San Antonio College Library

In a Paris suburb nicknamed Little Jerusalem, a family of Sephardic Orthodox immigrants shares a low-income apartment. Beautiful, teenaged Laura distances herself from her family's religion and her own burgeoning desire by devoting every waking moment to intellectual discipline and secular philosophy. Mathilde, Laura's married older sister, worries that strict observance of the Torah's marital codes has driven her husband Ariel into the bed of another....

A debut collection of short fiction offers a compassionate exploration of the complexities and challenges of American childhood.

In The End of the Suburbs journalist Leigh Gallagher traces the rise and fall of American suburbia from the stately railroad suburbs of the early 19th and 20th centuries to current-day sprawling exurbs where residents spend as much as four hours each day commuting. She shows why suburbia was unsustainable from the start and explores the hundreds of new, alternative communities that are springing up around the country and promise to reshape our way...

The devastating effects of work, adultery, rebellion, and self-deception slowly destroy the once successful marriage of Frank and April Wheeler, a suburban American couple.

"Everybody wants to live on Hogarth Street, the pretty, tree-lined avenue with its white houses. The new family, The Wests, are a perfect fit. Katherine and Josh seem so in love and their gorgeous five-year-old twins race screeching around their beautiful emerald-green lawn. But soon people start to notice: why don't they join backyard barbecues? Why do they brush away offers to babysit? Why, when you knock at the door, do they shut you out, rather...

In Picture Windows, Baxandall and Ewen shatter naive stereotypes of suburban life, replacing them with a clear and compelling historical analysis that situates the development of the suburbs in relation to the pivotal issues of postwar American life. They examine the years from World War II to the present, chronicling the transformation of rural lands into tidy, uniform subdevelopments that promised all of the comforts of postwar technology. The building...

This text traces the story of the suburb from its origins in nineteenth-century London to its twentieth-century demise in decentralized cities like Los Angeles.

Below the sign welcoming the new eighth-grade class to school is one that promises to leave no child unsuccessful and a handout that offers eight ways of being smart. For Edwin Hanratty, at times as hilarious as he is miserable, this is part of what makes junior high pretty much a relentless nightmare. And so, with Flake, his only friend, he contends with clique upon clique-the jocks who pummel them, the girls who ignore or taunt them-as well as the...

"This book is about my friends and the world I live in. In the fall of 1968 I began working as a photographer for the Livermore (California) Independent. My daily routine took me into the homes of hundreds of families and into contact with the social life of three suburban communities. The people I met enjoy the life-style of the suburbs. They have realized the American Dream. They are proud to be home own and to have achieved material success. To...