The End of the Hamptons: Scenes from the Class Struggle in America's Paradise / Edition 1

by Corey Dolgon

Overview

Winner of the 2005 Book Prize from the Association for Humanist Sociology

A portrait of the contentious, controversial history of the Manhattan elite's favorite fabled summer playground

In this absorbing account of New York’s famous vacation playground, Corey Dolgon goes beyond the celebrity tales and polo games to tell us the story of this complex and contentious land. From the displacement of Native Americans by the Puritans to the first wave of Manhattan elites who built the Summer Colony, to the current infusion of telecommuting Manhattanites who now want to live there year-round, the story of the Hamptons is a vicious cycle of supposed paradise lost.

Drawing on this fabled land's history, The End of the Hamptons provides a fascinating portrait of current controversies: the Native Americans fighting over land claims and threatening to build a casino, the environmental activists clashing with the McMansion builders, and the Latino day laborers and working-class natives trying to eke out a living in an ever-increasingly expensive town.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814719978
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	06/01/2006
Pages:	277
Sales rank:	1,151,465
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Corey Dolgon is associate professor of sociology at Worcester State College and the editor of Humanity and Society, the Journal of the Association for Humanist Sociology.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Spending Time in the Hamptons
1 Waves upon the Shore: Coming to the Hamptons from the Earliest Times to the 1970s
2 Houses in the Fields: New York City Moves East
3 Peconic County Now! Whose Quality of Life Is It Anyway?
4 Polo Ponies and Penalty Kicks: Sports on the East End
5 The Other Hamptons: Race and Class in America’s Paradise
6 From Clam Beds to Casinos: The Enduring Battle over Native American Land Rights
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This superb book focuses on current controversies in the Hamptons. . . . Dolgon’s treatment of these issues is carefully researched, richly detailed, and original, and presented in a beautifully clear narrative.”:
-David Halle,Contemporary Sociology

“Takes us beyond the much-romanticized beaches of Long Island to the rich entrepreneurs and their McMansions, the Latino workers, and the stubborn indigenous residents refusing to disappear. The book is important because it is in so many ways a microcosm of the nation.”:
- Howard Zinn,author of A People's History of the United States

“Delicious and intellectually nutritious as a Montauk seafood fiesta. Sharp and as jolting as the jitney journey from Manhattan, it is perfect beach reading, or enticing fodder for the downtime of long winters.”:
-Neil Smith,author of American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization

“Dolgon tells a history that is balanced and agenda-free.”:
-Foreword Magazine

,

“[A] very good book. It offers the reader an insightful political-economic analysis of eastern Long Island's microcosm of a class and ethnically divided society. . . . This is a fascinating book for scholars interested in how all these factors play out in a fabled locality.”:
-Antipode, Susan S. Fainstein,Columbia University

Editorial Reviews

"Takes us beyond the much-romanticized beaches of Long Island to the rich entrepreneurs and their McMansions, the Latino workers, and the stubborn indigenous residents refusing to disappear. The book is important because it is in so many ways a microcosm of the nation."

Howard Zinn

"Delicious and intellectually nutritious as a Montauk seafood fiesta. Sharp and as jolting as the jitney journey from Manhattan, it is perfect beach reading, or enticing fodder for the downtime of long winters."

Neil Smith

"Dolgon tells a history that is balanced and agenda-free"

Foreword Magazine

"[A] very good book. It offers the reader an insightful political-economic analysis of eastern Long Island's microcosm of a class and ethnically divided society. . . . This is a fascinating book for scholars interested in how all these factors play out in a fabled locality."

Antipode

"This superb book focuses on current controversies in the Hamptons. . . . Dolgons treatment of these issues is carefully researched, richly detailed, and original, and presented in a beautifully clear narrative."

Contemporary Sociology - David Halle

Takes us beyond the much-romanticized beaches of Long Island to the rich entrepreneurs and their McMansions, the Latino workers, and the stubborn indigenous residents refusing to disappear. The book is important because it is in so many ways a microcosm of the nation.”:
• Howard Zinn,author of A People's History of the United States

From the Publisher

According to author Corey Dolgon, the Battle of Long Island has never ended. In fact, sociologist Dolgon views the history of the island's East End from Puritan days to the present as a ceaseless war between haves and have-nots. As each new wave of immigrants settled on the island, landowners replayed patterns of rejection and exclusion and mourned another paradise lost. The End of the Hamptons recounts the most recent chapters in this vicious cycle: skirmishes between environmentalists and developers; wars between Native Americans and Manhattan "invaders"; and the contested advent of "McMansions."

Sociologist Dolgon's take on the famous "second home" summer resort (and increasingly year-round home) on the eastern end of New York State's Long Island is that it is not simply "an elite, yet neurotic, theme park for New York City's movers and shakers"; it's also an area being transformed by newer migrants, especially from Latin America, drawn by work but priced out of housing and social services-concerns that also affect local farmers, fishermen, blue-collar workers and the survivors of some long-settled Indian tribes. Don't look for celebrity gossip, old-timers' reminiscences, landscape descriptions or juicy historical anecdotes here; the book is mostly a "clip job," combining information culled from other sources, such as local papers or some of the many other books and magazine articles on the area, and there is little original research. Land development is a theme, but the most interesting chapter concerns regional efforts-strongly but somewhat dubiously supported by the ever-growing "mover and shaker" element (which increasingly votes here instead of the city) and so far fruitless-to break away from neighboring Suffolk Country to form a new "Peconic County." This involves issues of tax base, "affordable" housing and class, race and income differences that grow ever more acute. Unfortunately, the information throughout is chaotically organized and puzzlingly repetitious. 23 b&w illus. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly