What did the good life look like in 1945? Or more to the point, what did the good life look like to white working and middle class inner city families? The answer for many was suburbia, new out-of-town developments accessed by America’s millions of new car owners who longed for space and who could be assured that people of their social, racial and often religious backgrounds would be their neighbours. Suburbia was initially intended by New Dealers to be a post war egalitarian dream for all, but
Reading time:
Get the weekly analysis
One piece every week connecting current events to their historical roots — free, every Tuesday.
Subscribe free →Paid tier also available — deeper dives, full archive, essay guides.

Explaining History Podcast
For more than a decade, the Explaining History Podcast has helped listeners around the world make sense of modern history. What began in 2012 as a simple experiment—short, accessible episodes explaining major historical events—has grown into a long-running library of carefully researched, thoughtful explorations of the 20th and 21st centuries.
If this was useful, there’s more where it came from.
Every week I publish one piece connecting a current event to its historical roots — free, every Tuesday. Paid subscribers get two additional deeper dives and full archive access.
Subscribe to Explaining History →