1. Linda Saslow, “Once upon a Time in the Safety of the Suburbs,” New York Times, June 27, 1982.
2. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).
3. Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992); David M. P. Freund, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Kevin Kruse and Thomas Sugrue, eds., The New Suburban History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Matthew Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Becky M. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working Class Suburbs of Los Angeles (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Becky M. Nicolaides and Andrew Wiese, eds., The Suburb Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006); Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
4. Kruse, White Flight. Kruse argues that these were the push-pull values of “white flight.” He persuasively shows how moving to the suburbs was about not only leaving behind urban problems but also moving toward the enticements of suburban living.
5. May, Homeward Bound, 208–9. May argues that the suburban family ideal was key to a powerful political consensus valorizing domestic and foreign containment.
6. Robert Bruegmann, Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Owen D. Guttfreund, Twentieth-Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Louise Mozingo, Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011); Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
7. Rome, Bulldozer in the Countryside; Christopher Sellers, Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
8. Frank Hobbs and Nicole Stoops, Demographic Trends in the 20th Century, US Census Bureau, Census 2000 Special Reports, Series CENSR-4 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2002), http://
9. Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: The New Press, 2010), 303–4; Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 1–26; Michael W. Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 3–4.
10. Nancy E. Cohen, America’s Marketplace: The History of Shopping Centers (Lyme, CT: Greenwich, 2002); L. Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic; M. Jeffrey Hardwick, Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
11. Robert Self, All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy since the 1960s (New York: Hill & Wang, 2012), 9–10; Coontz, The Way We Never Were, 23–41.
12. David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague (New York: Picador, 2008).
13. Self, All in the Family, 9–10, 361–65.
14. Natasha Zaretsky, No Direction Home: The American Family and the Fear of National Decline, 1968–1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 2–5, 9–20; Matthew Lassiter, “Inventing Family Values,” in Bruce J. Schulman and Julian Zelizer, eds., Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 13–15.
15. Lassiter, “Inventing Family Values,” 15; Whitney Strub, Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 146–78.
16. Daniel K. Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 172–73.
17. McGirr, Suburban Warriors, 3–19.
18. Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Da Capo, 2002), 3; Ronald Reagan, “First Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan Foundation and Institute, https://
19. Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 246–48.
20. Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer, Fault Lines: A History of the United States since 1974 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019), ch. 6.
21. Lily Geismer notes this view in her study of suburban Massachusetts: “The desire of affluent suburbanites to preserve their individual quality of life and property and values bolstered another traditionally liberal cause: environmentalism.” Lily Geismer, Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 175.
22. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010); Matthew Lassiter, “Impossible Criminals: The Suburban Imperatives of America’s War on Drugs,” Journal of American History 102, No. 1 (June 2015): 126–40; Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
23. Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 8; William J. Clinton Presidential Library, “President Clinton Signing the ‘Crime Bill’ ” (1994), available on YouTube, https://
24. James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Frederick Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent (1954; reprint, Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1972); May, Homeward Bound; Jon Lewis, The Road to Romance and Ruin: Teen Films and Youth Culture (London: Routledge, 1992).
25. Andrew Hartman, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 171–200; Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (New York: Beacon Press, 2001); Marisa Chappell, The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty, and Politics in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).
26. Hartman, A War for the Soul of America, 177–83; Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!; Eithne Quinn, Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Tricia Rose, The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk about Hip Hop—And Why It Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 33–42.
27. McGirr, Suburban Warriors; Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of American Consensus (New York: Hill & Wang, 2002); Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).
28. Geismer, Don’t Blame Us, 1–2.
29. Geismer reinforces this pragmatic orientation of suburbanites in Massachusetts: “Suburban activists along Route 128 proved equally effective at navigating the political culture of their own communities, adopting a strategy that couched issues to align with and complement privileges and priorities of suburban residency.” Geismer, Don’t Blame Us, 13.
30. In a further irony, David Freund notes that during the immediate postwar era the federal government itself diminished its role in creating the suburbs by positing their development as a manifestation of the free market. Freund, Colored Property, 33.
31. For a history of Stand Your Ground in America, see Caroline E. Light, Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense (Boston: Beacon Press, 2017).
32. See Kruse and Sugrue, The New Suburban History; Wiese, Places of Their Own; Wendy Cheng, The Changs Next to the Diazes: Remapping Race in Suburban California (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013); and Mary Patillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
33. Nancy A. Denton and Joseph R. Gibbons, “Twenty-First-Century Suburban Demography: Increasing Diversity Yet Lingering Exclusion,” in Christopher Niedt, ed., Social Justice in Diverse Suburbs (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013), 19–20, 27–28; Geismer, Don’t Blame Us, 195–97; Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright, 2015), 203–4; Wiese, Places of Their Own, 255, 270–81.
34. Andrea S. Boyles, Race, Place, and Suburban Policing: Too Close for Comfort (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 10–11; Jodi Rios, “Everyday Racialization: Contesting Space and Identity in Suburban St. Louis,” in John Archer, Paul J. P. Sandul, and Katherine Solomonson, Making Suburbia: New Histories of Everyday America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 183–207.
35. Douglas S. Massey, Jonathan Rothwell, and Thurston Domina, “The Changing Bases of Segregation in the United States,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 626 (2009): 74–90; Mary Pattillo, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 1–3; Wiese, Places of Their Own, 258. Wiese argues, “Despite growing access to newer, more economically dynamic suburban areas, most black suburbanites in 1990 lived in older inner-ring suburbs, which exhibited a variety of fiscal shortcomings, such as high taxes, mediocre services, low-performing schools, commercial disinvestment, and anemic rates of property appreciation.” Wiese, Places of Their Own, 285.
36. Rachel Heiman, Driving after Class: Anxious Times in an American Suburb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015). In her ethnographic study of a New Jersey suburb, Heiman argues that suburbanites experienced a heightened sense of anxiety in the late 1990s as they struggled for the appearance and feeling of class security as they sought to create “a little security in an insecure world.” Ibid., 180.
37. Anna Clark, The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water Crisis and the American Urban Tragedy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2018); Christian Warren, Brush with Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
38. German Lopez, “1,000 People Sent Me Their Addiction Stories: Here’s What I Learned,” Vox, December 30, 2009, https://
39. Coontz, The Way We Never Were, ch. 2; and Self, All in the Family, 9–10. The use of quotation marks around traditional is intended to signal the fiction of the middle-class, nuclear family as traditional in US history.
1. Kent E. Portney, Siting Hazardous Waste Facilities: The Nimby Syndrome (New York: Auburn House, 1991), 10.
2. William Glaberson, “Coping in the Age of Nimby,” New York Times, June 19, 1988.
3. John Graham, “NIMBY Politicking,” Nuclear News, September 1982; Leon Daniel, “Town Unites to Fight Selection as Site for Nuclear-Waste Dump,” United Press International, February 7, 1984; William K. Stevens, “Philadelphia Trash: Too Much and Nowhere to Go,” New York Times, March 9, 1986; John Hanrahan, “Nuclear Power: The Dream Dims—Nuclear Waste Disposal: The ‘Not In My Back Yard’ Syndrome,” New York Times, April 21, 1987; Sam Roberts, “Metro Matters: Growing Reply to Society’s Ills: ‘Not in My Yard,’ ” New York Times, June 25, 1987; Philip S. Gutis, “1987: A Year of City Problems on L.I.,” New York Times, December 27, 1987; Warren R. Ross, “The Right to Protect Our Own Backyards,” New York Times, July 24, 1988; Joshua Hammer, with Elizabeth Bradburn, “The Haul in Toxic Waste,” Newsweek, October 3, 1988; David Arnold, “Distrust Creates the NIMBY Syndrome,” Boston Globe, January 25, 1989; Bella English, “Child’s Play Isn’t Always,” Boston Globe, February 6, 1989; “NIMBY?* But Trash Woes Are Ours to Cure,” editorial, Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), February 21, 1989; Richard Andrews, “Not in My Backyard,” Vermont Business Magazine, April 1989; Bill Barol, “Big Fun in a Small Town,” Newsweek, May 29, 1989; Donna Schaper, “Long Island Opinion: Yes in My Backyard,” New York Times, June 18, 1989; Joseph P. Shapiro, “Uncle Sam’s NIMBY Attack,” U.S. News & World Report, September 18, 1989; John M. Endries, “ ‘Not in My Backyard’: Curing a Syndrome,” Public Utilities Fortnightly, October 12, 1989; Mickey Baca, “What’s It All About, NIMBY?” New Hampshire Business Review, September 8, 1989; Marianna Riley, “Homeless Can Be Us, Even in Suburbs, Students Find,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 28, 1990; Anne Carey, “Not in My Backyard!” USA Today, July 19, 1990; Debera Carlton Harrell, “Neighbors Opposing New Day-Care Center in Issaquah,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 19, 1990.
4. Carey Goldberg defined “affluenza,” that particularly suburban affliction, as “the spiritual and environmental ills brought on by American-style overconsumption.” Goldberg, “ ‘Buy Nothings’ Discover a Cure for Affluenza,” New York Times, November 29, 1997.
5. Bella English, “The NIMBY Syndrome,” Boston Globe, November 16, 1988.
6. David Gergen, “ ‘Not in My Back Yard,’ ” U.S. News & World Report, July 22, 1991.
7. Self, American Babylon, 25.
8. Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in American History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
9. George Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006), 331; Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown (London: Verso, 2013), 39.
10. Walter Truett Anderson, “Environmentalists Come in All Stripes,” Oregonian, December 22, 1989.
11. Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (New York: Routledge, 2000); Steve Lerner, Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Chemical Toxic Exposure in the United States (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012); Dorceta Taylor, Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility (New York: New York University Press, 2014).
12. Sandy Tolan, “Revenge of the Nimby,” Arizona Trend, March 1988.
13. Andrew Needham, Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Southwest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 80–83.
14. Carl A. Zimring, Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 215–16.
15. Kruse and Zelizer note: “Reagan took the same approach with environmental regulations, seeking to undermine the significant reforms undertaken in the 1970s. The administration did little to enforce existing laws and had no interest in giving support to environmentalists who called on the government to do more to combat issues such as pollution, acid rain, or toxic waste.” Kruse and Zelizer, Fault Lines, 121.; see ch. 6 generally.
16. Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000 (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 46–96.
17. Andrew Jackson Downing, Cottage Residences; or, A Series of Designs for Rural Cottages and Cottage Villas, and their Gardens and Grounds Adapted to North America (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1844), available at Internet Archive, https://
18. Robert Fogelson, Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870–1930 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 4, 22–24. Fogelson calls these suburbs “bourgeois nightmares” as they featured legal mechanisms for maintaining the class and race identity of the suburb as wealthy and white.
19. Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 87–119; Sellers, Crabgrass Crucible.
20. “Superfund History,” US Environmental Protection Agency, https://
21. Hill, “Midpoint of ‘Environmental Decade’: Impact of National Policy Act Assessed.”
22. Self, American Babylon, 1–2.
23. Kruse, White Flight.
24. Zachary J. S. Falck, Weeds: An Environmental History of Metropolitan America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 138–42.
25. Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945–1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 54.
26. Meg Jacobs, Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s (New York: Hill & Wang, 2017); David E. Nye, Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 200–203. Nye notes that overall energy consumption increased throughout the postwar era, and that consumer electronics likely to be found in suburban America, such as television sets and air conditioners, contributed significantly to this growth.
27. Rick Eckstein, Nuclear Power and Social Power (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 41.
28. Eugene A. Rosa and Riley E. Dunlap note three stages in the shift in public opinion about nuclear power: “an early stage in the 1970s when Americans were enthusiastic about the growth of nuclear power; a second stage of ambivalence following TMI when a less enthusiastic plurality of citizens consistently supported nuclear growth; and a third stage—emerging in the early 1980s—when a decisive majority of Americans opposed building more nuclear power plants.” Rosa and Dunlap, “The Polls—Poll Trends: Nuclear Power: Three Decades of Public Opinion,” Public Opinion Quarterly 58, No. 2 (summer 1994), 295–324. See also Margot Hornblower, “In the Trenches of the ‘Nuclear’ Battle,” Washington Post, February 20, 1977.
29. Hayden, Building Suburbia, ch. 9.
30. Gene Smith, “Nuclear Power Hits a New Snag,” New York Times, November 13, 1966. The Fermi accident was barely covered in the news and went largely unnoticed by customers and had no lasting impact on the popular associations of nuclear power or the growth of the industry.
31. Bett Pohnka and Barbara C. Griffin, The Nuclear Catastrophe (New York: Ashley Books, 1977); Billy Hale, dir., Red Alert (Paramount Television and CBS Television, 1977). Though fodder for popular entertainment, science fiction and pulp novels such as The Nuclear Catastrophe (1977) and televisions movies like Red Alert (1977) foreshadowed the risks of building plants and failures of communication and regulation.
32. Pat Squires, “The Nuclear Issue Becomes Suburban,” New York Times, May 20, 1979.
33. Gary Arnold, “ ‘Syndrome’: The Nuclear Plant as Bogeyman in a Doomsday Thriller,” Washington Post, March 16, 1979.
34. According to the article, “Controversy also has engulfed the movie ‘The China Syndrome,’ which opponents say greatly exaggerates the dangers involved in operation of nuclear power plants. Defenders, however, claim that the Three Mile Island reactor accident in Pennsylvania proved that makers of the film were right.” “Do TV ‘Docu-Dramas’ Distort History?” U.S. News & World Report, May 21, 1979.
35. Sue Reilly, “A Disaster Movie Comes True,” People, April 16, 1979.
36. William K. Knoedelseder Jr. and Ellen Farley, “When Fate Follows Fiction—The ‘Syndrome’ Fallout,” New York Times, March 30, 1979; “A Nuclear Nightmare,” Time, April 9, 1979.
37. Tom Mathews, with Susan Agrest, Gloria Borger, Mary Lord, William D. Marbach, and William J. Cook, “Nuclear Accident,” Newsweek, April 9, 1979.
38. Dennis A. Williams, with Martin Kasindorf, Gerald C. Lubenow, and Ron LaBrecque, “Beyond ‘The China Syndrome,’ ” Newsweek, April 16, 1979.
39. “The Credibility Meltdown,” New York Times, March 30, 1979.
40. Conspiracy and paranoia about American institutions was rampant in American film of the 1970s. Just a few examples are: The Parallax View (1973), Serpico (1973), The Conversation (1974), Hearts & Minds (1974), The Stepford Wives (1975), Three Days of the Condor (1875), Black Sunday (1979), and Winter Kills (1979).
41. “A Nuclear Nightmare.”
42. “The Credibility Meltdown.”
43. Williams, “Beyond ‘The China Syndrome.’ ”
44. Regarding the operators on duty the morning of March 28, the presidential commission that investigated the accident wrote that “each was a product of his training—training that did not adequately prepare them to cope with the accident at TMI-2. Indeed, their training was partly responsible for escalating what should have been a minor event into a potentially devastating accident.” John G. Kemeny, Chairman, “The Need for Change: The Legacy of TMI,” in Report of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, October 1979, 13.
45. “A Glossary of Nuclear Terms: Cladding to Zircaloy,” New York Times, April 1, 1979; B. Drummond Ayres Jr., “Reporter’s Notebook: Nuclear Event,” New York Times, April 3, 1979.
46. New York Times, “The Credibility Meltdown.”
47. “Radiation: Who Said What?” Patriot News, March 30, 1979.
48. “Radiation: Who Said What?”; “Three Mile Island, 1979, 1981” Video Collection, Dick Thornburgh Papers, University of Pittsburgh, http://
49. Roger Quigley, “Goldsboro: Tranquility and Anger,” Patriot News, March 30, 1979.
50. Kemeny, “The Need for Change,” 8.
51. Kemeny, “The Need for Change,” 8.
52. Sound and Hudson against Atom Development (SHAD) Alliance activists noted the accident at TMI as part of a longer track record of mismanagement and regulation of the nuclear power industry. The group’s flyer promoting the documentary Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang read, “They lied to us about Viet Nam! They lied to us about Watergate! This film shows how they lied to us about RADIATION.” SHAD Alliance Papers, Peace and Conflict Studies Archive, Box 1, Swarthmore College.
