Municipal debt is a secret American pastime, defining—and dividing—suburbs across the United States. In his new book, Cracked Foundations: Debt and Inequality in Suburban America, the urban historian Michael Glass looks behind the marketing that attracted flocks of Americans to places like Levittown and uses debt as a lens through which to understand suburban disparities. The U.S. is one of the only countries in the world where municipalities raise money primarily through bonds, and their differential treatment on the private market has quietly driven inequality across the nation. Saddled with higher interest rates on their bonds, people in poor cities and towns today pay double the amount in property taxes, often suffer higher home-foreclosure rates, and wield paltrier education budgets compared with their wealthier counterparts. Major cities face the consequences of municipal bonds, too—Chicago famously leased its parking meters to investors in order to pay off its debts—but they employ teams of bond experts to negotiate the best terms. Small cities and towns, whose bond coordinator is often a single financial manager juggling dozens of other tasks, can do less to protect themselves from high interest rates.