Picture of the book Disillusioned, by author and journalist Benjamin Herold

ON SALE NOW

“An astonishingly important work.”

“An up-close, intimate account of life [in suburbia] that resounds with deeper meaning.”

The Atlantic

“An up-close, intimate account of life [in suburbia]
that resounds with deeper meaning.”

The New York Times Book Review

“[An] intrepid inquiry into the unfulfilled promise
of America’s suburbs.”

The New Yorker

“A well-informed, ambitious narrative about the simmering inequities in America’s suburbs.”

Kirkus Reviews

Outside Atlanta, a middle-class Black family faces off with a school system seemingly bent on punishing their teenage son. North of Dallas, a conservative white family relocates to an affluent suburban enclave, but can’t escape the changes sweeping the country. On Chicago’s North Shore, a multiracial mom joins an ultraprogressive challenge to the town’s liberal status quo. In Compton, California, undocumented Hispanic parents place their gifted son’s future in the hands of educators at a remarkable elementary school. And outside Pittsburgh, a Black mother moves to the same street where author Benjamin Herold grew up, then confronts the destructive legacy left behind by white families like his.

Disillusioned braids these human stories together with penetrating local and national history to reveal a vicious cycle undermining the dreams upon which suburbia was built. For generations, upwardly mobile white families have extracted opportunity from the nation’s heavily subsidized suburbs, then moved on before the bills for maintenance and repair came due, leaving the mostly Black and Brown families who followed to clean up the ensuing mess. But now, sweeping demographic shifts and the dawning realization that endless expansion is no longer feasible are disrupting this pattern, forcing everyday families to confront a truth their communities were designed to avoid: The suburban lifestyle dream is a Ponzi scheme whose unraveling threatens us all.

BENJAMIN HEROLD explores America's beautiful and busted public schools.

His award-winning reporting has appeared in Education Week, PBS NewsHour, NPR, Huffington Post, WHYY, The Hechinger Report, and the Public School Notebook. Herold has a master's degree in urban education from Temple University in Philadelphia, where he lives with his family.

SUBSCRIBE TO BENJAMIN HEROLD’S NEWSLETTER