
Lot’s of interesting food for thought here, but it is largely not an uplifting read.
I loved this quote towards the end “There has always been an American Dream that turns the fragments and shards of what came before into something beautiful and new”
January 1, 2025
I think if I had read this prior to our most recent election, I would have felt differently about this book. But, after the 2024 election, I think this book offers a fairly real view about the different perspectives of education in America. Everyone has an opinion of what education should and should not look like at this point, and this conflict often plays out in the suburbs.
I didn’t know much about the longtime management (or mismanagement) of money and funding in suburban areas and found that to be an interesting caveat to many issues. Regardless of my own personal opinion, I thought the author gave a window into the viewpoints of parents and what they want for their children and their education.
I didn’t know much about the longtime management (or mismanagement) of money and funding in suburban areas and found that to be an interesting caveat to many issues. Regardless of my own personal opinion, I thought the author gave a window into the viewpoints of parents and what they want for their children and their education.
September 20, 2025
This book is long and detailed and not for the faint-of-heart! It is an in-depth look at suburban America and the public school systems that were managed/mismanaged by the white people in charge. When people of color moved into suburbia, the white people moved further out and left them with a financial disaster. Then add in the racial tensions between the people of color who have recently moved there and the whites who previously have held all the power and now are afraid of losing it. Then add in the COVID differences of opinion and it becomes a train wreck. The author adds in his own personal experience and examines his culpability in creating the issues and his responsibility in fixing them. The last chapter and the epilogue were worth hanging in for.
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.
May 1, 2025
The book dove into complexities about these families in ways that allowed us to fully humanize them. We disagreed and agreed with some of their choices. As someone who considers themselves an urbanist, I really appreciated this book because it dispelled the myth that the suburbs are a bunch of middle class white people who hate living in cities. It’s not the 70s anymore. More and more working class people are being pushed out there and are living in neighborhoods with failing infrastructure in hopes of better opportunities. A worth while read, although some pages felt skipable.
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 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.
March 3, 2025
This book was well written and timely, but its arguments could use tightening and it was a disappointment overall. I read it after finishing books on culture wars in public schools and the growing movement to reduce the construction/expansion of highways in America. These subjects are all intimately related and I suggest looking into them if this book interests you.
The author describes Gunner Myrdal’s research, which raises the interesting prospect that white children are psychologically and morally damaged by being forced to suppress their knowledge of racist treatment toward minorities. This “need not to know” creates a split in a white American’s mind, between reality as she sees it every day, and her belief in the “American creed” of an equal opportunity melting pot. Unfortunately I don’t share Myrdal’s optimism that the strength of American democracy will eventually eliminate racism as a potent force. But it’s a very useful framework for looking at the psychological dimensions of racism in the US.
The question this book raised for my own life is: for those of us from backgrounds that gave us many advantages, how do we make choices about school for our children without propagating racism? Herold addresses this seemingly impossible dilemma in his last chapter, through the lens of “hyperobjects,” as defined by scholar Timothy Morton. Hyperobjects are human-created messes of impossibly large size, like climate change or the boom-and-bust cycle of suburban development. These issues subsume all aspects of our daily lives, forcing us to orient ourselves with relation to them. We react to them with resignation, overwhelmed by their scale and ubiquity. This analysis is useful. But Herold didn’t suggest how an affluent white person might make specific choices about their specific lives, to avoid propagating harm.
Myself and my partner didn’t come from affluent families, but we are white and we went to good schools. We both went to grad school and have made decent careers for ourselves as a librarian and a college instructor. In a few years we hope to have children, so a decade from now we’ll have to decide where to live and send them to school.
Say we lived where we do now in Alabama. The picture is different between county and city schools. The only elementary school in our county system to receive a D rating on its “state report card” has 68% of students on free/reduced lunch and 26% of students are a racial minority. The only elementary school in our city system to get a D has 78% of students on free/reduced lunch and 99% of students are a racial minority. Having high proportions of impoverished or minoritized students doesn’t condemn a school to failure- for example, another elementary school has 83% low income and 99% minority students, but still got a B rating. On the other hand, the two elementary schools that got As are 19% low income/30% racial minorities and 13% low income/27% minority.
So there’s a strong correlation between living in an area that has few low income inhabitants/racial minority inhabitants, and having your children zoned to a good public school. What can I do that supports both my belief in the importance of a good education for my child, and my belief that a child benefits from growing up among a diversity of people? Or my belief that this voluntary segregation/shift toward private and charter schooling is perpetuating the decline of public schools, and condemning children of color to languish in underfunded chaotic learning environments?
Add this dilemma to the fact that numerically speaking, families of color moving into a neighborhood does cause a decline in property values, and I see why even well meaning white liberals usually become selfish when it comes to where they live and where their children learn. But I did not learn any practical solutions from this book.
The parents that Herold writes about are, frankly, exhausting at times. Their stories had me marveling at what parents will do for their children, even when it crosses into underhanded or bullying behavior. One parent wasn’t selected as a chaperone for a bougie field trip and wrote a manipulative email about how sad she was that new parents weren’t being included. Later we get treated to a whopping dose of scientific illiteracy and reactionary bullshit from this same parent. Another responds to her son’s variety of bad behaviors (plagiarism, physical fights, and theft) with accusations of racism.
When a child is struggling, it’s the teacher's fault for not doing the work of a dozen people at once, her fault that a child needs intensive one on one attention to succeed. It gets tiresome walking alongside these parents at times. The whole book begs the question of the influence of home life on students- the typical lament from teachers is a lack of caring from parents, but what I saw here was attempts to coddle and secure special treatment for their particular child, couched in the language of either privilege or social justice depending on the parent’s politics.
