American Dreams, American Nightmares

Culture and Crisis in Residential Real Estate from the Great Recession to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Daniel Horowitz

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469671512
• Print ISBN:
  9781469671505
  9781469671499
• Subtopic: North American History

Two decades punctuated by the financial crisis of the Great Recession and the public health crisis of COVID-19 have powerfully reshaped housing in America. By integrating social, economic, intellectual, and cultural histories, this illuminating work shows how powerful forces have both reflected and catalyzed shifts in the way Americans conceptualize what a house is for, in an era that has laid bare the larger structures and inequities of the economy.

Daniel Horowitz casts an expansive net over a wide range of materials and sources. He shows how journalists and anthropologists have explored the impact of global economic forces on housing while filmmakers have depicted the home as a theater where danger lurks as elites gamble with the fates of the less fortunate. Real estate workshops and popular TV networks like HGTV teach home buyers how to flip—or flop—while online platforms like Airbnb make it possible to play house in someone else’s home. And as the COVID pandemic took hold, many who had never imagined living out every moment at home found themselves cocooned there thanks to corporations like Amazon, Zoom, and Netflix.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Housing Central
• Chapter 2: The Power of Positive Real Estate Workshops
• Chapter 3: From Realtor Magazine to the Financial Times
• Chapter 4: Journalists, Filmmakers, and the Gendering of Looking Backward
• Chapter 5: Looking Up and Down
• Chapter 6: New Media and Residential Real Estate
• Coda: From the Great Recession to the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Notes
• Index