Disillusioned

Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs

By: Benjamin Herold

Narrated by: Benjamin Herold, Bethany Smith

"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 avoid: 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.©2023 Benjamin Herold (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“An important, cleareyed account of suburban boom and bust, and the challenges facing the country today. . . . each suburb’s history is engrossing, and Herold, a journalist who has frequently reported on public education, delivers an up-close, intimate account of life there that resounds with broader meaning. The families also reflect the expanding range of people who now call American suburbs home.”—The New York Times Book Review

“This intrepid inquiry into the unfulfilled promise of America’s suburbs posits that a ‘deep-seated history of white control, racial exclusion, and systematic forgetting’ has poisoned the great postwar residential experiment. . . . Herold, a white journalist raised in Penn Hills, a Pittsburgh suburb, peels back layers of structural racism, granting that ‘the abundant opportunities my family extracted from Penn Hills a generation earlier were linked to the cratering fortunes of the families who lived there now.’”—The New Yorker

“Not only is Disillusioned engaging—riveting, really—it strikes at the very heart of the geography and emotional economy of race in the United States. ‘The suburbs’ are such a potent symbol and reality of the nation, and race is at the very center of their meaning, creation, and transformation. For decades now, we have lived with the myth that the suburbs are the centerpiece of the American Dream and that school integration is a simple matter of putting different races of children in the same well-maintained building in a bucolic setting. Disillusioned challenges us to be far more rigorous and honest in our accounts of race, place and community. An essential text in a challenging time.”—Imani Perry, New York Times-bestselling author of South to America, winner of the National Book Award

Enlightening

Illuminating revelation of the different perspectives of people from different communities that were all developed for the same reason , succeeded for a time , but are all in decline for the same reasons as well. Truly interesting and I personally was educated by it in a profound way.

Resident from one of the suburbs

Recommended to everyone I know! I burst into tears at the epilogue!
Thank you to everyone for collaborating on this especially Bethany!!!!!

Insightful and Informative

Especially enjoyed the epilogue written by one of the families interviewed. Thank you for sharing your story!

Good writing and research about the sociology of American Suburbs and their evolution.

Never having been a suburban dweller, I heard recently that the suburbs in America are changing, which only makes sense considering that cities are unaffordable. The book delves into the changes that are taking place and the challenges all suburban dwellers see themselves facing. A lot of focus was on public schools and the myriad of problems people face attending them. As a retired urban and rural public school teacher myself I again see that this book as well as the American public white and black, focus on the wrong things. The issue with public schools and what is destroying public education is the top down structure of the system. Major educational decisions are made by politicians and administrators who rarely care about kids. Teachers who do the heavy lifting are not consulted or supported in the ways that would change everything for children. The book didn’t address real issues as far as I was concerned.

Loved the writer’s approach

Not over reliant on sociology or firsthand accounts. Tell us what you see and take a shot at connecting the dots. I’ll take it from there. Thanks

Thank you, Fellow Penn Hiller!

Thank you so much for including us in Penn Hills PA in your amazing book and sharing Bethany's story 👍🏾

Great companions for a spectacular journey

I don't usually write reviews (tho I truly appreciate that others do) but this book just grabbed me and I could not put it down. It is a great journey through the adventure, the topography and history of the Canyon and the social and economic forces that both protect and threaten it.

Boring

Not what I thought it would be. Initial description of the book was more interesting than the actual book

Trying to make social science a “story” with a sleepy narrator voice

I like the attempt at “story telling “ about data points in social science, but the velvet voiced narrator would best be deployed on children’s bedtime stories