The Levittowners

In 1955, Levitt and Sons purchased most of Willingboro Township, New Jersey and built 11,000 homes. This, their third Levittown, became the site of one of urban sociology's most famous community studies, Herbert J. Gans's The Levittowners. The product of two years of living in Levittown, the work chronicles the invention of a new community and its major institutions, the beginnings of social and political life, and the former city residents' adaptation to suburban living. Gans uses his research to reject the charge that suburbs are sterile and pathological. First published in 1967, The Levittowners is a classic of participant-observer ethnography that also paints a sensitive portrait of working-class and lower-middle-class life in America. This new edition features a foreword by Harvey Molotch that reflects on Gans's challenges to conventional wisdom.

Much has been written about the housing policies of the Depression and the Postwar period. Much less has been written of the houses built as a result of these policies, or the lives of the families who lived in them. Using the houses of Levittown, Long Island, as cultural artifacts, this book examines the relationship between the government-sponsored, mass-produced housing built after World War II, the families who lived in it, and the society that fostered it. Beginning with the basic four-room, slab-based Cape Cods and Ranches, Levittown homeowners invested time and effort, barter and money in the expansion and redesign of their houses. The author shows how this gradual process has altered the socioeconomic nature of the community as well, bringing Levittown fully into the mainstream of middle-class America. This book works on several levels. For planners, it offers a reassessment of the housing policies of the 1940s and '50s, suggesting that important lessons remain to be learned from the Levittown experience. For historians, it offers new insights into the nature of the suburbanization process that followed World War II. And for those who wish to understand the subtle workings of their own domestic space within their lives, it offers food for speculation.

Completed in 1747, Mark Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands was the first major illustrated publication on the flora and fauna of Britain's American colonies. Together with his Hortus Britanno-Americanus (1763), which detailed plant species that might be transplanted successfully to British soil, Catesby's Natural History exerted an important, though often overlooked, influence on the development of art, natural history, and scientific observation in the eighteenth century. Inspired by a major traveling exhibition of Catesby's watercolor drawings from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, this collection of interdisciplinary essays considers Catesby's endeavors as a naturalist-artist, scientific explorer, experimental horticulturist, ornamental gardener, and early environmental thinker in terms of the interests held by the various, overlapping communities in which he functioned_particularly as those interests related to the British colonial enterprise. The contributors are David R. Brigham, Joyce E. Chaplin, Mark Laird, Amy R. W. Meyers, Therese O'Malley, and Margaret Beck Pritchard. The contributors: David R. Brigham (Worcester Art Museum) Joyce E. Chaplin (Vanderbilt University) Mark Laird (University of Toronto) Amy R. W. Meyers (Huntington Library & Art Collections) Therese O'Malley (National Gallery of Art) Margaret Beck Pritchard (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

In Tri-Faith America, Kevin Schultz explains how the United States left behind the idea that it was "a Protestant nation" and embraced the notion that Protestants, Catholics, and Jews were "Americans all." Schultz describes how the tri-faith idea surfaced after World War I and how, by the end of World War II, the idea was becoming widely accepted. During the Cold War, the public religiosity spurred by the fight against godless communism led to widespread embrace of the tri-faith idea.

Here isa unique collection of documents that spans the history of New Jersey, from the arrival of Dutch traders in the 1600s to the present. The materials touch on a range of subjects such as slavery and abolitionism, the labor movement, race and ethnic relations, and economic and environmental issues. The documents include letters, journals, pamphlets, petitions, artwork, and songs created not only by those who exercised power, but also by men and women of more humble station. Their lively accounts range from descriptions of Native Americans in the seventeenth century to Bruce Springsteen's lament about a declining factory town. New to this expanded edition is the text of former governor James McGreevey's "I am a Gay American" speech, as well as entries about the Abbott v. Burke court ruling mandating that New Jersey equalize funding of urban and suburban schools districts, sprawl and its effects on water supply, and the state's economic boom in the 1990s. A balanced survey of New Jersey's history in the context of a changing nation, this book is ideal for general readers who want to explore the primary sources of the state's past, and to U.S. history students at the high school and college levels.

Publisher description

Originally published in 1986, and drawing on material from the USA, The Netherlands and Israel, this book addresses the question of whether suburban environments enhance the quality of life and which factors influence this quality. It examines whether suburbs really provide improved housing and community services compared to the central city and whether they foster rewarding social patterns and psychological well-being. It also analyses precisely what characteristics suburban areas offer and how congruent these characteristics are with the preferences of suburban residents.

Fifty years ago, the phrase "family policy" was rarely heard in America. Individual states maintained laws governing marriage, divorce, education, inheritance, and child protection, which regulated the formation, childrearing practices, and dissolution of families. However, these scattered policy issues were not seen as closely related. Until the 1960s, the nuclear family was an institution that was part of the natural life-course expected of most adults. Family meant marriage, children, the establishment of a home, care of the elderly, but perhaps most of all, bonding of the generations. As early as the 1840s, certain elements of states' policies hinted at a weakening family structure, but not until the 1960s was the family openly attacked. Feminists objected to a male-oriented home economy, demographers encouraged negative population growth, the sexual revolution was on the rise, and religiously grounded morality in public life was challenged in the federal courts. Married couples with children had to shoulder a larger tax burden, further discouraging people from building and maintaining families. Perhaps because family was so central to the founders' lives they found no need to mention it in the Constitution. But today, generational bonds have fractured, while family policy is a paramount public concern. As Allan Carlson makes clear no nation can progress, or even survive, without a durable family system. Contemporary family policy represents an attempt to counter the negative forces of the last four decades so as to restore the natural family to its necessary place in American life. Fractured Generations' chapters follow the life-course of the human family--marriage; the birth of children; infant and toddler care; schooling; building a home; crafting a durable family economy; and elder care. This is a passionate and well-reasoned appeal for a return to the institution that is the last best hope for America's future: the family.