In Perfect Communities, Edward Berenson offers a well-researched and balanced account of William Levitt, the entrepreneur whose innovations in mass housing construction helped define postwar suburban America. Berenson provides a thoughtful examination of Levitt’s racial exclusion policies within the broader context of mid-20th-century segregation, and he illuminates their long-term consequences for housing inequality and racial wealth disparity in the United States. Levitt had an early recognition of the geographic disconnect between affordable housing and employment centers, which is a tension that continues to underlie America’s housing crisis. Berenson effectively demonstrates how Levitt’s ambitions, though often curtailed by war, economic shifts, or corporate disinterest, foreshadowed enduring structural problems in urban planning.

Despite these strengths, the book suffers from a lack of narrative cohesion to keep it interesting. While Perfect Communities is a valuable contribution to the history of suburbanization, it feels more like a textbook than casual reading, which is fine if you mainly just want the information, but I often want something more to keep me interested.