In popular imagination, the suburbs represent the “American Dream.” After World War II, families rushed into these new areas, building wealth through homeownership while enjoying superior public schools. But in this revelatory new account, Michael R. Glass exposes this prosperity as mythical, focusing on the archetype of Long Island. Cracked Foundations uncovers a hidden landscape of debt and speculation.

Glass shows how suburbanites were not guaranteed decent housing and high-quality education but instead had to obtain these necessities in the marketplace using mortgages and bonds. These debt instruments created financial strains, distributed resources unevenly, and codified segregation. Most important, they made housing and education commodities, turning homes and schools into engines of capital accumulation. The resulting pressures made life increasingly precarious, even for those privileged suburbanites who resided in all-white communities. For people of color denied the same privileges, suburbs became places where predatory loans extracted wealth and credit rating agencies punished children in the poorest school districts. Long Islanders challenged these inequalities over several decades, demanding affordable housing, school desegregation, tax equity, and school-funding equalization. Yet the unequal circumstances created by the mortgages and bonds remain very much in place, even today.

Susis J. Pak, Associate Professor of History at St. John's University, joins in conversation.