53. ABC Nightly News, March 30, 1979, available on YouTube, accessed February 18, 2020, https://
54. Kemeny, “The Need for Change,” 19.
55. Kemeny, “The Need for Change,” 19.
56. Kemeny, “The Need for Change,” 18.
57. “Chapter 4: The Tough Fight to Contain the Damage,” Washington Post, April 8, 1979.
58. Dickinson College, “Interview with College Employee #2,” conducted July 16, 1979, Three Mile Island, Dickinson University, http://
59. Gilbert D. Thompson, “Three Mile Island: The Initial Reaction,” Washington Post, April 4, 1979); “Letters: Reverberations of a Nuclear Accident,” New York Times, April 6, 1979.
60. McKinley C. Olson, “Middletown Revisited: After T.M.I.—A Meltdown of Trust,” Nation (April 19, 1980), 465–68.
61. Olson, “Middletown Revisited,” 465–66.
62. “Chapter 14: Inhabitants Wonder What to Believe,” Washington Post, April 11, 1979.
63. Adam Clymer, “Poll Shows Sharp Rise since ’77 in Opposition to Nuclear Power Plants,” New York Times, April 10, 1979.
64. Williams, “Beyond ‘The China Syndrome’ ” (first quote); A. O. Sulzberger, “Nuclear Critics Plan Political Moves and Mass Protests,” New York Times, April 7, 1979 (second).
65. Brown quoted in Tom Wicker, “Irony and Tragedy,” New York Times, April 6, 1979.
66. “A Nuclear Nightmare.”
67. Vance L. Sailor, “The High Cost of Gadflies,” New York Times, April 9, 1978. Nuclear power supporter Vance L. Sailor, a nuclear physicist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, said of these gadflies in 1978 that they clothed themselves in good citizenship but their delays were costing Long Island residents upward of a billion dollars. See Kenneth F. McCallion, Shoreham and the Rise and Fall of the Nuclear Power Industry (New York: Praeger, 1995), 25.
68. National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, Pub. L. No. 91–190, 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321–47 (1970), available at US Fish and Wildlife Service, https://
69. “What is SHAD?” leaflet, 1978, SHAD Alliance Papers, Peace and Conflict Studies Archive, Box 1, Swarthmore College.
70. Williams, “The No Nuke Movement”; Kirk Victor, ‘The Nuclear Turn-On,” National Journal (September 9, 1989), 2196.
71. Carter B. Horsley, “Nuclear Plant Hearings Near an Exhaustive End,” New York Times March 21, 1971.
72. Vance L. Sailor, “The High Cost of Gadflies,” New York Times, April 9, 1978.
73. Carter B. Horsley, “Little Community on L.I. Welcomes Big Neighbor,” New York Times, October 1, 1970. John Bellport, a town councilman in nearby Brookhaven, Long Island, and president of the Shoreham Civic Association, said in 1970 that the Lloyd Harbor Group protest was using scare tactics and ignoring the very real reduction in tax rates from 30 dollars for every 100 of assessed value to 6 for every 100. The Atomic Energy Council made essentially this point in a staff report on LILCO’s bid for the Shoreham plant in 1972 writing that the “need for the power is said to outweigh any damage to the environment.” David A. Andelman, “A.E.C. Staff Report Backs Nuclear Plant for LILCO,” New York Times, December 5, 1972.
74. “What is SHAD?” 1978.
75. The authors wrote of their mission that they “seek to expose interrelation of economic and political institutions that sustain nuclear energy.” “Outline of Manhattan Project Task Force Report,” SHAD Alliance Papers, Peace and Conflict Studies Archive, Box 2, Swarthmore College.
76. “Vigil for Karen Silkwood” flyer, late 1978 or early 1979, SHAD Alliance Papers, Peace and Conflict Studies Archive, Box 1, Swarthmore College.
77. Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 301; SHAD Alliance Letter to Residents Soliciting Volunteers, January 10, 1979, SHAD Alliance Papers, Peace and Conflict Studies Archive, Box 1, Swarthmore College. As SHAD noted in its January 10 letter, before the accident at Three Mile Island, the groups struggled to attract new members beyond the hardcore antinuclear opponents already in their ranks.
78. Mark Harrington, “Saga behind the Shoreham Nuclear Plant Retold,” Newsday, June 9, 2009.
79. Kyle Harvey, American Anti-nuclear Activism, 1975–1990: The Challenge of Peace (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 6–7.
80. A. O. Sulzberger Jr., “Nuclear Critics Plan Political Moves and Mass Protests,” New York Times, April 7, 1979 (quote); SHAD Alliance Letter, April 27, 1979, SHAD Alliance Papers, Peace and Conflict Studies Archive, Box 1, Swarthmore College; John T. McQuiston, “Shoreham Action Is One of Largest Held Worldwide,” New York Times, June 4, 1979; Stoler, “Pulling the Plug.”
81. Francis Brady, “The Shoreham Getaway,” New York Times, January 31, 1982. The Times even noted in the author information section that “Francis Brady lives on the Island, but not too close to Shoreham,” indicating a growing sense that being anywhere on Long Island was already too close to the plant.
82. “Shoreham Impasse: Suggested Solutions,” New York Times, January 1, 1989.
83. Stanley S. Smilan, “Nuclear Power at Shoreham: Who Makes the Decisions?” New York Times, April 8, 1979.
84. Greco quoted in James Barron, “Doubts Voiced on Shoreham A-Plant,” New York Times, April 16, 1982.
85. Edward Werth, “Nuclear Power: The ‘Wool Over Our Eyes,” New York Times, May 20, 1979.
86. “Sizing Up the Counties,” New York Times, December 26, 1982.
87. Michael Winerip, “Cohalan’s Opposition to Nuclear Plant Is Seen as Boon to Re-election,” New York Times, June 3, 1983.
88. “Long Island Goes Nuclear or Bust,” New York Times, February 27, 1983.
89. Sailor, “The High Price of Gadflies”; Thomas J. Burke, “Shoreham and the New Gadflies,” New York Times, August 6, 1978.
90. Burke, “Shoreham and the New Gadflies.”
91. Winerip, “Cohalan’s Opposition”; Frank Lynn, “Narrow Victory Puts a Damper on Cohalan Plan,” New York Times, November 13, 1983. Cohalan was narrowly elected, in part because a third-party conservative candidate siphoned off votes in a largely Republican county. All three candidates for county executive opposed Shoreham, though they differed on what to do if it was not opened.
92. “Excerpts,” New York Times, March 11, 1983.
93. “Nuclear Power: Is It the Best Choice—Or the Worst?” New York Times, June 1, 1980.
94. “Carney Won’t Seek Reelection to House due to Nuclear Issue,” Wall Street Journal, May 23, 1986; Frank Lynn, “Stakes Are High in Suffolk House Race,” New York Times, October 26, 1986. Closing the Shoreham plant was a key demand in the subsequent elections of the 1980s. In 1986, Republican leaders persuaded Representative William Carney to step aside because he did not oppose the plant strongly enough.
95. Frank Lynn, “Maverick Ending a Career,” New York Times, April 26, 1987
96. Frank Lynn, “Shoreham Dispute Claims Carney as Latest Political Casualty,” New York Times, June 1, 1986.
97. Michael Oreskes, “Shoreham Is Issue in Suffolk Races,” New York Times, September 8, 1985; “Shoreham Foe Wins Easily,” New York Times, September 11, 1985; “The ’85 Elections: Major Incumbents Win on L.I. and in Rockland,” New York Times, November 7, 1985; Frank Lynn, “Anti-LILCO Party an Election Force,” New York Times, November 17, 1985; John Rather, “Howard Challenged for Post,” New York Times, December 1, 1985; John Rather, “Proxy Showdown for LILCO,” New York Times, December 8, 1985; John Rather, “State and LILCO in Clash on Power Outlook for Long Island,” New York Times, December 29, 1985; “The State of the Governor,” New York Times, January 9, 1986; Frank Lynn, “Shoreham Key to Special Vote,” New York Times, March 23, 1986; Josh Barbanel, “Cuomo and Legislators Announce Accord on Takeover Plan for LILCO,” New York Times, July 3, 1986; Irwin Stelzer, “American Account: Falling Out with Nuclear Power,” New York Sunday Times, July 27, 1986; Frank Lynn, “Politics of Shoreham Pushes Suffolk Chief into Race for Judgeship,” New York Times, September 17, 1986; Paul Taylor, “Cuomo: A Fighter Finds New Ways to Win,” Washington Post, September 29, 1986; Clifford D. May, “Debate on Shoreham: Who Opposed It First?” New York Times, October 16, 1989; Frank Lynn, “Stakes Are High in Suffolk House Race,” New York Times, October 26, 1986; Mary McGrory, “An Issue Whose Time Has Come,” Washington Post, November 9, 1986; Philip S. Gutis, “Suffolk Politicians Brace for Battle on Executive,” New York Times, November 10, 1986; Frank Lynn, “Appeal of Cuomo in Suburbs Is Noted,” New York Times, December 7, 1986; Michael Oreskes, “Nuclear Plant Openings Threatened by Politics,” New York Times, February 8, 1987; Eric Schmitt, “Suffolk Race Reflects Nation’s Suburban Concerns,” New York Times, June 8, 1987; Philip S. Gutis, “A-Plant Plays Major Role in L.I. Race,” New York Times, October 27, 1987; Frank Lynn, “Lauder Prepares to Run for Congress in Suffolk,” New York Times, March 23, 1988; Thomas B. Edsall, “New York’s Local Issues May Dominate Its Primary,” Washington Post, April 16, 1988.
98. Victor, “The Nuclear Turn-On”; “Lights Off on Long Island,” Economist, April 29, 1989.
99. William Glaberson, “Coping in the Age of Nimby,” New York Times, June 19, 1988.
100. James Barron, “Nuclear Power Foes Go on But the Ranks Are Thinner,” New York Times, October 23, 1980. Barron noted that antinuclear activists’ numbers were dwindling even though the residents of Long Island continued to oppose the Shoreham.
101. Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformations of the American Environmental Movement (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2005), 3; Hurley, Environmental Inequalities, 57.
102. Perry L. Norton, “Fine—But Not in My Backyard,” New York Times, June 7, 1987.
103. Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring, 168, 176.
104. John T. McQuiston, “In the Suburbs Backyard Politics Comes Naturally,” New York Times, June 10, 1984; Ross, “The Right to Protect Our Own Backyards” (quote).
105. Perlstein, Before the Storm.
106. Schulman, The Seventies, xvi; Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement, 331.
107. Nash contrasts earlier conservative movements that focused on national issues and politics, with the New Right, which “was essentially the product of traumas experienced by ordinary people in their everyday lives.” This concentration on the everyday and the local encouraged suburban homeowners to see themselves as both victims of bureaucracies but also useful tools for shaping their local world. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement, 331.
108. One contemporary newspaper article noted that the New Right came from “a ‘conservative majority’ of blue-collar workers and ‘ordinary’ people who are frustrated over rising taxes and the largess of costly federal programs.” “ ‘For a Broader Constituency,’ ” Washington Post, January 29, 1978.
109. John W. Freece, Sprawl and Politics: The Inside Story of Smart Growth in Maryland (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 7. Freece notes that even in Maryland, which pioneered smart growth in the late 1990s, voters rejected a 1991 proposal to return the power of local land regulation to the state. This demonstrates that, even in pursuing progressive ideals, suburbanites still preferred local decision making; Ross, “The Right to Protect.”
110. Diane Greenberg, “Firefighters Wary of Shoreham Plant,” New York Times, April 6, 1980.
111. David Arnold, “Distrust Creates Nimby Syndrome,” Boston Globe, January 25, 1989.
112. Glaberson, “Coping in the Age of Nimby.”
113. Ross, “The Right to Protect Our Own Backyards.”
114. Charlotte Libov, “Nimby Takes Hold,” New York Times, August 16, 1987.
115. Gilmore, Golden Gulag. During the same era that Nimbys rejected jails in their local communities, Gilmore shows, the surveillance and prosecution of urban criminals increased to mammoth proportions, necessitating the construction of new jails.
116. Ross, “The Right to Protect Our Own Backyards.”
117. Portney, Siting Hazardous Waste Facilities, 14–16.
118. Matt Yancey, “Delay Seen in Narrowing List of Nuclear Waste Sites,” Associated Press, February 29, 1984; “Issues Guideline for Choosing Site,” Associated Press, December 6, 1984.
119. Robert Sangeorge, “Everybody Wants Nuclear Waste Sites but ‘Not in my Back Yard,’ ” United Press International, March 24, 1984.
120. John Hanrahan, “Nuclear Waste Disposal: The ‘Not in My Back Yard’ Syndrome,” United Press International, April 21, 1987.
121. Jordana Hart, “Neighbors’ Fears Stall New Homes for Mentally Ill,” Boston Globe, April 11, 1989.
122. Kean quoted in Sam Roberts, “Growing Reply to Society’s Ills: ‘Not in My Yard,’ ” New York Times, June 25, 1987.
123. Henry D. Royal, “Nuclear Policy Driven by Fear, Not Facts,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 24, 1989.
124. “A Sterling Nuke Site Could Threaten Water Supply,” Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard, December 21, 1988.
125. Frank DeLoache, “Hillsborough Residents Worry about Power Lines in Yard,” St. Petersburg Times, April 28, 1987; Larry Lange, “Neighbors Protest Power Station,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 6, 1991.
126. See, for example, Paul Brodeur, The Great Power-Line Cover-Up: How the Utilities and the Government Are Trying to Hide the Cancer Hazard Posed by Electromagnetic Fields (New York: Little, Brown, 1995); William Leiss and Christina Chociolko, Risk and Responsibility (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1994); Mark S. Dworkin, Cases in Epidemiology: A Global Perspective (Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2011); and Jeff Hect, “Cell Tests Suggest Link between Cables and Cancer,” New Scientist (December 3, 1987), 28.
127. Lerner, Sacrifice Zones, 4–6.
128. Michael Pousnerhousing, “Not In My Back Yard …,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, April 21, 1991.
129. John T. McQuiston, “In the Suburbs, Backyard Politics Comes Naturally,” New York Times, June 10, 1984.
130. Richard Cohen, “The Truth and Lies about Nuclear Power,” Washington Post, April 1, 1979.
131. “Springfield Nuclear Power Plant,” Simpsons Wiki, accessed February 23, 2020, https://
132. “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish,” The Simpsons (Fox Television, November 1, 1990).
133. “US Approves First New Nuclear Reactor in a Generation,” Reuters, February 12, 2012; Matthew L. Wald, “Nuclear Renaissance Is Short on Largess,” New York Times, December 7, 2010, http://
134. Peter Stoler, “Bracing for the Fallout,” Time, May 12, 1986.
135. “Viewpoints: The Old Town Entertainment Center,” Riverside (CA) Press Enterprise, February 15, 1995; Terry Nelson, “Don’t Burst the Building Boom,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 14, 1995; Alida C. Silverman, “Tell Us What You Think,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, February 29, 1996; David Friedman, “Global Conflict Is in Our Back Yard,” Oregonian, November 2, 1997.
136. Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring, 3–4.
137. Lassiter, Silent Majority, 13–14, 120–70.
138. Howard Kunreuther, “Please! Choose My Backyard!” Christian Science Monitor, September 19, 1990.
139. Environmental Protection Agency, “Key Dates in Superfund,” http://
140. Nancy Vogel, “Is California Bursting at Its Seams?” California Journal, July 1, 1991; Joyce Murdoch, “In Bethesda, Low-Income Housing With All the Extras,” Washington Post, April 5, 1993; Terry Nelson, “Don’t Burst the Building Boom,” Editorial, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 14, 1995; and Dan Kalb, letter to the editor, San Francisco Chronicle, November 6, 1995.
141. Jack Rosenthal, “On Language: Acronym Power,” New York Times, August 5, 1990; and “NIMBY*? But Trash Woes Are Ours to Cure” Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard, February 21, 1989.
142. Ross, “The Right to Protect Our Own Backyards.”
1. “Carter Proposes ‘Super Fund’ for Hazardous Cleanup,” National Journal (June 23, 1979), 1055.
2. Elaine Tyler May, Fortress America: How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy (New York: Hachette Books, 2017), 1–56.
3. “The Neighborhood of Fear,” Time, June 2, 1980.
4. “The Poisoning of America,” Time, September 22, 1980.
5. Peter Gwynne, with Mark Whitaker, Elaine Shannon, Mary Hager, and Sharon Begley, “The Chemicals around Us,” Newsweek, August 21, 1978.
6. “A Nightmare in Niagara,” Time, August 14, 1978.
7. Self, All in the Family, 365–69.
8. Estelle Freedman, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (New York: Ballantine, 2002), 132–33; Alison Lefkovitz, Strange Bedfellows: Marriage in the Age of Women’s Liberation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 9–10.
9. Herman Staudenmayer, preface to Environmental Illness: Myth and Reality (Boca Raton, FL: Lewis, 1999).
10. “The Toxicity Connection,” Time, September 22, 1980.
11. Julie Passanante Elman, Chronic Youth: Disability, Sexuality, and U.S. Media Cultures of Rehabilitation (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 169; Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (New York: Viking, 2000), 314–20; Peter Conrad, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 4–10.
12. Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, “An Inventory of Shimmers,” in Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, eds., The Affect Theory Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 1–28; Julie Passanante Elman, “ ‘Find Your Fit’: Wearable Technology and the Cultural Politics of Disability,” New Media and Society 20 (October 2018): 3760–77.
13. Jasbir K. Puar, The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 15–16.
14. Lisa Jones Townsel, “Symptoms Are ‘All over the Map,’ ” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 24, 1999.
15. Evelyn Todd, The Invisible Prison: A Handbook for Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (United Kingdom: Troubadour, 2015), epigraph.
16. May, Homeward Bound; Coontz, The Way We Never Were.
17. Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 192–210.
18. Linda Nash, Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 195.
19. Lois Marie Gibbs, Love Canal and the Birth of the Environmental Health Movement (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011), 1.
20. Richard S. Newman, Love Canal: A Toxic History from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 103.
21. Time, “A Nightmare in Niagara.”
22. Newman, Love Canal, 102–7.
23. Time, “Neighborhood of Fear.”
24. Peter Gwynne, with Mark Whitaker, Elaine Shannon, Mary Hager, and Sharon Begley, “The Chemicals around Us,” Newsweek, August 21, 1978.
25. Time, “Neighborhood of Fear.”
26. Gwynne, “The Chemicals Around Us.”
27. Glenn Jordan, dir., Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal (Filmways Television, 1982).
28. Fred Rothenberg, “Fighting-the-Establishment Stories on CBS and PBS Tonight,” Associated Press, February 17, 1982.
29. New York Times television critic Tony Schwartz derisively said of this television movie, and the genre: “Life is more complex than the film’s pat solutions suggest, and if you’re looking for ‘Crime and Punishment,’ you won’t find it here. But what you will get is an entertaining story about a tenacious woman who triumphed.” This didactic tendency, though artistically maligned, did work to give a straightforward account of a complicated issue and story and to more directly communicate the existential threats to the suburban environment. Tony Schwartz, “Lois Gibbs Fights the Battle of Love Canal,” New York Times, February 17, 1982.
30. Steve LaRue, “Region Copes with Toxics Risk,” San Diego Union-Tribune, December 1, 1985.
31. Gwynne, “Chemicals All around Us.”
32. Richmond quoted in Ed Magnuson, “The Poisoning of America,” Time, September 22, 1980.
33. Natalie Angler, “Hazards of a Toxic Wasteland,” Time, December 17, 1984.
34. Angler, “Hazards of a Toxic Wasteland.”
35. Michael Weisskopf, “Toxic Waste Sites Awash in Mismanagement,” Washington Post, November 16, 1986.
36. “Canal Cleanup,” Time, July 26, 1982.
37. Maureen Dowd, “Superfund, Supermess,” Time, February 21, 1983.
38. Angler, “Hazards of a Toxic Wasteland.”
39. Melinda Beck, with Mary Lord, “A Caustic Report on Chemical Dumps,” Newsweek, October 22, 1979.
40. “Part 3: Yesterday’s Toxics: Superfund,” Newsweek, July 24, 1989.
41. Lawrence Buell, Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 30–31.
42. Don DeLillo, White Noise (New York: Viking, 1985), 4.
43. New York Times book critic Christopher Lehman-Haupt offered his interpretation of the title of the novel: “ ‘White Noise,’ the title of Don DeLillo’s ninth and latest novel, refers to death,” which, like a constant sound, is ever present in postmodern life. Christopher Lehman-Haupt, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, January 7, 1985.
44. Ursula K. Heise, “Toxins, Drugs, and Global Systems: Risk and Narrative in the Contemporary Novel,” American Literature Vol. 74, No. 4 (2002): 747–78.
45. DeLillo, White Noise, 198.
46. DeLillo, White Noise, 41–43.
47. DeLillo, White Noise, 103.
48. DeLillo, White Noise, 139, 205.
49. Joanne Ostrow, “Rockville’s Mock Disaster Develops a Few Disasters of Its Own,” Washington Post, June 30, 1983.
50. DeLillo, White Noise, 129.
51. Other films of the era that took for granted the pervasive practice of illegal toxic waste dumping and its deleterious effects include Prophecy (1979), The Children (1980), Modern Problems (1981), The Living Dead Girl (1982), The Being (1983), Mutant (1984), State Park (1984), Choke Canyon (1986), Night Trackers (1987), Street Trash (1987), Think Big (1989), Men at Work (1990), Killer Crocodile (1989), and Alligator II: The Mutation (1991).
52. “The Movie Channel,” Washington Post, October 13, 1988; “Showtime,” Washington Post, October 30, 1988. These films got significant exposure in the predominantly suburban outlets of cable television and home video. After limited theatrical runs in the New York metro area, where the films were produced, Class of Nuke ’Em High and The Toxic Avenger played on pay cable movie channels like the Movie Channel and Showtime in the fall of 1987 and throughout 1988. Class of Nuke ’Em High was listed as playing for ten weeks on either Showtime or the Movie Channel between October 1987 and November 20, 1988.
53. Vincent Canby, “Screen: ‘Class of Nuke ’Em High,’ ” New York Times, December 12, 1986.
54. Sangeorge, “Everybody Wants Nuclear Waste Sites But ‘Not In My Back Yard.’ ”
55. Cindy Skrzycki, “Twentieth Century Anxieties: Accidents Waiting to Happen,” U.S. News and World Report, May 19, 1986; “Close-Up: The Killing Ground,” ABC News, March 29, 1979; Angler, “Hazards of a Toxic Wasteland.”
56. Foster Church, “Dump Site Selection All Politics,” Portland Oregonian, December 20, 1987.
57. Chris Chrystal, “Surveys Show Nation Fears Risks of Nuclear Dump,” United Press International, January 18, 1989.
58. Hilary Sigman, “Midnight Dumping: Public Policies and Illegal Disposal of Used Oil,” RAND Journal of Economics 29, No. 1 (spring 1998): 157–78.
59. “The Killing Ground.”
60. Rochelle L. Stanfield, “Because It Can Happen Here, Localities Want Tougher Rules on Dangerous Cargo,” National Journal, February 23, 1985.
61. Staudenmayer, Environmental Illness, 12–13.
62. “The Toxicity Connection.”
63. Conrad calls this process “medicalization,” whereby “nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical problems.” Conrad, The Medicalization of Society, 4.
64. Susan Abod, dir., Homesick: Living with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (Dual Power Productions, 2013).
65. Robert Reinhold, “When Life Is Toxic,” New York Times, September 16, 1990.
66. Jean Marbella, “No Breathing Space,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 5, 1990.
67. Kathy Boccella, “Inside Pollutants May Be Riskier than Outside Ones,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 2, 1995.
68. Steve Kroll-Smith and H. Hugh Floyd, Bodies in Protest: Environmental Illness and the Struggle over Medical Knowledge (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 2.
69. Bonnye L. Matthews, Chemical Sensitivity: A Guide to Coping with Hypersensitivity Syndrome, Sick Building Syndrome, and Other Environmental Illnesses (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998).
70. Matthews, Chemical Sensitivity, 82.
71. Matthews, Chemical Sensitivity, xi.
72. Matthews, Chemical Sensitivity, 71.
73. John C. Burnham, Health Care in America: A History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 446–47; Paul Starr, Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 63–64.
74. Todd, The Invisible Prison, xv.
75. Todd, The Invisible Prison, 13.
76. Susan Abod and Lisa Pompopidam, dirs., Funny, You Don’t Look Sick: Autobiography of an Illness (Dual Power Productions, 1995).
77. Susan Greenhalgh, Under the Medical Gaze: Facts and Fictions of Chronic Pain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Robert A. Aronowitz, Making Sense of Illness: Science, Society, and Disease (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 19–39.
78. Robert Gioielli, Environmental Activism and the Urban Crisis: Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014); Zimring, Clean and White.
79. Terr Al, “Environmental Illness: A Clinical Review of 50 Cases,” Archives of Internal Medicine 146, No. 1 (January 1986): 145–49; Paul Berg, “California Doctors Discredit Clinical Ecology Theory,” Washington Post, February 26, 1986.
80. Thomas Orme and Paul Benedetti, “Multiple Chemical Sensitivity,” American Council on Science and Health, February 1, 1994, https://
81. Staudenmayer, preface to Environmental Illness.
82. Donna E. Stewart, “Environmental Illness and Patients with Multiple Unexplained Symptoms,” Archives of Internal Medicine 146, No. 7 (1986): 1447; C. M. Brodsky, “Multiple Chemical Sensitivities and Other ‘Environmental Illness’: A Psychiatrist’s View,” Occupational Medicine 2, No. 4 (October–December 1987): 695–704; Ephraim Kahn and Gideon Letz, “Clinical Ecology: Environmental Medicine or Unsubstantiated Theory?” Annals of Internal Medicine 111, No. 2 (July 1989): 104–6; G. E. Simon, W. J. Katon, and P. J. Sparks, “Allergic to Life: Psychological Factors in Environmental Illness,” American Journal of Psychiatry 147, No. 7 (July 1990): 901–6; Donald W. Black, Ann Rathe, and Rise B. Goldstein, “Environmental Illness: A Controlled Study of 26 Subjects with ‘20th Century Disease,’ ” Journal of the American Medical Association 264, No. 24 (December 1990): 3166–70; Donald W. Black, “Environmental Illness and Misdiagnosis—A Growing Problem,” Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 18, No. 1 (August 1993): 23–31; J. E. Salvaggio, “Psychological Aspects of ‘Environmental Illness,’ ‘Multiple Chemical Sensitivity,’ and Building-Related Illness,” Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 94, No. 2, Part 2 (August 1994): 366–70; R. Sergio Guglielmi, Daniel J. Cox, and Daniel A. Spyker, “Behavioral Treatment of Phobic Avoidance in Multiple Chemical Sensitivity,” Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 25, No. 3 (September 1994): 197–209; Rebecca L. Gomez, Roger W. Schvaneveldt, and Herman Staudenmayer, “Assessing Beliefs about ‘Environmental Illness/Chemical Sensitivity,’ ” Journal of Health Psychology 1, No. 1 (January 1996): 107–23; Herman Staudenmayer, “Clinical Consequences of the EI/MCS ‘Diagnosis’: Two Paths,” Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 24, No. 1 (August 1996): 96–100; Stephen Barrett and Ronald Gots, Chemical Sensitivity: The Truth about Environmental Illness (New York: Prometheus Books, 1998); Arthur J. Borsky and Jonathan F. Borus, “Functional Somatic Syndromes,” Annals of Internal Medicine 130, No. 11 (June 1999): 910–21.
83. Catriona Sandilands, “Sexual Politics and Environmental Justice: Lesbian Separatists in Rural Oregon,” in Rachel Stein, ed., New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 109–26; Nancy C. Unger, Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History (London: Oxford University Press, 2012), 163–87. Carol’s choice to move to Wrenwood mirrored a tactic practiced by marginalized communities of the 1970s in response to their own environmental endangerment. In Carol’s case, however, she leverages privilege in choosing to leave. She can afford to stay at the Wrenwood Center and not be forced to live off the land as many women’s groups did in the 1970s.
84. Marlene Simons, “Concern Rising over Harm from Pesticides in Third World,” New York Times, May 30, 1989. It seemed, according to the New York Times that outside the United States, people were largely exposed to toxins, often exported from that country, while American suburbanites chose to be around them, or at least to tolerate them, for other benefits.
85. Steve Lerner, Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Chemical Toxic Exposure in the United States (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010).
86. Colman McCarthy, “The Chemical Refugees,” Washington Post, January 23, 1988.
1. William L. Chaze, “Fear Stalks the Streets,” U.S. News & World Report, October 27, 1980.
2. Judith Valente, “Bucolic Burglary Wave,” Washington Post, April 7, 1978.
3. “Burglar Alarms,” Consumer Reports (August 1981), 436–42.
4. Lassiter, The Silent Majority, 2; Self, American Babylon, 256–90. According to Self, California suburbanites in the 1970s crafted a narrative of victimization that belied the great power they held, a vision in which government and inner-city minorities attempted to deprive them of the benefits of suburban living, including home ownership and local sovereignty. Lassiter, too, asserts that a suburban culture of political exclusion emerged around race and civil rights that attempted to exempt suburban areas from collective responsibility and encouraged a privatist ethic. In the midst of battles over busing, taxation, school control, and racial integration during the 1960s and ’70s, suburbanites imagined themselves as aggrieved and sought to combat their victimization through locally directed actions to protect their power and privilege. This chapter follows these scholars’ lines of thinking about the power of suburban victimization to see how they mobilized new fears as part of this privatist ethic centered on local power and spatial exclusivity.
5. National Sherriff’s Association, “Neighborhood Watch Manual,” Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, https://
6. Alexander, The New Jim Crow; Gilmore, Golden Gulag, 22.
7. Charles H. Levine, “Police Management in the 1980s: From Decrementalism to Strategic Thinking,” Public Administration Review 45 (1985): 691–700; William P. Browne, “Resource Needs and Attitudes toward Financial Allocation: A Study of Suburban Police Chiefs,” Public Administration Review 34, No. 4 (July–August 1974): 397–99; Stuart A. Scheingold, “Politics, Public Policy, and Street Crime,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 539 (May 1995): 163; Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Police Organization in the Twentieth Century,” Crime and Justice 15 (1992): 63–64. Reiss notes that small police forces were predominant in the 1980s; in New Jersey, for example, 77 percent of all departments had fewer than forty officers.
8. This relationship to law enforcement experienced by people of color in American cities differed in the sense that it directly expressed the privilege of suburban living even in a moment of seeming imperilment. As Elizabeth Hinton observes of urban policing, “National law enforcement programs introduced various forms of surveillance into social welfare programs, labeled entire groups of Americans as likely criminals and targeted them with undercover and decoy squads, ran sting operations that created underground economies, and combated gangs with militarized police forces and severe sentencing guidelines.” Conversely, the state empowered residents of suburbs under siege to surveil and police spaces as adjuncts to law enforcement. Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 10–11. See also Victor Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York: New York University Press, 2011); Max Felker-Kantor, Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 1–3.
9. Gilmore, Golden Gulag. At the same moment when suburbanites were pursuing private solutions to perceived criminal threats, Gilmore persuasively argues, the prison industry and the surveillance and prosecution of urban criminals expanded to mammoth proportions, further highlighting the spatial and political privilege of suburban life, buttressed by racial inequality, articulated in the criminal justice system, and mapped onto space.
10. Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder, Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999), 7.
11. Steven Macek, Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, and the Moral Panic over the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 32–35. In arguing for a more city-centric view of suburban security measures, Macek shows that these safety innovations simply heightened fear of the central city by further stigmatizing it as being outside the zone of safety. While urban criminal threats remained visible during this period, his argument does not account for the ways in which suburbs themselves were understood as dangerous, specifically because of security measures that served as everyday reminders of danger.
12. “Voices from the Suburbs,” Christian Science Monitor, May 24, 1983.
