Product Details
Simon & Schuster, June 2000
Hardcover, 544 pages
ISBN-10: 0684832836
ISBN-13: 9780684832838
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.
Alan RyanThe New York Review of BooksRich, dense, thoughtful, fascinating...packed with provocative information about the social and political habits of twentieth-century Americans.
Richard FlacksLos Angeles TimesPutnam styles himself as a kind of sociological detective....The reader experiences the suspense that can happen in both detective fiction and science.
Wendy RahnThe Washington PostThis is a very important book; it's the de Tocqueville of our generation. And you don't often hear an academic like me say those sorts of things.
Alan EhrenhaltThe Wall Street JournalA powerful argument...presented in a lucid and readable way.
Julia KellerChicago TribuneA learned and clearly focused snapshot of a crucial moment in American history.
William KristolEditor and Publisher, The Weekly StandardWhether you agree with the central thesis of Bowling Alone, Putnam's argument deserves to be seriously considered by everyone interested in our social well-being. Each of us should read Bowling Alone alone
-- and then discuss it together.
Times Online, October 7, 2009
...and a common enemy to nurture our communities?” Seldon asks. Yes — according to the latest research of Robert Putnam, the American academic who has closely studied social capital and trust, most notably in his book Bowling Alone. ...
Times Online, September 26, 2009
...and a common enemy to nurture our communities?” Seldon asks. Yes — according to the latest research of Robert Putnam, the American academic who has closely studied social capital and trust, most notably in his book Bowling Alone. ...
Miami Herald, August 9, 2009
...Ourselves and Our Neighbors. Hal Niedzviecki. City Lights. 296 pages. $17.95 in paper. We may still be bowling alone, as Harvard professor Robert Putnam famously observed in his 1995 article about the decline of civic organizations. But it's ...
Forbes.com, August 6, 2009
...s only a facade of being connected. It can make you lonelier,' he says. In his 1995 essay Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, detailed how social isolation damages civic and ...
Washington Post, August 1, 2009
...Ourselves and Our Neighbors By Hal Niedzviecki City Lights. 296 pp. Paperback, $17.95 We may still be bowling alone, as Harvard professor Robert Putnam famously observed in his 1995 article about the decline of civic organizations. But it's ...
National Post, April 22, 2009
...civilization with its secularism and isolationism has done much to break down the tribal glue. Social observers like Robert Putnam, in his book, Bowling Alone, As evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar says, modern human tribes are based on ...
Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2009
...stress.' The couple said they were partly inspired by Harvard University professor Robert D. Putnam's 2000 book 'Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community,' which argued that television and suburban sprawl created an ...
Robert D. Putnam's Books
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