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