"Protecting Suburban America: Gentrification, Advocacy, and the Historic Imaginary will undoubtedly take a prime spot on the bookshelves of both professional and grassroots preservationists ... as well as public historians, memory scholars, and cultural historians broadly conceived. Indeed, the ethnography alone makes it worthwhile, while the nuanced look at race and power will no doubt spark fruitful discussion among those who read and discuss it. - Heritage & SocietyThis comprehensive study of gentrification in California deftly exposes the persistent linkage between historic conservation and genealogical passion on the one hand and covert forms of social and ethnic exclusion on the other. It is a major contribution to our understanding of an increasingly common form of structural violence as well as of the surprisingly varied motives that drive the passion for the past. - Michael Herzfeld, Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University"