13. “Fear Drives to Suburbs,” New York Times, June 8, 1982.
14. Hugh A. Mulligan, “Thieves Rush In,” Associated Press, October 31, 1980; “When Fear is the Burglar,” New York Times, March 2, 1982; Bureau of Justice Statistics, “1973–1982 Trends: Criminal Victimization in the United States,” United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, September 1983, 2.
15. Andree Brooks, “Adapting to the Rise in Suburban Crime,” New York Times, February 7, 1982.
16. James K. Stewart, “Public Safety and Private Police,” special issue, “Law and Public Affairs,” Public Administration Review 45 (November 1985): 758–65.
17. “The People’s War against Crime,” U.S. News & World Report, July 13, 1981; Thomas McCarroll, Richard Woodbury, and John Greenwald, “The New Fortress America,” Time, September 13, 1983.
18. Bruce Hager, “Burglar-Alarm Fines for Faulty Devices,” New York Times, September 21, 1980.
19. Patricia Yoxall, “Here’s How—Short of a Moat—to Protect Your Castle,” Chicago Tribune, June 13, 1981.
20. Bob Vila, “Old House Restoration,” Popular Mechanics (July 1986), 45–46.
21. Linda B. Martin, “Another Myth Crumbles: Crime Is Marching In,” New York Times, October 30, 1980.
22. Jeanne Lesem, “Burglar-Proofing Your Home: Tips from a Retired Detective,” United Press International, April 8, 1983.
23. Louise Cook, “Consumer Scorecard: Locking Burglars Out,” Associated Press, March 21, 1980.
24. Stewart, “Public Safety and Private Police,” 760. See also Louise Cook, “Part I: The Problem,” Associated Press, May 17, 1977; Julia Malone, “Crime: Neglected Issue,” Christian Science Monitor, February 19, 1981.
25. Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 291–99.
26. Felker-Cantor, Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD, 17.
27. Saslow, “Once Upon a Time.”
28. Saslow, “Once Upon a Time”; Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (New York: Basic Books, 2001); Jessica Grose, “Parents Are Now Getting Arrested for Letting their Kids Go to the Park,” Slate, July 15, 2014, http://
29. Steven J. Marcus, “Home Barriers against Theft,” New York Times, October 13, 1983.
30. Cook, “Part I: The Problem.”
31. Carol Krucoff, “Keeping Burglars Away While You’re Off to Play,” Washington Post, July 10, 1979; Louise Cook, “Consumer Scorecard: Locking Burglars Out,” Associated Press, March 21, 1980; Tom Zito, “The Saga of Superthief: Pranks, Gadgets, and the Big Payoff,” Washington Post, April 29, 1980; Bill Gold, “Is Your House Protected by a Burglar Alarm?” Washington Post, May 27, 1980; Diana Shaman, “As Daytime Burglaries Rise, Homeowners Add Alarm Systems,” New York Times, October 5, 1980; Louise Cook, “Make Sure Protection Keeps Pace with Prices,” Associated Press, October 6, 1980; “Burglar Alarm Buyers Must Get $25 Permit,” New York Times, January 21, 1981; Lorrie DeRose, “Burglaries: Cause for Alarm,” Washington Post, October 6, 1981; Ron Scherer, “Home Alarms Ring Profits,” Christian Science Monitor, October 23, 1981; Hugh A. Mulligan, “Crime Turns Back Civilization’s Clock,” New York Times, November 20, 1981; “When Fear Is the Burglar,” New York Times, March 2, 1982; Peter Kerr, “Essentials for Security in the Home,” New York Times, April 15, 1982; Bernard Gladstone, “The Essentials for Maintaining Security at Home,” New York Times, April 15, 1982; James T. Yenckel, “Sounding the Alarm,” Washington Post, November 11, 1982; James T. Yenckel, “What to Do When Help Is Not on the Way,” Washington Post, November 28, 1982; “Strengthen Home Alarm System,” United Press International, December 29, 1982; Larry Neumester, “Fear Spreads as Third Morris County Woman Found Murdered,” Associated Press, January 6, 1983; Andrew Pollack, “Bell and G&W Offer Talking Alarm System,” New York Times, June 2, 1983; Samuel G. Freedman, “Tapping the Security Market,” New York Times, June 12, 1983; Bernard Gladstone, “Ways to Make Your Home More Secure While You’re Away,” New York Times, July 10, 1983; “Man Fatally Shoots Wife After Burglar Alarm Goes Off,” Associated Press, September 26, 1983; Tom Shea, “Grab Bag of Devices Helps Control Homes,” InfoWorld, October 31, 1983; Fred Bayles, “Part I: America’s Changing the Way It Fights Crime,” Associated Press, August 12, 1985. Bayles estimated that half a million alarms were installed in 1984.
32. Steven J. Marcus, “Home Barriers against Theft,” New York Times, October 13, 1983.
33. Diana Shaman, “Long Island Housing: As Daytime Burglaries Rise, Homeowners Add Alarms,” New York Times, October 5, 1980.
34. Norman Black, “Wiring America IV: News and Information Services,” Associated Press, July 9, 1981. See also Pat Bauer, “Free Shares of Cable TV Costs Its Users,” Washington Post, September 14, 1980; Margaret Shapiro, “2-Way Cable TV Channels Urged for P.G.,” Washington Post, October 2, 1980; Pat Bauer, “Cable Television: Area Communities Fret over Electronic Snooping,” Washington Post, November 18, 1980; Tom Jory, “Wiring America I: Cable’s Dizzying Growth,” Associated Press, July 5, 1981; Matthew L. Wald, “Towns Eye Future of Cable TV Net,” New York Times, July 5, 1981; Thomas Rizzo, “Columbus: America’s Cable Capital,” Associated Press, July 6, 1981; and Thomas Rizzo, “Home Security Systems—A New Frontier for Cable,” Associated Press, July 9, 1981.
35. Susan Chira, “A Crackdown on False Burglar Alarms,” New York Times, October 2, 1983.
36. “False Alarm Law Studied,” Washington Post, August 6, 1978; Linda Wheeler, “Burglar Alarm Sound Usually a False Note,” Washington Post, August 3, 1980; Bruce Hager, “Burglar-Alarm Fines for Faulty Devices,” New York Times, September 21, 1980; Judy Glass, “False Burglar Alarms Set Off Controversy,” New York Times, June 27, 1981; “Keeping Up with Burglar Alarms,” New York Times, July 28, 1981; McCarroll, Woodbury, and Greenwald, “The New Fortress America.”
37. Chira, “A Crackdown on False Burglar Alarms.”
38. ADT, “We’re Home Even When You’re Not” (1989), YouTube, https://
39. ADT, “Sound Advice” (1990), YouTube, https://
40. ADT, “Burglar Confessions” (1992), YouTube, https://
41. ADT, “Prized Possessions” (1993), YouTube, https://
42. ADT, “Security for Life” (1999), YouTube, https://
43. National Crime Prevention Council, Office of Justice Programs, United States Department of Justice, Are We Safe? The 2000 National Crime Prevention Survey, NCJ 186729 (Washington, DC, 2001). This survey estimates that, by the year 2000, 41 percent of all homes in the United States were under the protection of neighborhood watch programs.
44. Black, “Wiring America IV: News and Information Services.”
45. Molly Moore, “Burglars Beware: Neighbors on Duty,” Washington Post, December 10, 1981.
46. Richard M. Titus, “Residential Burglary and the Community Response,” in Ronald Clarke and Tim Hope, eds., Coping with Burglary (Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff, 1984), 114.
47. Katy Holloway, Trevor Bennett, and David P. Farrington, “Does Neighborhood Watch Reduce Crime?” Crime Prevention Research Review (Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, US Department of Justice), No. 3 (2013).
48. Holloway, Bennett, and Farrington, “Does Neighborhood Watch Reduce Crime?”
49. Kathryn Tolbert, “Keeping Crime at Bay: Lookouts, Block Watch Groups Make Homes Seven Times Safer,” Washington Post, April 23, 1981; Holloway, Bennett, and Farrington, “Does Neighborhood Watch Reduce Crime?” 8. Studies show that community policing efforts are largely difficult to evaluate in terms of the extent to which they prevent crime or lower crime rates, though some studies conclude they are mostly ineffectual.
50. “When Fear Is the Burglar”; Henry Fairlie, “It’s Time to Stop Letting Criminals Imprison Us,” Washington Post, January 11, 1981.
51. Saslow, “Once Upon a Time.”
52. Susan Ladov, “Speaking Personally: Our Homes Have Become Our Castles under Siege,” New York Times, January 18, 1981.
53. Ladov, “Speaking Personally.”
54. Setha Low, Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America (New York: Routledge, 2003); Blakely and Snyder, Fortress America, 3.
55. Despite the high profile of the crime and the efforts of law enforcement, the case remained unsolved for many years. However, on December 16, 2008, Hollywood police announced that, after a review of the case, they were confident that Otis Toole, convicted murderer and confidante of child molester and murderer Henry Lee Lucas, was responsible for Adam’s murder.
56. Etan’s story was retold in the 1983 film Without a Trace. However, at the end of that filmic retelling, a heroic detective discovers the Etan character living with another family.
57. Susan D. Greenbaum, Blaming the Poor: The Long Shadow of the Moynihan Report on Cruel Images of Poverty (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015); Daniel Geary, Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015); Self, American Babylon, 26–37; and James T. Patterson, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle over Black Family Life—from LBJ to Obama (New York: Basic Books, 2010).
58. Bernard D. Healey, The Atlanta Youth Murders and the Politics of Race (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998), 3.
59. John Erman, dir., The Atlanta Child Murders (Rafshoon Communications et al., 1985); Paul Renfro, “ ‘The City Too Busy to Care’: The Atlanta Youth Murders and the Southern Past, 1979–81,” Southern Cultures 21, No. 4 (2015): 43–66.
60. Paul Renfro, “Milk Carton Kids: Endangered Childhood and the Carceral State,” in Susan Eckelmann, Sara Fieldston, and Paul Renfro, eds., Growing Up America: Youth and Politics since 1945 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2019), 256.
61. “Still No Sign of 6-Year-Old Boy Who Vanished from Toy Department,” United Press International, July 29, 1981; “Head Identified as That of Missing Youth,” Associated Press, August 11, 1981.
62. “Action on Lost Children Urged,” New York Times, November 22, 1981.
63. David Gelman, Susan Agrest, John McCormick, Pamela Abramson, Nikki Finke Greenberg, Marsha Zabarsky, Holly Morris, and Tessa Namuth, “Stolen Children,” Newsweek, March 19, 1984.
64. Phillip Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of the Eighties (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 111. Jenkins argues that 1977 was the year of the child because that was when a movement against molestation, abuse, and child pornography appeared on the political agenda. This emerging conception of children as particularly endangered helped pave the way for fears of stranger abductions to become culturally powerful.
65. Gelman, Agrest, McCormick, Abramson, Greenberg, Zabarsky, Morris, and Namuth, “Stolen Children”; Neal Karlen, with Nikki Finke Greenberg, David L. Gonzalez, and Elisa Williams, “How Many Missing Kids?” Newsweek, October 7, 1985. In the latter article, experts from the Department of Health and Human Services, FBI, and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children disagreed about the number of missing children, especially those abducted by strangers. FBI statistics revealed only sixty-seven stranger abductions in 1984, which, in light of later studies, seems much more likely than the higher figures cited in the mid-1980s.
66. David F. Whitman, “Missing Children: What Makes Search So Tough,” U.S. News & World Report, August 19, 1985.
67. Eugene Kraybill, “Scaring Our Kids,” U.S. News & World Report, February 10, 1986. Kraybill, a father of three, wrote that though it is a tragedy when any child is abducted, relatively few are actually abducted by a stranger. Instead, he suggested the public should focus on broken homes, which, he argued, spurred most runaways and child abductions by family members.
68. Judd Pilot, dir., How to Raise a Street Smart Child (Home Box Office, 1987), available on YouTube, https://
69. John Walsh, Tears of Rage: From Grieving Father to Crusader for Justice; The Untold Story of the Adam Walsh Case (New York: Pocket Books, 1997), 103.
70. Juvenile Justice, Runaway Youth, and Missing Children’s Act Amendments of 1984: Hearing on H.R. 4971 before the House Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Committee on Education and Labor, 98th Cong., 45, 47 (April 9, 1984) (statement of John Walsh).
71. Judy Mann, “From Caution to Hysteria,” Washington Post, April 9, 1986.
72. Mann, “From Caution to Hysteria.”
73. Lawrence Kilman, “Child Protection Game Endorsed by Adam Walsh Center,” Associated Press, June 12, 1986.
74. Barbara Kantrowitz and Connie Leslie, “Teaching Fear,” Newsweek, March 10, 1986.
75. Awareness Series: No Thanks, Stranger (playEd Games, 1986).
76. Vivian Kramer Fancher, Safe Kids: A Complete Child-Safety Handbook and Resource Guide for Parents (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991).
77. Strangers Dangers (MiTi, 1985).
78. Jerry Buck, “Television’s ‘Wanted’ Gets Its Man,” Associated Press, May 17, 1988. This article compared three new crime-focused reality shows: America’s Most Wanted, Cops, and Unsolved Mysteries. Premiering in 1987, Cops focused more on the tasks of beat officers on the street than on asking for help from the viewing audience to catch criminals. Debuting in 1988, Unsolved Mysteries did ask for help from the audience, but the show ranged widely from asking for information on murder cases to exploring UFO sightings and the paranormal. Earlier incarnations of the reality genre appeared mostly on the Public Broadcasting Service. The most successful series was An American Family, which premiered in January 1973. The show followed the lives of the Loud family while parents Pat and Bill were filing for divorce and son Lance emerged as the first openly gay character on television.
79. Monica Collins, “Broadcast Crime Busters; ‘Wanted’ Captures Its Audience,” USA Today, March 2, 1989; “Full Capture List,” America’s Most Wanted Fans, https://
80. Anna Williams notes in her analysis of the show that “the spectacle of the imperiled white nuclear family is crucial to AMW’s definition of crime,” including a focus on “violent crimes, the majority of whose victims are women and children.” Williams, “Domestic Violence and the Aetiology of Crime in America’s Most Wanted,” Camera Obscura 31 (January–May 1993): 99.
81. Phil McCombs, “John Walsh’s Pursuit, and ‘America’s Most Wanted’ One Year Later,” Washington Post, April 25, 1989. Other people considered for the job of the show’s host were author Joseph Wambaugh and former Marine Corps commandant Paul X. Kelley, but they did not bring the same gravitas to the role as the aggrieved father John Walsh.
82. Peter Farrell, “Sniping Crimestoppers Recruit Viewing Posse,” Portland Oregonian, September 19, 1988.
83. Steven Erlanger, “Manhunting in an Armchair,” New York Times, February 2, 1988.
84. Farrell, “Sniping Crimestoppers Recruit Viewing Posse.”
85. Farrell, “Sniping Crimestoppers Recruit Viewing Posse.”
86. Bob Niedt, “Crime Stopper: John Walsh and America’s Most Wanted,” Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard, August 2, 1988.
