Books : Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community
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by: Robert D. Putnam
List Price: $16.00Amazon.com's Price: $10.88 You Save: $5.12 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.0973
EAN: 9780743203043
ISBN: 0743203046
Label: Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 544
Publication Date: August 07, 2001
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Sales Rank: 3333
Studio: Simon & Schuster
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Editorial Review:
Product 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.
Amazon.com Review:
Few people outside certain scholarly circles had heard the name Robert D. Putnam before 1995. But then this self-described 'obscure academic' hit a nerve with a journal article called 'Bowling Alone.' Suddenly he found himself invited to Camp David, his picture in People magazine, and his thesis at the center of a raging debate. In a nutshell, he argued that civil society was breaking down as Americans became more disconnected from their families, neighbors, communities, and the republic itself. The organizations that gave life to democracy were fraying. Bowling became his driving metaphor. Years ago, he wrote, thousands of people belonged to bowling leagues. Today, however, they're more likely to bowl alone: Television, two-career families, suburban sprawl, generational changes in values--these and other changes in American society have meant that fewer and fewer of us find that the League of Women Voters, or the United Way, or the Shriners, or the monthly bridge club, or even a Sunday picnic with friends fits the way we have come to live. Our growing social-capital deficit threatens educational performance, safe neighborhoods, equitable tax collection, democratic responsiveness, everyday honesty, and even our health and happiness. The conclusions reached in the book Bowling Alone rest on a mountain of data gathered by Putnam and a team of researchers since his original essay appeared. Its breadth of information is astounding--yes, he really has statistics showing people are less likely to take Sunday picnics nowadays. Dozens of charts and graphs track everything from trends in PTA participation to the number of times Americans say they give 'the finger' to other drivers each year. If nothing else, Bowling Alone is a fascinating collection of factoids. Yet it does seem to provide an explanation for why 'we tell pollsters that we wish we lived in a more civil, more trustworthy, more collectively caring community.' What's more, writes Putnam, 'Americans are right that the bonds of our communities have withered, and we are right to fear that this transformation has very real costs.' Putnam takes a stab at suggesting how things might change, but the book's real strength is in its diagnosis rather than its proposed solutions. Bowling Alone won't make Putnam any less controversial, but it may come to be known as a path-breaking work of scholarship, one whose influence has a long reach into the 21st century. --John J. Miller
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Terrible book
I am currently enrolled in American Society and this is the corresponding textbook. After reading some is its chapters, Putnam seems to contradict himself at the end. How can you make sense of his work, interviews, experiments, and outlined research if is objective to his own views?
Rating:  - Tons of data seems to miss the point
I admit I didn't finish the book. I was bored by much of it and read parts here and there. But what I looked for and didn't find was what seems to me to be obvious...We're less social because we're more mobile. Corporations shuttle families around the nation so rapidly that after a few generations of this nobody is really part of any community anymore, they're just living/working/earning there. Nobody you grew up with lives near you. You have no reputation to protect. We're a nation of strangers. ... Read More
Rating: - Bawling Alone: Fundamental Flaws
Putnam accurately articulates that odd malaise many boomers deeply feel; loss of "community" (whatever one may take that to mean). He then tangentially reasons that the culprit is "diversity". The fact is that this particular boomer angst is far more the product of population density. In the '50s and '60s (his "Golden Age") solitude was far more easily acquired. Even in urbania, a short walk or a brief drive could deliver the needed dose of peace and quiet that reknits the "ravell'd sleeve of care". No ... Read More
Rating:  - A little dull....
It's rather drier and more academic than I'd hoped for, though terrifically erudite. It's enormous too. A fascinating subject, and a very important book, but hard to sustain an interest in. Suited to the more academic reader.
Rating:  - A Lonelier Crowd
Robert D. Putnam's BOWLING ALONE provides what is, arguably, the most robust scientific treatment in a single volume of the conversation about friendship and its benefits begun by Aristotle nearly twenty-four centuries ago, a conversation about what has now come to be called "social capital" :
"...how can prosperity be guarded and preserved without friends...And in poverty and in other misfortunes men think friends are the only refuge. It helps the young, too, to keep them from error; it aids ... Read More
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