Environmental historian Adam Rome examines the postwar suburban building boom as an environmental crisis that sparked new forms of environmental consciousness. Tracing the expansion of tract housing from Levittown through the 1970s, he documents how mass development destroyed wetlands, increased erosion, and polluted waterways, while builders and local officials prioritized construction over environmental protection. The book follows the emergence of resistance: scientists who documented environmental damage, middle-class homeowners who organized to protect their property values, and a nascent environmental movement that saw suburbia as symptom of broader ecological crisis. Rome shows how concerns about suburban development fed into the environmental movement of the late 1960s, connecting local NIMBY activism to national legislation like the Clean Water Act. His research complicates narratives that treat suburbs simply as sites of conformity and consumption, revealing them also as arenas of political mobilization. Rome draws on developer records, government documents, and contemporary journalism to reconstruct debates about land use that shaped the American landscape. For readers interested in environmental history, suburban development, or the origins of contemporary environmentalism, this work provides scholarly analysis of how the bulldozer became a symbol of ecological threat.