RETURN TO HOMEAn Author Wednesday Interview with Steve Bergsman, author of “Growing Up Levittown: In a Time of Conformity, Controversy and Cultural Crisis”
One of the most successful and daring real estate developments in U.S. history was the building of Levittown, Long Island, in 1947. Although it became the prototype modern suburb, it was more reviled than appreciated during the first three decades of its existence. Intellectuals and critics attacked Levittown unmercifully, essentially calling it a boring environment that crushed the spirit of its population. Popular authors, such as Richard Yates, author of Revolutionary Road, used the modern suburb as a metaphor for creative sterility.
Steve Bergsman grew up in Levittown during those early years and looking back now as an aging baby boomer, he thought it a wonderful place to have spent a childhood. Growing Up Levittown: In a Time of Conformity, Controversy and Cultural Crisis is a love letter is this quintessential suburb. Juxtaposed against a prevailing history of criticism and literary slander, Growing Up Levittown is a memoir of a happy childhood.
Read more for the rest of this great author interview and to learn how you can grab a free copy of Steve’s book!
Q. Thanks for the interview Steve! Can we begin by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and how long you’ve been working in and writing about this topic?
A . I have been writing about real estate, both commercial and residential, for the past 25 years. I’ve written for newspapers, magazines, news services and now the Internet. This is my fifth book touching on the subject of real estate.
Q. What’s your new book about? Why did you write it? What main message will readers take away from it?
A. In some regards, Levittown was one of the most successful, if not influential, real estate developments in the history of the United States. Today, most of us are products of a suburban youth, whether we grew up near New York, Miami, Houston, Sacramento or Cedar Rapids. Before the advent of Levittown that wasn’t the case. People either grew up in cities or in rural areas. William Levitt, who designed and created Levittown, figured out how to mass-produce homes on a grand scale – thousands of houses going up at one time. For better of for worse, Levittown was the first, modern suburb, as we know it today.
Q. What inspired you to write this book?
A. I could have attacked the Levittown question through data and historical records, but I grew up there. I entered kindergarten in the Island Trees School District of Levittown and didn’t leave until after I graduated high school. So, I figured I had a unique perspective and could tell the story of the development through my own personal history.
Q. What were some of the greatest discoveries, lessons, or findings you came across while doing research and writing this book?
A. William Levitt and Levittown, together, held the unique positions of being attacked by the intellectual leftwing of the country as well as the conservative, generally Republican rightwing. The “left” associated Levittown with that particular 1950s concept of conformity, i.e., if you were unlucky enough to grow up in Levittown, you would end up like everyone else around you. The upper-crust “right,” hated Levittown for variety of reason, snobbery, lowering of aesthetic standards and simply because the suburbs got in the way when they wanted to travel from the city to their country properties.
Q. What do you feel sets your book apart from others in the same genre?
A. Starting in the early 1950s, some of America’s best writers began to use the suburbs as the backdrop for short stories and novels, usually, as I wrote in my book, “depicting the suburban landscape as a cultural wasteland inhabited by a particularly venal species of Americans who drank to much, philandered and saw their life forces oozing away in a false paradise.” It all made for great literature, but it was factually all wrong. Unfortunately, all those books created the myth of suburban malaise, which persists today.
Q. What are 5 things everyone should know in your area of expertise?
A. Be innovative. Be controversial. The pundits don’t know what you know? Apply the success lessons from other industries to your own situation. Time is the true determinate of success.
Q. If someone were a complete noobie when it comes to the topic of your book, what should they know about it?
A.Was Levittown, the epitome of conformity?: Exactly the opposite. Just consider this, during the 1950s and 1960s, or the formative years of Levittown’s development, the following people had at one time or another made Levittown their home: songwriter Ellie Greenwich; singers Eddie Money and Billy Joel; Zippie The Pinhead cartoonist Bill Griffith; children’s book illustrator Jon Buller; radio host John Gambling; TV political commentator Bill O’Reilly; Maureen Tucker and Sterling Morrison of the Velvet Underground (the house band for Andy Warhol’s Factory), and, lets not forget, Steve Bergsman, journalist and author.
Q. If you could write 1 Golden Rule to take away from your book, what would it be and why?
A. When Levittown was built, the common thought was that William Levitt was building a suburban slum. The opposite happened. Levittown survived very nicely and today is a leafy suburb of tidy homes. A Levitt home that originally sold for less than $8,000 at the end of 1940s, probably would cost $350,000 for a buyer today.
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Available at:
The book has only been released in ebook format and is available for purchase on Amazon on: Amazon.com, Amazon.com.uk, Amazon.de (all on Kindle), Apple’s iBookstore, Barnes and Noble (Nook- coming soon), Sony (coming soon), Kobo, Diesel, Scrollmotion (coming soon), Smashwords (in all Formats).
About the Author: Steve Bergsman has contributed to a wide range of magazines, newspapers and wire services for more than twenty-five years, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal Sunday, Global Finance, Executive Decision, Chief Executive, The Australian, HomeFront (Canada), Investment Dealer’s Digest, Reuters News Service, Inman News and Copley News Service. He has been a regular contributor to the “Ground Floor” real estate column in Barron’s and has written for all of the leading real estate industry publications. His previous books include Maverick Real Estate Investing, Maverick Real Estate Financing, Passport to Exotic Real Estate, and After The Fall: Opportunities and Strategies for Real Estate Investing in the Coming Decade.
Contact Steve:
www.redroom.com/author/steve-bergsman
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/GrowingUpLevittown
Twitter: @SBergsman
Tel: 480-464-9224 (Mesa, Arizona)
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