87. Niedt, “Crime Stopper.”
88. Frank J. Prial, “Freeze! You’re on TV,” New York Times Magazine, September 28, 1988.
89. Donna Gable, “ ‘AMW’ Honors 200th Capture,” USA Today, May 7, 1992.
90. For news articles and reviews that tied AMW to the tragedy that befell Walsh’s family in a suburban shopping mall, see Catherine Shahan, “Fox Television Unveils Show Searching for ‘Most Wanted’ Criminals,” United Press International, February 2, 1988; David Briscoe, “TV Show Credited with Capturing Some of America’s ‘Most Wanted,’ ” Associated Press, March 28, 1988; Buck, “Television’s ‘Wanted’ Show Gets Its Man”; Collins, “Broadcast Crime Busters”; Greg Joseph, “ ‘Wanted’ A Huge Neighborhood Watch,” San Diego Union-Tribune, June 16, 1989; Jim Sullivan, “ ‘Most Wanted’ Least Wanted by Felons,” Boston Globe, April 14, 1990; Amy Ellis, “Host Is Caught Up in ‘Most Wanted’ Show,” St. Petersburg Times, July 7, 1990; Robert P. Laurence, “Crusade to Catch Culprits,” San Diego Union-Tribune, February 7, 1991; Peter Farrell, “Here’s a Guide to TV’s Version of the Real World,” Oregonian, March 3, 1991; David L. Shaw, “ ‘Wanted’ Host to Speak in Auburn,” Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard, April 11, 1991; Dan Sewell, “ ‘America’s Most Wanted’ Host Gets ‘Sad Satisfaction’ from Major Arrest,” Associated Press, April 26, 1991; Deborah Hastings, “Using Television to Capture Criminals,” Associated Press, April 27, 1991; Ed Siegel, “It’s Not Fiction; It’s Not News; It’s Not Reality; It’s Reali-TV,” Boston Globe, May 26, 1991; Janis D. Froelich, “Drama in Real Life,” St. Petersburg Times, June 5, 1991; Sean Piccoli, “Living on the Edge: There’s No Hiding from Fear,” Washington Times, February 19, 1992; Brian Donlon, “Hosting Real-Life Dramas: Narrators Set the Tone,” USA Today, March 9, 1992; Donna Gable, “Missing Children Are ‘Most Wanted’ in ’92,” USA Today, September 11, 1992; and Brian Donlon, “ ‘Most Wanted’ Still Hard at Work,” USA Today, November 19, 1992. Beyond those otherwise noted, there were numerous instances in the press of Adam’s story being connected to the mission and success of America’s Most Wanted.
91. Erlanger, “Manhunting in an Armchair.”
92. It was announced prominently on the show that it was produced with cooperation from federal and local enforcement, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So it likely did not behoove Walsh or others to be overtly critical of law enforcement.
93. Tom Shales, “Fox’s ‘Most Wanted’ A Worrisome Success,” Oregonian, May 20, 1988.
94. Prial, “Freeze! You’re on TV.”
95. This was also the premise of late 1980s board game Security Watch from Tinker Games. Players acted as adjuncts to police, accumulating points for criminals they help apprehend.
96. Shahan, “Fox Television Unveils Show.”
97. Stephanie Mann, with M. C. Blakeman, Safe Homes, Safe Neighborhoods: Stopping Crime Where You Live (Berkeley: Nolo Press, 1993), 3, 7.
98. Laura E. Quarantiello, On Guard! How You Can Win against the Bad Guys (Lake Geneva, WI: Tiare, 1994).
99. Vincent Canby, “ ‘Death Wish’ Exploits Fear Irresponsibly,” New York Times, August 4, 1974; Macek, Urban Nightmares, 203–13. The first urban vigilante films emerged in the early 1970s around the time that President Richard Nixon called for a return to “law and order.” They featured the righteous vigilante defending white middle-class victims on urban landscapes filled with minorities and criminals. These images were intended to be visceral reminders of the supposed failures of the liberal state in decaying urban centers; as such, they helped pave the way for the suburban iterations analyzed in this chapter.
100. Richard Maxwell Brown, No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). Brown argues that standing your ground as a legally endorsed American value has a history dating back to the Civil War.
101. Michael Winner, dir., Death Wish (Dino De Laurentiis Company and Paramount Pictures, 1974); Don Siegel, dir., Dirty Harry (Malpaso Company and Warner Brothers Pictures, 1971). Dirty Harry, the original modern vigilante film, demonstrated these essential elements. Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) eschews protocol and the law to catch the Scorpio killer terrorizing San Francisco. The tagline for the film exaggerated not only the single-mindedness of the vigilante but also his righteousness: “You don’t assign him to murder cases. You just turn him loose.” Harry Callahan doesn’t need to be told to stop crime, no matter the method. Other films in the genre include the other films in the Dirty Harry series, Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), and Sudden Impact (1983), as well as Outrage (made for television, 1973), Walking Tall (1973), The Death Squad (television, 1974), The Psychopath (1975), Deadbeat (1976), Breaking Point (1976), Taxi Driver (1976), The One Man Jury (1978), Exterminator (1980), Fighting Back (1982), Young Warriors (1983), Vigilante (1983), The Executioner, Part II (1984), Exterminator 2 (1984), The Annihilators (1985), Sudden Death (1985), and The Ladies Club (1986).
102. Vincent Canby, “Film: ‘Impact,’ with Clint Eastwood,” New York Times, December 9, 1983.
103. Deana Poole, “Gun Bill Could Mean: Shoot First, Ask Later,” Palm Beach Post, March 23, 2005; Jim Haug, “Bill Allows Freer Use of Deadly Force,” Daytona Beach News Journal, March 24, 2005; “Deaths Nearly Triple since ‘Stand Your Ground’ Enacted,” CBS Miami, March 3, 2020, https://
104. Spencer’s explanation of the modern criminal justice system in America eerily mirrors the words of President Bill Clinton upon signing the 1994 Crime Bill: “Every day we read about somebody else who has literally gotten away with murder. The American people have not forgotten the difference between right and wrong, but the system has.” “President Clinton Signing the ‘Crime Bill’ (1994),” posted to YouTube by William J. Clinton Presidential Library, December 11, 2012, https://
105. “Attorney General Barr Presents Justice Department Awards,” U.S. Newswire, December 14, 1992.
106. Erlanger, “Manhunting in an Armchair”; Collins, “Broadcast Crime Busters; “ ‘Wanted Captures Its Audience.”
107. Michael W. Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 4–5.
108. Flamm, Law and Order, 4–5.
109. Stuart Hall, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (London: Macmillan, 1978); Macek, Urban Nightmares.
110. Osha Gray Davidson, Under Fire: The NRA and the Battle for Gun Control (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998), 29.
111. Donald Baer, Ted Gest, and Lynn Anderson Carle, “Guns,” U.S. News & World Report, May 8, 1989.
112. Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 9–11. Alexander argues that white Americans usually managed to avoid the complex web of social control through mass incarceration because of the disparities in enforcement of laws and the sentencing of those convicted, particularly as part of the war on drugs.
113. Robert Spitzer, Guns across America: Reconciling Gun Rules and Rights (London: Oxford University Press, 2015), 105–6.
114. Wyatt Holliday, “The Answer to Criminal Aggression Is Retaliation: Stand-Your-Ground Laws and the Liberalization of Self-Defense,” University of Toledo Law Review (Winter 2012): 407–436; Christine Catalfamo, “Stand Your Ground: Florida’s Castle Doctrine for the Twenty First Century,” Rutgers Journal of Law and Public Policy (fall 2007): 504–45.
115. Alan Gomez, “House Passes NRA-Backed Gun Proposal,” Palm Beach Post, April 6, 2005.
116. Holliday, “The Answer to Criminal Aggression,” 418; Catalfamo, “Stand Your Ground.”
117. Haug, “Bill Allows Freer Use of Deadly Force”; “Go Ahead; Pass This Bill,” Palm Beach Post, March 27, 2005; Lloyd Dunkelberger, “Self-Defense Bill Gets Early Senate OK” Lakeland (Fla.) Ledger, March 23, 2005; Deana Pool, “Gun Bill Could Mean: Shoot First, Ask Later,” Palm Beach Post, March 23, 2005; “ ‘Make My Day’ Law Won’t Do Anything for Tourism,” Palm Beach Post, April 29, 2005; Patrik Jonsson, “Is Self-Defense Law Vigilante Justice?” Christian Science Monitor, February 26, 2006.
118. Deana Poole, “Deadly Force Bill Moving on a Fast Track,” Palm Beach Post, March 24, 2005.
119. Poole, “Deadly Force Bill Moving on a Fast Track.”
120. Latisha R. Gray, “Gun Critics Fear State Law Will Become O.K. Corral,” Sarasota Herald Tribune, October 1, 2005.
121. Jonsson, “Is Self-Defense Law Vigilante Justice?”
122. Adam Liptak, “15 States Expand Right to Shoot in Self-Defense,” New York Times, August 7, 2006.
123. Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 99–109.
124. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, a phone survey of American households, the number of households per 1,000 reporting a violent crime remained steady between 1973 and 1985, with a high of 52.3 in 1981 and a low of 45.2 in 1985. Between 1986 and 1990, the rate dropped to an average of 43.5, followed by an upswing through 1995. However, the total crime index—i.e., “the estimated number of homicides of persons age 12 and older recorded by police plus the number of rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults from the victimization survey whether or not they were reported to the police”—reported an uptick in violent crime in 1982 and a slow decline through 1986, followed by another increase through 1993, and then a continued reduction into the new millennium. Bureau of Justice Statistics, United States Department of Justice, “Key Facts at a Glance: Four Measure of Serious Violent Crime,” Office of Justice Programs, March 25, 1998, https://
125. Janet. L. Lauritsen and Maribeth L. Rezey, Measuring the Prevalence of Crime with the National Crime Victimization Survey, NCJ 241656 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice, September 2013), https://
126. Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 1–19; Gilmore, Golden Gulag, 5–30.
1. I use the term public space in this chapter in its generic sense to refer to space seemingly open to all but not necessarily collectively owned or regulated. So, in addition to spaces like streets and parks, the shopping mall functioned as de facto public space, central to cultural, political, and social life, in the use and discourses of suburban life in the era under review. Shopping malls performed this function despite the fact that they were privately owned and operated and that state courts have taken different approaches to interpreting the constitutional rights of free speech and assembly in these spaces.
2. Zaretsky, No Direction Home, 12. Zaretsky argues persuasively that existential fears about familial and national decline were intertwined following the cultural revolutions of the 1960s. By the 1980s, then, parents and children—including the teens discussed in this chapter—were the focus of both anxiety and regulation; Hartman, A War for the Soul of America, 87. See also Cohen, introduction to A Consumer’s Republic.
3. Jonathan Kaplan, dir., Over the Edge (Orion Pictures, 1979; Warner Home Video, 2005).
4. “Suburb’s Teen Center Deserves 2nd Chance,” Milwaukee Sentinel, September 16, 1977; Amelia Davis, “Largo Teens Want to Keep Pool Room, Center As Is,” St. Petersburg Times, May 16, 1987.
5. Amy Heckerling, dir., Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Universal Pictures, 1982).
6. Bob Levey, “Teens View Center as ‘Their’ Community,” Washington Post, January 1, 1981; Mike Sager, “Malls—Hubs of Often Centerless Suburbia Become Home Away from Home,” Washington Post, February 9, 1983.
7. Ted Gest, with Jeannye Thornton, “As More Crime Invades the Shopping Malls—,” U.S. News & World Report, June 11, 1984.
8. Ray Pelosi, “Amusement Centers Change Again, but Profit Potential Is Still Strong,” Shopping Center World (September 1983), 41.
9. Greydon Clark, dir., Joysticks (Jensen Farley Pictures, 1983).
10. Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic, 257–89; Margaret Crawford, “The World in a Shopping Mall,” in Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park: Scenes from the New American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill & Wang, 1992).
11. Bruce Koon and James A. Finefrock, “Mouse Packs: Kids on a Crime Spree,” San Francisco Examiner, November 11, 1973.
12. Joseph R. Mitchell and David Stebenne, New City Upon a Hill: A History of Columbia, Maryland (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2007); Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Suburban Alchemy: 1960s New Towns and the Transformation of the American Dream (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001).
13. Roger Ebert, “Over the Edge” (review), Chicago Sun-Times, January 1, 1980.
14. Ebert, “Over the Edge.”
15. Kerry Segrave, Jukeboxes: An American Social History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002), ch. 4.
16. Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 218–49.
17. Bloom, Suburban Alchemy.
18. “Shorttakes,” Christian Science Monitor, January 28, 1982.
19. Julie Brossy, “Reaching Out to Community: Community Center Fills Void for Seniors, Teens,” San Diego Tribune, December 5, 1988; Terry Rodgers, “Oceanside to Turn Building into Community Center,” San Diego Tribune, March 30, 1990.
20. “Suburb’s Teen Center Deserves 2nd Chance.”
21. Valeria M. Russ, “Recreation Center to Open Saturday,” St. Petersburg Times, January 31, 1980.
22. Davis, “Largo Teens Want to Keep Pool Room, Center As Is.”
23. For example, the Millwood Presbyterian Church outside Spokane, Washington, opened an “alternative recreation center” essentially to provide a safe place for teens to congregate, unlike other recreation centers. Tim Hanson, “Center for Teen-Agers Will Open Saturday,” Spokane Spokesman-Review, February 16, 1985.
24. Anita Farel, “Planning After-School Activities for Young Adolescents: Parents’ Preferences and Needs,” Children Today, March 1, 1984.
25. Steve Waksman, “Suburban Noise: Getting Inside Garage Rock,” in John Archer, Paul J. P. Sandul, and Katherine Solomonson, Making Suburbia: New Histories of Everyday America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 329–42. Suburban hardcore punk’s access to and use of the electric guitar appears to be a later manifestation of its emergence as an instrument used by young, suburban consumers in the 1960s. Waksman argues that the instrument and the garage bands formed because of its availability was a domesticated form of rock rebellion focused on the making and consumption of music in the liminal space of the garage. This forms a clear contrast with hardcore, which was public and against domestication and was largely uninterested in a musical career or the music industry.
26. Leerom Medevoi sees this same dynamic between rock-and-roll music and its suburban audiences of the 1950s. He argues that youth rebellion then was packaged and sold as an identity that was supposed to control actual teen rebellion, spurred by suburban life, which, he shows, was the worst of urban and rural life. Rather than an identity that could contain rebellion, hardcore was a direct articulation of suburban tensions that fomented rebellion and confrontation. Medevoi, Rebel: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 92–94.
27. Zaretsky, No Direction Home, 3–5.
28. For example, hardcore punk critiques were reminiscent of Pete Seeger’s song “Little Boxes” and John Keats’s book The Crack in the Picture Window.
29. Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 2002), 2.
30. Hebdige, Subculture, 3–4, 74–89.
31. Paul Rachman, dir., American Hardcore (AHC Productions and Envision Films, 2006); Steve Waksman, “California Noise: Tinkering with Hardcore and Heavy Metal in Southern California,” Social Studies of Science 34, No. 5 (October 2004): 683.
32. Middle Class, “Out of Vogue,” on Out of Vogue (Joke Records, 1978).
33. “The Middle Class,” Flipside, No. 9 (August 1978).
34. Middle Class, “Out of Vogue.”
35. “Interview with Middle Class,” Flipside, No. 12 (December 1978).
36. McGirr, Suburban Warriors.
37. Self, All in the Family, 309–10, 328, 332.
38. David E. James, “Hardcore: Cultural Resistance in the Postmodern,” in David E. James, ed., Power Misses (London: Verso, 1996), 224; Ryan Moore, Smells like Teen Spirit: Music, Youth, and Social Crisis (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 52; Lefkovitz, Strange Bedfellows; Self, All in the Family, 309–311. James argues that hardcore punks were “taking the anger, negativity and the anti-professionalism of English punk as a point of departure” to create suburban punk as “hundreds of bands sprang up in garages in the endless, homogenized cinder-block tracts.”
39. Steven Blush, American Hardcore: A Tribal History (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2001), 12.
40. Self, All in the Family, 309–38.
41. Narratives of suburban imperfection have trafficked well in postwar American culture, with books, films, and television programs on the topic winning awards and critical praise. For example, 1980’s Ordinary People and 1999’s American Beauty were both awarded Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Other films on this topic include Neighbors (1981), Pump Up the Volume (1990), The Brady Bunch Movie (1995), Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) and Happiness (1998), and Rian Johnson’s Brick (2005). Novels include Richard Ford’s suburban novels The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1995), and Lay of the Land (2006) and John Updike’s Rabbit novels, as well as novels turned into films such as Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road (1961; film, 2008), Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives (1972; film, 1975 and 2004), Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides (1993; film 1999), Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm (1994; film, 1997), Tom Perrotta’s Little Children (2004; film, 2006), and Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (2002; film, 2009). Award-winning television shows debunking the myth of suburban perfection include The Simpsons (1989–present), Married … with Children (1987–97), and The Sopranos (1999–2007).
