“Putnam is technically a Harvard social scientist, but a better description might be poet laureate of civil society.”
Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated
The Collapse and Revival of American Community
Description
Once we bowled in leagues, usually after work -- but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified in this brilliant volume, Bowling Alone, which The Economist hailed as "a prodigious achievement."
Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans' changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how social structures -- whether they be PTA, church, or political parties -- have disintegrated. Until the publication of this groundbreaking work, no one had so deftly diagnosed the harm that these broken bonds have wreaked on our physical and civic health, nor had anyone exalted their fundamental power in creating a society that is happy, healthy, and safe.
Like defining works from the past, such as The Lonely Crowd and The Affluent Society, and like the works of C. Wright Mills and Betty Friedan, Putnam's Bowling Alone has identified a central crisis at the heart of our society and suggests what we can do.
Reviews
“An ambitious book . . . Bowling Alone is a prodigious achievement. Mr. Putnam’s scholarship is wide-ranging, his intelligence luminous, his tone modest, his prose unpretentious and frequently funny.”
“A mountainous, momentous work . . . . [Putnam’s] put his finger on an important sociological development.”
“Bowling Alone provides important new data on the trends in civic engagement and social capital. . . . It is a formidable achievement. It will henceforth be impossible to discuss these issues knowledgeably without reading Putnam’s book and thinking about it.”
