ABSTRACT
May suggests that a study of suburbia is a study of wider American aspirations. May crafts a study that thoroughly and successfully examines the mid-century home; the consensus appears to be that the inquiry's narrowness does little to dim May's achievement. May's class-specific analysis excludes those who were not so well off or who differed from the norm in any other way. Many other identities and experiences remain conspicuous by their absence in the text: homosexuals, bachelors, unmarried women, urban-dwellers, African Americans, Jews, Hispanics, and people of other ethnicities. May does mention some of these other identities, particularly the experience of African Americans in relation to suburbia. May looks at a variety of cultural "traces" through the analysis of primary sources, from films and advertisements to the responses given by couples in the course of the Kelly Longitudinal Study (KLS).