42. Black Flag, “TV Party,” on Damaged (SST, 1981).
43. Black Flag, “Six Pack,” on Damaged (SST, 1981). Other bands, such as the Descendents, from Manhattan Beach, California, also created short, punchy songs about banal amusements. Their song “I Like Food” (on the album Fat, 1980) does little more than declare the band’s love for eating food as opposed to “dining,” but the song punctures the pretentiousness of bland suburban cuisine.
44. Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: W. W Norton, 1991).
45. Circle Jerks, “Mrs. Jones,” on Wonderful (Combat Records,1985).
46. Youth Brigade, “You Don’t Understand,” on Sink with Kalifornija (Frontier Records, 1984).
47. Descendents, “Suburban Home,” on Milo Goes to College (New Alliance, 1982).
48. Peter Belsito and Bob Davis, Hardcore California: A History of Punk and New Wave (Berkeley: Last Gasp of San Francisco, 1983), 11.
49. Moore, Smells like Teen Spirit, 55.
50. Gaines, Teenage Wasteland, 196.
51. Produced with little or no money, zines provided concert and album reviews, interviews, and scene reports. Zines, because fans made them, were irregularly produced, poorly constructed, and often lasted no more than a few issues. However, those with the largest readership, such as MaximumRockNRoll, Flipside, and Suburban Voice, lasted for many years and served to tie together places and audiences with the bigger scenes of greater Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, D.C. In these zines, there was no pretense of objectivity. The reporting is matter-of-fact and the style gossipy as the writer recounts comings and goings of band members and scenesters, often using only first names. The intent, from reviews to scene reports, was to evaluate what was good and cultivate it through the production of a print public to parallel the experience of the scene.
52. Jack Rabid, “Punk Goes Hardcore,” in Theo Cateforis, ed., The Rock History Reader (New York: Routledge, 2007), 198. Rabid’s account of the Black Flag show was originally featured in his zine, The Big Takeover, No. 4 (1981).
53. “Intro,” Flipside, No. 22 (December 1980),.
54. “Stop the Presses! Late Bulletin! RIOT ON THE SUNSET STRIP!!!” MaximumRockNRoll, No. 4 (January–February 1983).
55. “Stop the Presses!”
56. John Rockwell, “Disks That Clarify Los Angeles Rock,” New York Times, April 4, 1982.
57. Stephen Braun, “Battle over Punk Rock Club Reflects Rift in Values,” Los Angeles Times, February 12, 1984.
58. Belsito and Davis, Hardcore California, 62.
59. Craig Lee, “Four Teen-Metal Labels of Love,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 1981.
60. Blush, American Hardcore, 276.
61. Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981–1991 (New York: Little, Brown, 2012), 16; Belsito and Davis, Hardcore California, 45.
62. Al Flipside, “Intro,” Flipside, No. 16 (October 1979),.
63. “Flipside Interviews Black Flag,” Flipside, No. 22 (December 1980),.
64. The hardcore scene did include venues that regularly hosted hardcore shows, but most stayed in business only for brief periods because of violent clashes with police outside the venue and difficulty in making money from the hardcore scene. According to show flyers and zines, some of the more frequent venues included the Starwood at 8151 Santa Monica Blvd. Hollywood, California; Mabuhay Gardens, 443 Broadway, San Francisco; Hong Kong Café, 425 Gin Ling Way, Los Angeles; Madame Wong’s, Chinatown, Los Angeles; Masque, 1655 N. Cherokee, Los Angeles; and the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1714 Placentia Ave., Costa Mesa, California. “Intro and Nooze,” Flipside, No. 17 (December 1979). This issue of Flipside has a useful rundown of clubs that were hosting punk shows at the time. As the author indicates, lists like his were necessary to keep track of which clubs were open and friendly to hardcore.
65. “Punk Flyers Collection,” Cornell University Digital Collections, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, accessed March 17, 2020, https://
66. For a concise history of the shopping mall, see Kenneth T. Jackson, “All the World’s a Mall,” American Historical Review 101, No. 4 (October 1996): 1111–21. For further reading on malls and public space, see Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic, 257–89; and Crawford, “The World in a Shopping Mall.” For general shopping center history see: Nancy E. Cohen, America’s Marketplace: The History of Shopping Centers (Lyme, CT: Greenwich, 2002.). For a history of Victor Gruen and the indoor mall. see Hardwick, Mall Maker. On the history of American architecture and shopping, see Richard W. Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920–1950 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997).
67. Bob Levey, “Teens View Center as ‘Their’ Community,” Washington Post, January 1, 1981; Mike Sager, “Malls—Hubs of Often Centerless Suburbia Become Home Away from Home,” Washington Post, February 9, 1983.
68. N. Cohen, America’s Marketplace, 46. There were thirty-six thousand and five hundred by 1990.
69. Dan Kane and Cheryl Imelda Smith, “Mall Rats Bring Thefts, Fights, and Drugs,” Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard, March 20, 1988.
70. Lynn Spiegel has persuasively argued that early television shows with a suburban setting emphasized simple family disputes and straightforward conflict resolution within the span of one episode. Lynn Spiegel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 136–37. I would extend her argument to say that most family sitcoms, through the cancelation of The Brady Bunch in 1974, followed this format and presented tame subject matter compared to later incarnations. Further, more controversial material was usually relegated to shows with a distinctly urban setting, such as All in the Family. Suburban-set films of the postwar era also rarely delved into the lives of teens as straightforwardly as the films discussed in this chapter. This is not to say that film dealt with suburban life in quite the same way as sitcoms, but the emphasis on realism and darker subject matter remain fixed on the lives of adults in films such as William Wyler’s The Desperate Hours (1955) or the sex comedy Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (1969).
71. Levey, “Teens View Center as ‘Their’ Community.”
72. Levey, “Teens View Center as ‘Their’ Community.”
73. Larry Elkin, “The American Style: Suburban Mall Breeds New Species,” Associated Press, July 31, 1981.
74. Leah Y. Latimer, “ ‘Mall Rats’: Idle Youths Become Street People of Shopping Center,” Washington Post, February 21, 1983; Kane and Smith, “Mall Rats Bring Thefts, Fights, and Drugs.”
75. Rochelle Slovin, “Hot Circuits,” in Mark J. P. Wolf, ed., The Medium of the Video Game (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 145. Slovin argues that video games “shifted from immersive, social experiences in arcades (where, according to some academic studies, more than half the time participants would watch, ‘hang out,’ and socialize rather than play) to solitary, home-based entertainment.” See also Laura June, “For Amusement Only: The Life and Death of the American Arcade,” The Verge, January 16, 2013, http://
76. In 1980, reporter Kathleen Ennis described the ubiquity of coin-operated video game players: “Videomaniacs can be found everywhere here: In singles bars, mingling around Asteroids; in arcades, spending the last quarter of their allowances to beat the high score on Space Invaders; in nightclubs, vying for a spot at Galaxian between acts, and in fast-food restaurants, grabbing a quick game of Astro Fighter before heading back to work. They’re kids, businessmen in three-piece suits and unemployed writers. And, many of them will readily admit, playing electronic games is more than a mere pastime. It’s a lifestyle.” Kathleen Ennis, “Aargh! Swoosh! It’s Video Games,” Washington Post, Dec. 11, 1980.
77. Steven L. Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon—The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), 5–7. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia banned pinball in New York City in 1942 because he believed it encouraged gambling and fighting. The ban lasted until 1976, right before the emergence of the video game arcade.
78. Pelosi, “Amusement Centers Change Again, but Profit Potential is Still Strong,” 36.
79. Jura Koncius, “Video Games: Regulating America’s Latest Craze,” Washington Post, October 8, 1981.
80. Koncius, “Video Games.”
81. “Video Games Win in Arcades,” New York Times, August 23, 1980.
82. “1981 Spaceport Employee Training Video, Parts 1 and 2,” available on YouTube, http://
83. Lynn Langway, with Pamela Abramson, David T. Friendly, Frank Maier, Marsha Zabarsky, and Linda R. Prout, “Invasion of the Video Creatures,” Newsweek, November 16, 1981.
84. David Pauly, “Hard Times for Pizza Time,” Newsweek, January 23, 1984.
85. Richard Brandt, with Cynthia Green, “How Do You Start a Craze? Ask Nolan Bushnell,” Business Week, February 17, 1986.
86. “Videogames—Fun or Serious Threat?” U.S. News & World Report, February 22, 1982.
87. “Frequency of Coin-Op Videogame Releases,” International Arcade Museum, accessed March 1, 2020, http://
88. Shelagh Kealy, “Asteroids Machines Hook All Types and Ages; Home and Bars Now Sound Alike,” United Press International, August 2, 1981.
89. U.S. News & World Report, “Videogames—Fun or Serious Threat.”
90. Lola Sherman, “Council Gives Video Arcade a Replay: Carlsbad Vote Ignores Advice of Planners, Police on Teen Hangout,” San Diego Union-Tribune, November 21, 1984.
91. Joseph Sargent, dir., Nightmares (Universal Pictures, 1983); Nick Castle, dir. The Last Starfighter (Lorimar Films and Universal Pictures, 1984); “Pac-Man Fever,” Time, April 5, 1982.
92. “Pac-Man Fever”; Curt Suplee, “Video Game Vitality,” Washington Post, February 6, 1983.
93. Time, “Pac-Man Fever.”
94. “The Battle for America’s Youth,” New York Times, January 5, 1982.
95. Elkin, “The American Style.”
96. George Mihalka, dir., Pinball Summer (Film Ventures International, 1982); Clark, Joysticks.
97. Black Randy and the Metrosquad, “I Slept in an Arcade,” on Pass the Dust, I Think I’m Bowie (Dangerhouse Records, 1979).
98. Bonito v. Bloomfield, N.J. Super 390, LEXIS 1246 (1984). According to the briefs in this case, other states had similar provisions for regulating arcades or other businesses with coin-operated games, including New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and California.
99. Bonito v. Bloomfield.
100. Paul Hodge, “Video-Games Limit Proposed in Vienna,” Washington Post, January 26, 1983.
101. Amusing Sandwich v. City of Palm Springs, Court of Appeal of California, App. LEXIS 1796 (March 22, 1985).
102. Kieffer v. Spencer, Court of Appeal of California, App. LEXIS 1840 (March 29, 1984).
103. Besides those discussed below, other places where bans limiting access were attempted or instituted included Mesquite, Texas; Brookhaven, New York; Centereach, New York; Marlboro, Massachusetts; Oakland, California; Coral Gables, Florida; West Warwick, Rhode Island; Durham, New Hampshire; Plymouth, Massachusetts; and Hialeah, Florida. See Robert Sangeorge, “Supreme Court: Pool Halls to Video Arcades,” United Press International, November 8, 1981; Ellen Mitchell, “Video Game Rooms Targeted by Towns,” New York Times, December 13, 1981; “The Battle for America’s Youth”; “Two Cities Ban Video Games for Youngsters,” Associated Press, February 10, 1982; Hilary DeVries, “Pow! Bang! Towns Zap Video Games,” Christian Science Monitor, May 27, 1982; “Mass. Town Zaps Space Invaders,” United Press International, June 17, 1982; and Barry Klein, “Hialeah Plays for Keeps, Bans Video Games,” St. Petersburg Times, May 11, 1988.
104. “Two Cities Ban Video Games for Youngsters.”
105. Barbara Wierzbicki, “Video Arcades Meet Stiff Community Opposition,” InfoWorld, December 6, 1983; Elsa Brenner, “Arcade Ban Ends,” New York Times, April 26, 1998.
106. Phillippa K. Mezile, “Video Game Mania,” Washington Post, March 11, 1982.
107. Mitchell, “Video Game Rooms Targeted by Towns”; DeVries, “Pow! Bang! Towns Zap Video Games.”
108. “Shoplifting Is Number One Problem,” Shopping Center World (November 1978), 39.
109. Dr. Harold Gluck, “Beating the Shoplifter,” Shopping Center World (March 1979), 30.
110. Stephanie Dyer, “Designing ‘Community’ in the Cherry Hill Mall: The Social Production of a Consumer Space,” in “Constructing Image, Identity, and Space,” special issue, Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 9 (2003): 263–75; Victor Gruen, with Larry Smith, Shopping Town USA: The Planning of Shopping Centers (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1960); Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall, 324–25.
111. “Security … How to ‘Defend’ Your Investment,” cover of Shopping Center World (November 1977); Charles J. Hura, “Fire Protection: ‘Vital to Uninterrupted Operations,’ ” Shopping Center World (November 1977), 16; “Security Is Upgraded by Effective Use of Lighting,” Shopping Center World (November 1977), 18; Anthony N. Potter, “Mall Security Field Changing to Meet Needs of the Industry,” Shopping Center World (February 1983), 26.
112. Dr. Harold Gluck, “Burglars Are Professionals Trying to Make a Living,” Shopping Center World (November 1977), 13.
113. William R. Brown, “Protecting Shoppers Means Protecting Profits,” Shopping Center World (October 1984), 64.
114. Jeff Parsons, Blue Skies: A History of Cable Television (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 98, 228, 316.
115. Leon A. Wortman, Closed Circuit Television Handbook (Indianapolis: Howard W. Sams & Co., 1974), 164–66.
116. Wortman, Closed Circuit Television Handbook, 183–87.
117. Government Accounting Office (hereafter GAO), “Report to the Chairman, Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives: Video Surveillance,” GAO-03-748 (June 2003), 7–8; Marcus Nieto, “Public Video Surveillance: Is It an Effective Crime Prevention Tool?” California Research Bureau, CRB-97-005 (1997), http://
118. GAO, “Report to the Chairman, Committee on Government Reform,” 29–30.
119. A. Truett Ricks, B. G. Tillet, and Clifford W. Van Meter, Principles of Security, 3rd ed. (Cincinnati: Anderson, 1994), 170–71; Nieto, “Public Video Surveillance.”
120. L. Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic, 272–78. In tracing the battles over the legal definition of mall space as public or private through the postwar era, Cohen finds that the controlling Supreme Court decision, PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robbins (1980), recognized limited free speech rights in malls but affirmed an earlier ruling that states should decide for themselves the protections and limits to free speech within shopping centers.
121. Robert Bond, “Feeling Safe Again,” Shopping Center World (November 1989), 181.
122. Mike McCaffrey, with Larry Oxenham, “Find the Shoplifter—If You Can,” Shopping Center World (May 1983), 160.
123. Ricks, Tillet, and Van Meter, Principles of Security, 203–11.
124. Art Levine, “Watch Those Watchdogs! The Security Business Is Booming, but So Are Crimes by Guards,” U.S. News & World Report, July 11, 1988.
125. Levine, “Watch Those Watchdogs!”
126. Hardwick, Mall Maker, 4–5.
127. Gruen, Shopping Town USA, 257.
128. Gruen, Shopping Town USA, 264.
129. Mary Ellen Podmolik, “Malls Get Tough on Teenage Rowdies,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 10, 1992.
130. William Clay Cunningham, John J. Strauchs, and Clifford W. Van Meter, Private Security Trends, 1970–2000: The Hallcrest Report II (McLean, VA: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1990), 203.
131. Levine, “Watch Those Watchdogs!”
132. Cunningham, Strauchs, and Van Meter, Private Security Trends, 163.
133. Lisa Benton-Short, The National Mall: No Ordinary Public Space (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 5–6. Benton-Short provides a short but thorough discussion of contemporary definitions of public space.
134. “Malls for Shopping, Not Hanging Out,” USA Today, September 11, 1996; Jeff Flock, “Mall of America Imposes Curfew on Teenagers,” CNN Early Prime, October 4, 1996;
135. “Teen Spending Power,” Chain Store Age 73, No. 4 (April 1997): 24; John T. Riordan, “Just One Child Arrested,” Chain Store Age 73, No. 11 (November 1997): 160; Dan Hanover, “Child’s Play,” Chain Store Age 74, No. 5 (May 1998): 54–57.
136. Karl Vick, “Mall and Order in Minnesota: Rowdy Groups of Teens Prompt Huge Shopping Complex to Impose Weekend Curfew,” Washington Post, September 18, 1996; Craig Wilson, “ ‘Fight City’ No Longer: Mall of America Teen Curfew Off to a Quiet Start,” USA Today, October 7, 1996.
