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At the beginning of the sixties the American sociologist Bennett M. Berger published his first book calling into question what was then referred to as the ‘suburban myth’ of the United States. When published it was neither a best seller nor considered reputable research. It was probably one of the first publications on working class suburbia; if not an original view of suburbia, it offered a different view from those of the early fifties. This article studies the book and introduces its contents to the French public in order to evaluate the study fifty years after its completion.