“Keogh provides an accessible and convincing synthesis of statistics, institutional history, and sociological analysis. It’s a landmark account.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A brilliant analysis of suburban poverty.”

Library Journal

“As Keogh’s pathbreaking book In Levittown’s Shadow documents, the prosperity of postwar communities like Levittown depended on growing suburban poverty and exploitation elsewhere.” 

Dissent

"Tim Keogh’s In Levittown’s Shadow: Poverty in America’s Wealthiest Postwar Suburb drills deep into the social history of Long Island from the 1940s to the ’70s. . . . it’s powerfully illuminating."

Commonweal

“Impressively researched and passionately argued, In Levittown’s Shadow enriches suburban historiography. It also contributes usefully to an ongoing debate about just how far the US could or should move toward European-style social democracy.”

Choice

“In Levittown’s Shadow shows us how the postwar US suburb was both better and worse than you might think, establishing what we might even characterize as a social-democratic welfare state for some, but one built on the exploitation and immiseration of others. This excellent book thus complicates our histories of the character and development of the US welfare state, undermines the myth of the poverty-free suburb, and deepens our understandings of the long roots of today’s widespread suburban poverty.” 

Stephen Pimpare, University of New Hampshire

“There are more people living below the poverty line in suburbs than in urban centers today. Keogh pulls back the curtain on the longer history of this suburban poverty, explaining how Americans embraced suburbs as exceptionally prosperous spaces while also writing policies that made inequality a core component of suburban growth. In Levittown’s Shadow is a compelling, urgent study—one that points a way out of this complex history toward a more equitable, just, and thriving future.” 

Nancy Kwak, University of California San Diego