137. Maureen Busch, “Safety Is Our Top Priority,” USA Today, September 10, 1996.
138. Connie Gentry, “Lost Prevention,” Chain Store Age 77, No. 11 (November 2001): 121–24.
139. Brady C. Williamson and James A. Friedman, “State Constitutions: The Shopping Mall Cases,” Wisconsin Law Review, No. 3 (May–June 1998): 883–904; Vick, “Mall and Order in Minnesota.”
140. Meredith Robing, “Big Mall’s Curfew Raises Questions of Rights and Bias,” New York Times, September 4, 1996.
141. Robing, “Big Mall’s Curfew Raises Questions of Rights and Bias.”
142. “Many Teens Pay as Mall Punishes Sins of the Few,” USA Today, September 10, 1996.
143. Neal Karlen, “Tapping ‘Mom Power’ to Police a Huge Mall,” New York Times, December 19, 1996; “Parents Patrol Minnesota Mall to Enforce Teen Curfew,” Associated Press, February 19, 2001.
144. Kenneth Adams, “The Effectiveness of Juvenile Curfews at Crime Prevention,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 587 (May 2003): 137–38; Deborah Sharp, “Cities Big, Cities Small, City’s Mall Use Curfews,” USA Today, October 4, 1996; Jennifer Newsom, “Curfew Is Bane for Teens, Boon for Parents,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 8, 1996; Theresa C. Viloria, “By Their Own Rules in a World Perceived as Dangerous, Many Teens See Wisdom in Setting Some Limits,” San Jose Mercury News, November 5, 1996; “Bensalem Adopts New Teen Curfew,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 25, 1999. In Punished, Victor Rios places urban curfew laws within the broader context of punitive social control targeted at young men of color and as a technique to more easily arrest and incarcerate this population.
145. Meredith, “Big Mall’s Curfew Raises Questions of Rights and Bias”; Jeff Flock, “Morning News,” CNN, October 4, 1996; Chuck Haga, “Commerce and Curfew Clash at a Mall,” Christian Science Monitor, October 9, 1996; Chet Fuller, “Curfew Targets Teenagers at Minnesota Mall,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, October 21, 1996.
146. Sally Apgar, “Megamall’s Plan for Required Escorts Praised, Assailed,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, June 21, 1996.
147. Dirk Johnson, “Nice City’s Nasty Distinction: Murders Soar in Minneapolis,” New York Times, June 30, 1996.
148. Devah Pager and Hana Shephard, “The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets,” Annual Review of Sociology 34 (2008): 181–209; Zachary W. Brewster and Sarah Nell Rusche, “Quantitative Evidence of the Continuing Significance of Race: Tableside Racism in Full-Service Restaurants,” Journal of Black Studies 43, No. 4 (May 2012): 359–84; Jerome D. Williams, “Racial Discrimination in Retail Settings: A Liberation Psychology Perspective,” in Mia Bay and Ann Fabian, eds., Race and Retail: Consumption across the Color Line (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015), 263–77; Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, 265.
149. Connie Gentry, “Security Is Marketing,” Chain Store Age 74, No. 6 (June 1998): 121–24.
150. Wilson, “ ‘Fight City’ No Longer.”
151. Gentry, “Security Is Marketing.”
152. Riordan, “Just One Child Arrested.”
153. Jim McCartney, “The Megamall’s First Five Years,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, August 3, 1997; Kimberly Hayes, “Mall of America Is Pleased with Its Teen Policy’s Results,” Star Tribune, October 5, 1997; “Mall Curfew Called a Success,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, October 6, 1997.
154. Hayes, “Mall of America Is Pleased with Its Teen Policy’s Results.”
155. “Parents Patrol Minnesota Mall to Enforce Teen Curfew.”
156. Tom Steadman, “Malls Limit Teens with Curfews, Rules,” Associated Press, December 30, 1998; Jason Strait, “Mall Sets Teen Curfew to Curtail Rowdy Behavior,” Associated Press, March 30, 2001; “Coastal Georgia Mall Mandates Weekend Chaperons for Teen Visitors,” Associated Press, August 9, 2001.
157. Williamson and. Friedman, “State Constitutions”; Richard Epstein, “Takins, Exclusivity and Speech: The Legacy of PruneYard v. Robins,” University of Chicago Law Review 64, No. 1 (winter 1997): 21–56; Cohen, “From Town Center to Shopping Center,” 1070. In terms of the law, the nature of shopping mall space with regard to constitutional rights is largely determined at the state level per the decision in PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins (1980). This has resulted in individual states treating that space differently. Some, including New Jersey and five others, see shopping centers as public space for the purposes of free speech and right of assembly, while the rest do not or have yet to make a determination.
158. Suzi Migrani, Target Markets: International Terrorism Meets Global Capitalism in the Mall (Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2017), 81. Migrani calls this process of training mall patrons to spend more and loiter less “discipline and purchase.”
159. N. R. Kleinfeld, “Video Games Industry Comes Back to Earth” New York Times, October 17, 1983.
160. One industry observer wrote of the late 1980s arcade, “In addition to featuring new, improved games in a more attractive setting, the new and overhauled arcades are being targeted more toward the family than they were in the past according to retailers and operators.” Joe Morris, “Amusement Centers Are Winners Again,” Shopping Center World (September 1987), 60.
161. John McCloud, “Fun and Games Is Serious Business,” Shopping Center World (July 1989), 32.
162. McCloud, “Fun and Games Is Serious Business.”
163. June Williamson, “Protest on the Astroturf at Downtown Silver Spring: July 4, 2007,” in Niedt, Social Justice in Diverse Suburbs, 54–69. Williamson argues that this regulation of indoor malls led to new suburban forms that functioned outside strict surveillance as public space and were defended as openly accessible by local residents, as seen in her analysis of Silver Spring.
164. Evan McKenzie, Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). McKenzie calls this tendency “hostile privatism” and sees it in the movement toward privately owned communities governed by their residents, a movement that has upset the traditions of shared public space and government.
165. Teachers and psychologists were concerned with video game addictions and exposure to violent content that might spur adolescent players to adopt transgressive behavior. In 1981, the New York Times cited a Dr. Millman of New York Hospital who predicted a slippery slope from addiction to video games to more dangerous addictions: “The games present a seductive world. They offer a social structure, a system, a special language, something to relate around. There is the ritual of waiting on line, of being the predator in a violent game. From time immemorial kids have wanted to alter the way they felt—to be totally absorbed in an activity where they are out on an edge and can’t think of anything else. That’s why they try everything from gambling to glue sniffing.” Glenn Collins, “Children’s Video Games: Who Wins (or Loses)?” New York Times, August 31, 1981.
166. Edward J. Walsh, Rex Warland, and D. Clayton Smith, Don’t Burn it Here: Grassroots Challenges to Trash Incinerators (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
1. C. Everett Koop, “Raised on Rock ’n’ Roll: The Sound and the Fury,” address delivered at Parents’ Music Resource Center symposium, October 26, 1987.
2. Both the PMRC and Koop were part of a broader antipornography movement and the pornography wars in the postwar United States, as explained in Whitney Strub, Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).
3. Kruse and Zelizer, Fault Lines, ch. 7; William P. Putsis Jr., “Product Diffusion, Product Differentiation, and the Timing of New Product Introduction in the Television and VCR Market, 1964–85,” Managerial and Decision Economics 10, No. 1 (March 1989): 37–50; Thomas Eisenmann, “The U.S. Cable Television Industry, 1948–1995: Managerial Capitalism in Eclipse,” Business History Review 74, No. 1 (April 1, 2000): 19; Austan Goolsbee and Amil Petrin, “The Consumer Gains from Direct Broadcast Satellites and the Competition with Cable TV,” Econometrica 72, No. 2 (March 2004): 351–81.
4. Parsons, Blue Skies, 452–77.
5. Koop, “Raised on Rock ’n’ Roll,” 3.
6. Koop, “Raised on Rock ’n’ Roll,” 5. Koop echoed the concerns of evangelical Christians who also located the moral problems of American culture in the home. See Eileen Luhr, Witnessing Suburbia: Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 27.
7. “ ‘Missing Genius’ Apparently Tried Suicide, Police Say,” Associated Press, August 12, 1980; “Two Arraigned in ‘Satanic’ Slaying of 17-Year-Old,” Associated Press, July 6, 1984; “Parents of Teen Who Killed Self Sue Singer Ozzy Osbourne,” Associated Press, January 14, 1986; John Roll, “Whether Music Instigated Youth Suicide Pact Apparently Headed for Trial,” Associated Press, December 4, 1986.
8. Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional, 4–9.
9. Rose, Hip Hop Wars, 40.
10. Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 9–18.
11. Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime; Kelley, Yo’ Mama’ Disfunktional, 78–103; Sanford F. Schram, After Welfare: The Culture of Postindustrial Society (New York: New York University Press, 2000), ch. 2. Tricia Rose writes, “Over the last three decades, the public conversation has decidedly moved toward an easy acceptance of black ghetto existence and the belief that black people themselves are responsible for creating ghettos and for choosing to live in them, thus absolving the most powerful segments of society from any responsibility in the creation and maintenance of them.” Rose, Hip Hop Wars, 9.
12. Chappell, The War on Welfare, 11–15, 200–201; Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, “Guns and Butter: The Welfare State, the Carceral State, and the Politics of Exclusion in the Postwar United States,” Journal of American History 102, No. 1 (June 2015): 87–99.
13. Chappell, The War on Welfare, 200.
14. Coontz, The Way We Never Were; Hartman, A War for the Soul of America, 2–3.
15. Lawrence Grossberg, We Gotta Get Out of this Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992), 5–7; Strub, Perversion for Profit, 187–94; William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway Books, 1996), 232; Sara Diamond, Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Christian Right (New York: Guilford Press, 1998), 63–66.
16. Self, All in the Family, 349.
17. Charles W. Phillips, “Focus on the Family,” Saturday Evening Post (April 1982), 34–37, 121; Richard N. Ostling, “Jerry Falwell’s Crusade,” Time, September 2, 1985; Robert Ajemian, “Jerry Falwell Spreads the Word,” Time, September 2, 1985; Richard N. Ostling, “A Jerry-Built Coalition Regroups,” Time, November 16, 1987; “Falwell’s Farewell,” National Review, July 14, 1989; Diamond, Not by Politics Alone, 18–41.
18. Luhr, Witnessing Suburbia, 23, 46; Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at a White House Ceremony Honoring the Winners in the Secondary School Recognition Program and the Exemplary Private School Recognition Project,” Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, October 1, 1985, https://
19. Hartman, A War for the Soul of America, 2–3.
20. Hartman, A War for the Soul of America, 171–200; Kelley, Yo Mama’s Disfunktional; Chappell, The War on Welfare; Kohler-Hausmann, Getting Tough.
21. Ronald Reagan, “Message to the Congress Transmitting the Annual Economic Report of the President,” The American Presidency Project, February 1, 1982, http://
22. Schulman, The Seventies, 235–36.
23. Gil Troy, Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 80s (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 290.
24. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks on the Signing of the Proclamation of ‘Just Say No’ to Drugs Week,” Pub. Papers 658, May 20, 1986.
25. Tom Adams and Hank Resnik, “Teens in Action: Creating a Drug-Free Future for America’s Youth” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration, 1985).
26. Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 276–333; Scott O. Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz, “Why ‘Just Say No’ Doesn’t Work,” Scientific American, January 1, 2014.
27. Troy, Morning in America, 15, 267.
28. May, Homeward Bound, 16–37. This figuring of the suburban home was reminiscent of that during the heyday of the Cold War when, Tyler May argues, the suburban home was a bulwark against social change and the broader sense of imminent nuclear war—a domestic iteration of the Cold War strategy of containment of communism.
29. Margaret Hornblower, “Youths’ Deaths Tied to Satanic Rite,” Washington Post, July 9, 1984.
30. “Two Arraigned in ‘Satanic’ Slaying of 17-Year-Old,” Associated Press, July 6, 1984.
31. Robert D. McFadden, “Youth Found Hanged in L.I. Cell after Arrest in Ritual Killing,” New York Times, July 8, 1984.
32. Sara Rimer, “Northport Residents Express Disbelief at News of Slaying,” New York Times, July 8, 1984.
33. “The Devil Worshippers,” 20/20 (ABC News, May 16, 1985), available on YouTube, https://
34. Hornblower, “Youths’ Deaths Tied to Satanic Rite”; Lindsay Gruson, “ ‘Satanic Ritual’ Is Now Ruled Out in June Slaying of Youth in L.I. Woods,” New York Times, December 27, 1987; “Youth Charged in ‘Satanic’ Slaying Found Dead in Jail Cell,” Associated Press, July 7, 1984.
35. “Teen Found Innocent in Killing,” Associated Press, April 25, 1985.
36. Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, 4–6.
37. Lynn Schofield Clark, From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 27–28.
38. Stephanie Mansfield, “The Man in the Moon,” Washington Post, January 23, 1982.
39. Sandra Salmans, “Fighting That Old Devil Rumor,” Saturday Evening Post (October 1982).
40. Robert Walser, Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), 10–13.
41. Eileen Luhr, “Metal Missionaries to the Nation: Christian Heavy Metal Music, ‘Family Values,’ and Youth Culture, 1984–1994,” American Quarterly 57, No. 21 (March 2005): 103–28.
42. An urban legend from the 1970s held that KISS stood for Knights in Satan’s Service.
43. Luhr, Witnessing Suburbia, 49.
44. Kevin Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2015).
45. Divina Infusino, “Senators’ Wives Aim to Revolutionize Disc Ratings,” San Diego Union-Tribune, August 7, 1985.
46. “Heavy Metal,” 20/20 (ABC News, May 21, 1987), available on YouTube, http://
47. “Youth Charged in ‘Satanic’ Slaying Found Dead in Jail Cell.”
48. Hornblower, “Youths’ Deaths Tied to Satanic Rite.”
49. Laurinda Keys, untitled article, Associated Press, February 26, 1982; Kenneth Stoffels, “TSR Sees Profits in Its Future following Austerity Measures,” Business Journal–Milwaukee, January 27, 1986; Mary Austin, “The Assignment: Find Out about Dungeons and Dragons,” Christian Science Monitor, February 9, 1981; Anne H. Oman, “Dungeons & Dragons: It’s Not Just a Game, It’s an Adventure,” Washington Post, February 20, 1981.
50. Thomas Radecki, “Dungeons & Dragons Controversy,” United Press International, January 15, 1985.
51. “Missing ‘Genius’ Apparently Tried Suicide, Police Say,” Associated Press, August 12, 1980.
52. Tom Zito, “Dungeons and Dragons: In This Fantasy Land of Power and Treasure, You Don’t Play Around,” Washington Post, September 7, 1983.
53. Rona Jaffe, Mazes and Monsters (New York: Dell, 1981); Steven Hilliard Stern, dir., Mazes and Monsters (McDermott Productions et al., 1982).
54. Jaffe, Mazes and Monsters, 13.
55. Pat Pulling, with Kathy Cawthon, The Devil’s Web: Who Is Stalking Your Children for Satan? (Lafayette, LA: Huntington House, 1989), 11–12.
56. Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (hereafter BADD), “Introductory Letter to Supporters,” 1984 (copy in author’s possession).
57. BADD, “Introductory Letter to Supporters.”
58. BADD, “Introductory Letter to Supporters.”
59. Ed Bradley, “Dungeons & Dragons,” 60 Minutes (CBS), September 15, 1985.
60. Loren K. Wiseman and Michael A. Stackpole, “Questions & Answers about Role-Playing Games,” pamphlet prepared for the Game Manufacturing Association, available at Internet Archive, https://
61. “Parents of Teen Who Killed Self Sue Singer Ozzy Osbourne.”
62. Roll, “Whether Music Instigated Youth Suicide Pact Apparently Headed for Trial.”
63. Robert E. McKeown, Steven P. Cuffe, and Richard M. Schulz, “US Suicide Rates by Age Group, 1970–2002: An Examination of Recent Trends,” American Journal of Public Health 96, No. 10 (2006): 1744–51.
