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Whose Hamptons Are They Anyway?,
This
review is from: The End of the Hamptons: Scenes from the Class Struggle
in America's Paradise (Hardcover)
I recently finished reading The End
of the Hamptons.I found it fascinating reading, scholarly yet accessible to the general reader.
Dolgon creates a strong sense of place, of history and of the present day class and cultural conflicts that continue to shape the Hamptons.
He gets beneath the glitter and the stereotypes to uncover the forces at work.
As a Cape Codder concerned about development and the "end of Cape Cod" as I know it I found the book to have relevance for communities far beyond the Hamptons.
The question of whose voices are heard in the continual struggle for land and resources is a central question confronting us all.
After providing historical background, Dolgon describes recent events: the stuggles and interactions of Native Americans, environmentalists, fishermen, service workers, and the uber-wealthy.
Such struggles and interactions are going on all over America, and all over the world. With this in mind, the book is truly worth the time.
The author has done little serious research and conflates gossip with his superficial and dated Marxism.
Indeed, to suggest that the secessionist movement to create Peconic County was Marxist inspired, as he does, borders on the psychotic.
"The Group for America's South Fork" was founded yet the author spoke to neither of the founders.
He gives enormous credit to one individual, Hal Ross, who played only a minor role in the environmental movement that arose from a passion to protect the farms.
As the author of the Suffolk County Farmland Preservation Act, I find this incredible.
There is a real need for a serious study of what happened on the South Fork politically and socially, but this is not it.
Ian Marceau, who was the first director of
The Group for America's South Fork,
and who is lauded as a kind of saviour by the author, told everyone that he would work for the developers if they paid him more than the environmental group did.
But don't look for this or any other truth in this slight and useless tract.
The author's hatred of the Hamptons has its origins in the politics of resentment, which is utterly tiresome.
Richard Cummings, author. Proposition 14-A Secessionist Remedy
4 of 5 people found the following review
helpful
5.0 out of 5
stars A deeply
informative and richly textured book, May 31, 2005
By
This
review is from: The End of the Hamptons: Scenes from the Class Struggle
in America's Paradise (Hardcover)
Dolgon strips away the Vanity
Fair-style pretension and name-dropping absurdity so often associated with this
topic and exposes a far more interesting Hamptons - a Hamptons of richly
textured history, colorful and varied people, and deeply ingrained dichotomies,
contradictions, struggles and patterns of inequality. Dolgon is original.
He has chosen the more challenging path for this work.
To be sure, a trashy love letter to New York Society would have found its summer readership.
But Dolgon takes the less worn path, getting under the skin of The Hamptons and examining the area through the lens of its people and through multiple generations of social change.
The result is a fascinating book and an original take on an area whose depth and meaning is so often overlooked for its pretty face. This is an excellent book.
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