Suburbs as slums -- Transportation revolution and the erosion of the walking city -- Home, sweet home: the house and the yard -- Romantic suburbs -- Main line: elite suburbs and commuter railroads -- Time of the trolley -- Affordable homes for the common man -- Suburbs into neighborhoods: the rise and fall of municipal annexation -- New age of automobility -- Suburban development between the wars -- Federal subsidy and the suburban dream: how Washington changed the American housing market -- Cost of good intentions: the ghettoization of public housing in the United States -- Baby boom and the age of the subdivision -- Drive-in culture of contemporary America -- Loss of community in metropolitan America -- Retrospect and prospect