64. Jack McCollum et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants v. CBS, Inc., et al., Court of Appeal of California, Second Appellate District, Division Three, No. B025565, July 1988.
65. Roll, “Whether Music Instigated Youth Suicide Pact Apparently Headed for Trial.”
66. McCollum v. CBS, 8; Sandra Chereb, “Lawyer: Judas Priest Album Sent ‘Boys over the Edge to Eternity,’ ” Associated Press, July 16, 1990.
67. McCollum v. CBS, opinion of Judge Croskey, note 22, p. 12.
68. Tipper Gore, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society: What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Children from Sex and Violence in the Media (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1987; reprinted, New York: Bantam Press, 1988), 104.
69. Sandra Chereb, “British Rock Singer Expresses Relief, Concern over Ruling,” Associated Press, August 24, 1990; McCollum v. CBS, 2–6.
70. Dionne Searcey, “Behind the Music: Sleuths Seek Messages in Lyrical Backspin,” Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2006.
71. Jon Pareles, “Speed-Metal: Extreme, Yes; Evil, No,” New York Times, September 25, 1988.
72. Richard Deatley, “Heavy Metal Singer Denies His Song Caused Suicide,” Associated Press, January 21, 1986.
73. Deatley, “Heavy Metal Singer.”
74. Ronald Reagan, “Youth Suicide Prevention Month,” June 4, 1985, Pub. Papers, 737.
75. Melinda Cooper, Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism (New York: Zone Books, 2017), 190–91.
76. James S. Newton, “Suicides Put ‘Burnouts’ in Spotlight,” New York Times, March 13, 1987; Jane Gross, “Bergenfield Adults View Youths Who Lack Hope,” New York Times, March 18, 1987; Larry Martz, with Peter McKillop, Andy Murr, and Ray Anello, “The Copycat Suicides,” Newsweek, March 23, 1987.
77. Martz, “The Copycat Suicides”; Richard Harrington, “Bedeviling Rumors,” Washington Post, November 20, 1985. The press characterized AC/DC as satanic based on the band’s song titles, such as “Highway to Hell” and “Night Prowler,” the latter supposedly about the serial killer Richard Ramirez, the “night stalker.” Further, rumors persisted that the band’s name was some sort of abbreviation or satanic code for “antichrist devil’s crusade” or the like.
78. Gross, “Bergenfield Adults View Youths Who Lack Hope.”
79. Lindsay Tanner, “Police Link Two Young Suicides with New Jersey Deaths,” Associated Press, March 13, 1987.
80. Martz, “The Copycat Suicides.”
81. “Teen’s Suicide Linked to Six Others, Police Say,” Associated Press, March 16, 1987; Michael Fleeman, “Young Couple Attempts Suicide in Same Garage Four Teen-Agers Used,” Associated Press, March 17, 1987.
82. Julia Dolan, “Community Tries to Understand Teen-Agers’ Suicides,” Associated Press, March 12, 1987; Jane Gross, “Amid Grief, Classmates Fault Earlier Response,” New York Times, March 12, 1987; Jane E. Brody, “Youth Suicide: A Common Pattern,” New York Times, March 12, 1987; Malcolm Ritter, “Studies Suggest Suicide News Can Trigger More Elsewhere, But Questions Remain,” Associated Press, March 13, 1987; Michael Dobbs, “After Suicides, Town Ponders How It Failed 4 Teen-Agers,” Washington Post, March 13, 1987; Martz, “The Copycat Suicides”; Charles S. Taylor, “CDC Says Youth Suicides Still Increasing,” United Press International, March 10, 1988; and Robert Byrd, “CDC Recommends 10 Steps for Handling ‘Cluster’ Suicides,” Associated Press, August 25, 1988.
83. “Heavy Metal.”
84. Walser, introduction to Running with the Devil. Walser argues that 1980s heavy metal was a particularly suburban genre of popular music.
85. Phillips said that Teaneck High School was known for academic excellence, but, like most high schools across America, it also had a group of metalheads. The implication was that Teaneck High was the “average” suburban high school with its requisite metalhead population. One of the kids says, “Not everyone has to go to college—I think I’ve had enough years of school.”
86. Gaines, Teenage Wasteland, 237–61.
87. On the show, de-metaling consisted mostly of tearing down posters, purging music collections of heavy metal, and changing teenagers’ wardrobes. Waksman, “Suburban Noise.” Waksman tells a similar story about 1960s teenage suburban garage rockers forced to take down their posters and put away their instruments because of the negative influence of rock and roll.
88. Pat H. Broeske, “Deprivation and the Power of Punk,” Washington Post, November 29, 1985.
89. Ellis E. Conklin, “Punk and Heavy Metal: Teen Rebellion or Something Darker?” United Press International, May 25, 1985.
90. Conklin, “Punk and Heavy Metal.”
91. Gregory Bodenhamer, Back in Control: How to Get Your Children to Behave (New York: Prentice Hall, 1988), xii.
92. Parents Music Resource Council, Rising to the Challenge, 2nd ed. (Video Visions, 1988).
93. “Frank Zappa vs. Candy Stroud,” Nightwatch with Charlie Rose (CBS, August 25, 1985), available on YouTube, http://
94. Gore, Raising PG Kids, 28.
95. Richard Harrington, “X-Rated Lyrics Bill on Maryland Slate,” Washington Post, February 8, 1986; Richard Harrington, “Porno Wars, Part XXX,” Washington Post, February 12, 1986; Jon Pareles, “A Case against Censoring Rock Lyrics,” New York Times, May 3, 1987. Some legislative initiatives were considered that would have regulated who could buy records or go to concerts. The two best examples were considered by the Maryland House of Representatives and the San Antonio City Council. Maryland delegate Pauline Toth lost a vote to have her bill made into law, while the ordinance in San Antonio to restrict underage concertgoers was passed but proved largely irrelevant to curbing heavy metal concerts in the city.
96. US Senate, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, First Session on Contents of Music and the Lyrics of Records, September 19, 1985 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1985), 11. S. Hrg. 99–529, 11.
97. Untitled article, Associated Press, June 5, 1985.
98. Allan Parachini, “’84 Youth Suicides a Blip in 7-Year Drop, Report Says,” Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1986.
99. US Senate, First Session on Contents of Music and the Lyrics of Records, 1.
100. US Senate, First Session on Contents of Music and the Lyrics of Records, 56.
101. Gore, Raising PG Kids, 43.
102. Gore, Raising PG Kids, 12.
103. Gore, Raising PG Kids, 13.
104. Gore, Raising PG Kids, 117, 118. The focus on heavy metal and satanism spun off a group of “experts” who went into great detail about satanic cult activities. To a large degree, they imparted advice similar to the PMRC’s, though the Satan experts’ came from an overtly Christian perspective. Two examples of this genre that emerged in the late 1980s were Thomas W. Wedge with Robert L. Powers, The Satan Hunter (Canton, OH: Daring Books, 1988); and Bob Larson, Satanism: The Seduction of America’s Youth (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1989).
105. Gore, Raising PG Kids, 119.
106. Gore, Raising PG Kids, 114.
107. Gore, Raising PG Kids, 160–64. Gore provided twelve actions for parents carry out in the community—most of which follow the program of the PMRC. These approaches valorized the home, local action, and individual freedom and responsibility, as well as the exercise of consumer rights, including local boycotts, letter writing, sharing concerns with fellow parents, organizing community groups, and monitoring radio, television, movie theaters, and video rental stores.
108. Gore, Raising PG Kids, 157.
109. The narrator also noted that a hydraulic penis, reported to be twenty feet in length, was seen at Beastie Boys concerts. This fact is recited in such a way that it seems a ten- or fifteen-foot hydraulic penis would have been more appropriate.
110. Pat Pulling, with Kathy Cawthon, The Devil’s Web: Who Is Stalking Your Children for Satan? (Lafayette, LA: Huntington House, 1989).
111. Pat A. Pulling, Pat Dempsey, and Mary Dempsey, “Dungeons and Dragons: Witchcraft, Suicide, Violence,” n.d., available at Internet Archive, https://
112. Pulling, The Devil’s Web, x.
113. Pulling, The Devil’s Web, 27.
114. Pulling, The Devil’s Web, 12.
115. US Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs and the Judiciary, First Session on Contents of Music and the Lyrics of Records September 19, 1985 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1985), 11. S. Hrg. 99-529, 11.
116. Josef Adalian, “Coverage of Shootings Blankets TV,” Variety, April 22, 1999.
117. Dave Cullen, Columbine (New York: Twelve, 2009), 107.
118. Eric Harris, “Manifesto,” FBI Report on Columbine, Part 1, April 22, 1999, p. 32, available at Congressional and Federal Web Harvests, National Archives, https://
119. Bill Hutchinson and K. C. Baker, with Virginia Breen, “Two Looked to Darkness,” Daily News, April 22, 1999; Michael Fleeman, “Goth or Not? High School Massacre Puts Spotlight on Dark Sub-culture,” Associated Press, April 22, 1999; “Our Children Too Often Hear That Violence Is the Solution,” Detroit News, April 22, 1999; Jodi Wilgoren, “Society of Outcasts Began with a $99 Black Coat,” New York Times, April 25, 1999.
120. Robin McDowell, “Colorado Suspects Called Outcasts,” Associated Press, April 20, 1999.
121. Patrick O’Driscoll, “Shooting Suspects Seen as Outcasts,” USA Today, April 21, 1999; Brent Pulley, “Terror in Littleton: The Trench Coat Mafia,” New York Times, April 21, 1999.
122. John Cloud, “Special Report: Troubled Teens,” Time, May 31, 1999.
123. Karen Thomas, “Surrounded by Sound and Fury: Whirlwind of Violence, Hate Sweeps Kids Online and Off,” USA Today, April 22, 1999; Steve Dunleavy, “Blind Could See It Coming,” New York Post, April 22, 1999.
124. Cullen, Columbine, 177–81, 222–24.
125. Cullen, Columbine, 227–28.
126. “Phenomenon of the Gothic Movement, 20/20 (ABC News, April 21, 1999).
127. Steve Carney, “Kids Who Kill: How to See the Warning Signs in Today’s Kids,” Daily News of Los Angeles, April 22, 1999.
128. CNN, “Columbine Shooting Leaves 15 Dead,” Inside Politics, April 21, 1999.
129. Timothy Egan, “Violence by Youths: Looking for Answers,” New York Times, April 22, 1999; Erica Goode, “When Violent Fantasy Emerges as Reality,” New York Times, April 25, 1999; Patricia Hersch, “Life in the Lost Lane,” Washington Post, April 25, 1999; Sarah Boxer, “When Fun Isn’t Funny,” New York Times, May 1, 1999; Chris Taylor, “Digital Dungeons,” Time, May 3, 1999; Andrew Pollack, “Video Game Industry Gathers Under Siege,” New York Times, May 14, 1999; “Video Battlers Stick by Their Games,” New York Times, June 20, 1999.
130. The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News, April 21, 1999.
131. Thomas, “Surrounded by Sound and Fury.”
132. “School Shootings,” Hannity and Colmes, Fox News Channel, April 22, 1999.
133. Frank Bruni, “Senate Narrowly Rejects Plan to Restrict Gun-Show Sales,” New York Times, May 13, 1999.
134. Andrew Ferguson, “What Politicians Can’t Do,” Time, May 3, 1999.
135. “Columbine Shooting Leaves 15 Dead,” Inside Politics, CNN, April 21, 1999.
136. CNN, “Columbine Shooting Leaves 15 Dead.”
137. James Brooke, “Terror in Littleton: The Overview,” New York Times, April 20, 1999.
138. “Anti-violence Help for Parents,” Associate Press, May 5, 1999.
139. “Shock and Horror Grip Littleton and the Nation in the Wake of Columbine High School Shooting,” CNN, April 21, 1999.
140. Fleeman, “Goth or Not?”
141. Tasha E. Kelter, “No Answers,” Daily Nebraskan, April 22, 1999.
142. Robert King and Amy Schatz, “Schools Focus on Safety,” St. Petersburg Times, April 22, 1999.
143. Erica Goode, “Deeper Truths Sought in Violence by Youths,” New York Times, May 4, 1999.
144. Ethan Bronner, “Experts Urge Swift Action to Fight Depression, Isolation and Aggression,” New York Times, April 22, 1999.
145. Marilyn Manson, “Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?” Rolling Stone, June 24, 1999.
146. Cullen argues the first wave of reporting and commentary firmly set the narrative of what happened. Cullen, Columbine, 213.
147. Cullen, Columbine, 149.
148. CNN, “Columbine Shooting Leaves 15 Dead.”
1. “NIMBY? Trash Woes Are Ours to Cure” editorial, Post Standard, February 21, 1989; Robert A. Hamilton, “The View from Preston: The Town That Won’t Give Up Its Fight against an Incinerator,” New York Times, April 16, 1989; Donna Schaper, “Yes in My Back Yard,” New York Times, June 18, 1989; “Beating Back Nimby—Creativity Important in Siting Interim Jail,” (editorial), Seattle Times, March 11, 1990; James Fink, “Nimbys Seen as Amherst’s Grinch,” Business First-Buffalo, March 25, 1991; Steven A. Holmes, “When Grass Looks Greener on Our Side of the Fence,” New York Times, April 21, 1991; Kathryn Balint, “Nuclear Waste Piles Up While Dump Debated,” San Diego Union-Tribune, July 26, 1991; Angela Logomasini, “Trashing the Nimby Syndrome,” Journal of Commerce, July 6, 1992; Andrew L. Yarrow, “ ‘Not in My Back Yard’ and Repercussions,” New York Times, October 4, 1992; Jeff Webb, “NIMBYs Will Pressure New Commissioners,” St. Petersburg Times, November 22, 1992.
2. Rae Tyson, “USA’s Backyard Backlash: Communities Want Projects Put Elsewhere,” USA Today, July 19, 1990; Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring, 3.
3. Angela Logomasini, “Trashing the NIMBY Syndrome,” Journal of Commerce, July 6, 1992.
4. Michael Kinch, introduction to Between Hope and Fear: A History of Vaccines and Human Immunity (New York: Pegasus Books, 2018); Andrea Kitta, Vaccinations and Public Concern in History (New York: Routledge, 2012), 58–90; Michael Willrich, Pox: An American History (New York: Penguin, 2011), 343.
5. Gioielli, Environmental Activism and the Urban Crisis; Andrew Zaleski, “The Unequal Burden of Lead,” CityLab, January 2, 2020, https://
6. Kinch, Between Hope and Fear.
7. “Ring Video Doorbell Commercial,” August 15, 2015, available on YouTube, https://
8. Rani Molla, “The Rise of Fear-Based Social Media like Nextdoor, Citizen, and now Amazon’s Neighbors,” Vox, May 7, 2019; Michael Harriot, “App Developer Responds to ‘The Racist Nextdoor,’ ” The Root, July 1, 2019.
9. Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 1–19; Gilmore, Golden Gulag, 5–30.
10. Davis, City of Quartz, 253–57.
11. Paresh Dave, “Ring Modernized the Doorbell, Then Its Inventor, Jamie Siminoff, Went to War Against Crime,” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2017.
12. Josh Sanburn, “Why the Death of Malls Is about More than Shopping,” Time, July 20, 2017.
13. Sanburn, “Why the Death of Malls Is about More than Shopping.”
14. Natasha Geiling, “The Death and Rebirth of the American Mall,” Smithsonian, November 25, 2014.
15. Nelson D. Schwartz, “The Economics (and Nostalgia) of Dead Malls,” New York Times, January 3, 2015; Amanda Kolson Hurley, “Shopping Malls Aren’t Actually Dying,” CityLab, March 25, 2015, https://
16. James Witte, Marissa Kiss, and Randy Lynn, “The Internet and Social Inequalities in the U.S.” in Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn W. Muschert, eds., The Digital Divide: The Internet and Social Inequality in International Perspective (London: Routledge, 2013), 67–84; Karl Vick, “The Digital Divide: A Quarter of the Nation Is without Broadband,” Time, March 30, 2017.
17. Zelizer and Kruse, Fault Lines, ch. 12.