But I think Herold would argue that if troubled students had been educated in a system that gave them a fair chance from the beginning, they wouldn’t have an antagonistic relationship with school. I guess the question once you’re dealing with older children is how to mitigate the negative effects of their prior schooling, while still holding them accountable for poor choices. I think the author would also say, allowing my emotion filled judgments of people’s behavior to cloud my understanding of the bigger picture is a bad idea, and that’s true. And he’d probably tell me that even the irrational and flawed among us deserve to know that their children have been born into a world that will treat them decently, which you know, fair.
Lastly, I don’t know that framing the end of the book around Bethany’s reactions to the author was a good idea. I think he may have kept her objections vague out of respect for her perspective, but without the details of the conflict, it’s puzzling. I understand that this brought him to his final and perhaps most crucial question- how is he personally responsible and what should he do? But although it’s necessary to center your subjects and their experiences, it’s not always helpful to allow their reactions to largely remake your views on an issue.
2 / 5 stars. Worth reading if this subject is a passion of yours, but not otherwise.
The author describes Gunner Myrdal’s research, which raises the interesting prospect that white children are psychologically and morally damaged by being forced to suppress their knowledge of racist treatment toward minorities. This “need not to know” creates a split in a white American’s mind, between reality as she sees it every day, and her belief in the “American creed” of an equal opportunity melting pot. Unfortunately I don’t share Myrdal’s optimism that the strength of American democracy will eventually eliminate racism as a potent force. But it’s a very useful framework for looking at the psychological dimensions of racism in the US.
The question this book raised for my own life is: for those of us from backgrounds that gave us many advantages, how do we make choices about school for our children without propagating racism? Herold addresses this seemingly impossible dilemma in his last chapter, through the lens of “hyperobjects,” as defined by scholar Timothy Morton. Hyperobjects are human-created messes of impossibly large size, like climate change or the boom-and-bust cycle of suburban development. These issues subsume all aspects of our daily lives, forcing us to orient ourselves with relation to them. We react to them with resignation, overwhelmed by their scale and ubiquity. This analysis is useful. But Herold didn’t suggest how an affluent white person might make specific choices about their specific lives, to avoid propagating harm.
Myself and my partner didn’t come from affluent families, but we are white and we went to good schools. We both went to grad school and have made decent careers for ourselves as a librarian and a college instructor. In a few years we hope to have children, so a decade from now we’ll have to decide where to live and send them to school.
Say we lived where we do now in Alabama. The picture is different between county and city schools. The only elementary school in our county system to receive a D rating on its “state report card” has 68% of students on free/reduced lunch and 26% of students are a racial minority. The only elementary school in our city system to get a D has 78% of students on free/reduced lunch and 99% of students are a racial minority. Having high proportions of impoverished or minoritized students doesn’t condemn a school to failure- for example, another elementary school has 83% low income and 99% minority students, but still got a B rating. On the other hand, the two elementary schools that got As are 19% low income/30% racial minorities and 13% low income/27% minority.
So there’s a strong correlation between living in an area that has few low income inhabitants/racial minority inhabitants, and having your children zoned to a good public school. What can I do that supports both my belief in the importance of a good education for my child, and my belief that a child benefits from growing up among a diversity of people? Or my belief that this voluntary segregation/shift toward private and charter schooling is perpetuating the decline of public schools, and condemning children of color to languish in underfunded chaotic learning environments?
Add this dilemma to the fact that numerically speaking, families of color moving into a neighborhood does cause a decline in property values, and I see why even well meaning white liberals usually become selfish when it comes to where they live and where their children learn. But I did not learn any practical solutions from this book.
The parents that Herold writes about are, frankly, exhausting at times. Their stories had me marveling at what parents will do for their children, even when it crosses into underhanded or bullying behavior. One parent wasn’t selected as a chaperone for a bougie field trip and wrote a manipulative email about how sad she was that new parents weren’t being included. Later we get treated to a whopping dose of scientific illiteracy and reactionary bullshit from this same parent. Another responds to her son’s variety of bad behaviors (plagiarism, physical fights, and theft) with accusations of racism.
When a child is struggling, it’s the teacher's fault for not doing the work of a dozen people at once, her fault that a child needs intensive one on one attention to succeed. It gets tiresome walking alongside these parents at times. The whole book begs the question of the influence of home life on students- the typical lament from teachers is a lack of caring from parents, but what I saw here was attempts to coddle and secure special treatment for their particular child, couched in the language of either privilege or social justice depending on the parent’s politics.
But I think Herold would argue that if troubled students had been educated in a system that gave them a fair chance from the beginning, they wouldn’t have an antagonistic relationship with school. I guess the question once you’re dealing with older children is how to mitigate the negative effects of their prior schooling, while still holding them accountable for poor choices. I think the author would also say, allowing my emotion filled judgments of people’s behavior to cloud my understanding of the bigger picture is a bad idea, and that’s true. And he’d probably tell me that even the irrational and flawed among us deserve to know that their children have been born into a world that will treat them decently, which you know, fair.
Lastly, I don’t know that framing the end of the book around Bethany’s reactions to the author was a good idea. I think he may have kept her objections vague out of respect for her perspective, but without the details of the conflict, it’s puzzling. I understand that this brought him to his final and perhaps most crucial question- how is he personally responsible and what should he do? But although it’s necessary to center your subjects and their experiences, it’s not always helpful to allow their reactions to largely remake your views on an issue.
2 / 5 stars. Worth reading if this subject is a passion of yours, but not otherwise.
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