#291 A Forgotten History of American Suburbs w/ Tim Keogh
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2023
⏱️ 55 minutes
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Summary
The suburbs have long been a symbol of American prosperity in the post-WWII era. Yet the contrast between suburban wealth and "inner city" poverty overlooks the stories of those living in suburbia who were unable to reach "the good life." In this episode Ben & Bob talk with Tim Keogh, whose new book In Levittown's Shadow: Poverty in America's Wealthiest Suburb (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2023), explores the history of suburbanization in Long Island, New York, and argues that post-WWII prosperity relied on those impoverished suburbanites who we've since forgotten.
Dr. Tim Keogh is assistant professor of history at Queensborough Community College, part of the City University of New York.
This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer. I'm Bob Crawford. And this is the road to now. And we're back. Bob, you know what's funny? I just realized this right before we got on here. It's been like a minute since the two of us recorded an episode together. We've been doing a couple of solo ones. And I'm happy to see you, dude. Your hair got a little longer. It did. It did. Some of it did. the two of us recorded an episode together. We've been doing a couple of solo ones, and I'm happy to see you, dude. |
| 0:21.2 | Your hair got a little longer. |
| 0:36.4 | It did. It did. Some of it did. The front part did because, you know, some of it doesn't grow anymore. So I just want to grow the parts that grow and, you know, let the other, I get a haircut. My son says, Dad, don't get a haircut. It doesn't come about. |
| 0:41.2 | So I'm just being selective on which hairs get cut these days. |
| 0:42.7 | Same here, buddy. |
| 0:43.4 | Yeah. |
| 0:48.3 | Today's guest for the show, Tim Keough, welcome to the Road to Now. |
| 0:49.7 | Thanks for having me. |
| 0:50.0 | Pleasure. |
| 0:56.0 | Tim is both a citizen and scholar of Long Island, New York. |
| 0:58.1 | And he has this great new book out. |
| 1:03.0 | The title is in Levittown's Shadow, Poverty in America's wealthiest, post-war suburb. |
| 1:07.5 | And I loved the way that you structured this book. And your argument here is so counter to what I think a lot of us imagine |
| 1:12.8 | about the past. So before we get into it, let's just start off. Your book's all about this post-World |
| 1:18.2 | World War II prosperity. It's about the creation of the suburbs and this iconic, this iconic |
| 1:25.6 | landscape that emerges that comes to kind of define the way we |
| 1:29.7 | imagine the suburbs. |
| 1:31.2 | And Levittown. |
| 1:32.3 | Yes. |
| 1:32.8 | So before we get into your argument, could you just lay out the general narrative that |
| 1:41.4 | most of us have and explain what Levittown is and how it fits into the story |
| 1:45.5 | of America's post-World War II prosperity. Yeah, so the typical story of Levitown is kind of global |
... |
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