This image is the cover for the book Golden Dream

Golden Dream

The #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Our Crowd offers an anecdote-filled tour of the most exclusive suburbs of 1970s America.

In this charming and insightful inquiry, Stephen Birmingham investigates the nesting habits, enjoyments, and frustrations of American suburban life in the seventies. He explores the social organism that is the American suburb—from Scottsdale, Arizona, to New York’s Westchester County, along with the tawny suburbs surrounding the mighty industrial cities that fringe the Great Lakes.

Birmingham spoke with householders great and small, gleaning their private views of the suburban experience. Almost all of them arrived in the suburbs with a dream. The reality they found was often less than they envisioned. Along with swimming pools and manicured lawns come soaring property taxes, status contests, and old-world prejudices colliding with new neighbors.

“Gossipy, chatty [Stephen Birmingham] thrusts his line into the waters of suburban social life, catching a lot of trivia about country clubs and trends.” —The Christian Science Monitor

Stephen Birmingham

Stephen Birmingham (1929–2015) was an American author of more than thirty books. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, he graduated from Williams College in 1953 and taught writing at the University of Cincinnati. Birmingham’s work focuses on the upper class in America. He’s written about the African American elite in Certain People and prominent Jewish society in Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York, The Grandees: The Story of America’s Sephardic Elite, and The Rest of Us: The Rise of America’s Eastern European Jews. His work also encompasses several novels including The Auerbach Will, The LeBaron Secret, Shades of Fortune, and The Rothman Scandal, and other non-fiction titles such as California Rich, The Grandes Dames, and Life at the Dakota: New York’s Most Unusual Address.
 

Open Road Integrated Media