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Inventing Great Neck: Jewish Identity and the American Dream.

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Inventing Great Neck: Jewish Identity and the American Dream. By Judith S. Goldstein. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006. ix + 205 pp.

In Inventing Great Neck: Jewish Identity and the American Dream, Judith Goldstein explores "one of America's most fascinating suburbs" (1), offering a study of ethnic and religious transformation that focuses in particular on the impact of the Jewish community. This entertaining and well-written work examines Great Neck's individual histories and clashes over community identity from the 1920S through the 1960s. It complements recent studies of ethnic experiences of suburbia, including Mary Jane Capozzoli's Three Generations of Italian American Women in Nassau County and Sarah Mahler's Salvadorans in Suburbia. (1)

Goldstein selected Great Neck, a Long Island suburb of New York City, for her study, not because she grew up there, but because of the city's varied claims to national recognition. During the 1920s, Great Neck was home to new celebrity writers, journalists, and Broadway and Hollywood stars. Later, in the 1940s, 1950S, and...

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