How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do it Again

Abstract

Robert D. Putnam, Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, is arguably the most insightful researcher and writer on American community since Alexis de Tocqueville. In 2013, President Barack Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal for “deepening our understanding of community in America.” His popularization of the concept of social capital,1 first in Making Democracy Work (1993), combined with his rigorous, data-driven analysis of the decay of communitarian bonds within American life — most deeply explored in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2001) — have set the stage for countless conversations and efforts to repair the divisions and distractions that seem to be isolating us from one another. When Putnam speaks, people tend to listen.2