Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

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, 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.

• Better Together: Restoring the American Community
• Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis
• Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream
• Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton Studies in Political Behavior)
• We Wanted Workers: Unraveling the Immigration Narrative
• How Cities Work : Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken
• Who Owns the Future?
• Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
• The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters
• Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences)