‘Anyone familiar with his equally excellent book Invincible Green Suburbs, Brave New Towns, will not be surprised by Clapson’s comparative study of twentieth century suburban society in Britain and the United States. Suburban Century develops many of the ideas behind the earlier work, and also highlights some new problems for the historian of suburbia. The book contains useful chapters on urban dispersal; suburban aspiration; black suburbanisation; Jewish and Asian suburbanisation; women and suburban sadness, community and association, and the politics of suburbia. Suburban Century provides an important and accessible new approach to suburbia for which both political and social historians will be indebted.’
Urban History, 31/2 2004