The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

by Robert D. Putnam, Shaylyn Romney Garrett (With)

An eminent political scientist’s brilliant analysis of economic, social, and political trends over the past century demonstrating how we have gone from an individualistic “I” society to a more communitarian “We” society and then back again, and how we can learn from that experience to become a stronger, more unified nation—from the author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids.

Deep and accelerating inequality; unprecedented political polarization; vitriolic public discourse; a fraying social fabric; public and private narcissism—Americans today seem to agree on only one thing: This is the worst of times.

But we’ve been here before. During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, America was highly individualistic, starkly unequal, fiercely polarized, and deeply fragmented, just as it is today. However as the twentieth century opened, America became—slowly, unevenly, but steadily—more egalitarian, more cooperative, more generous; a society on the upswing, more focused on our responsibilities to one another and less focused on our narrower self-interest. Sometime during the 1960s, however, these trends reversed, leaving us in today’s disarray.

In a sweeping overview of more than a century of history, drawing on his inimitable combination of statistical analysis and storytelling, Robert Putnam analyzes a remarkable confluence of trends that brought us from an “I” society to a “We” society and then back again. He draws inspiring lessons for our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society once again based on community. Engaging, revelatory, and timely, this is Putnam’s most ambitious work yet, a fitting capstone to a brilliant career.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Sociology, Audiobook, Economics, American History

Audiobook

First published October 13, 2020

About the author

Robert David Putnam is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. Putnam developed the influential two-level game theory that assumes international agreements will only be successfully brokered if they also result in domestic benefits. His most famous work, Bowling Alone, argues that the United States has undergone an unprecedented collapse in civic, social, associational, and political life (social capital) since the 1960s, with serious negative consequences. In March 2015, he published a book called Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis that looked at issues of inequality of opportunity in the United States. According to the Open Syllabus Project, Putnam is the fourth most frequently cited author on college syllabi for political science courses.[

Reviews

[David Wineberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Millions of Americans have grown up thinking there is no alternative to the cult of the individual, living alone, striving for him or her self alone, and taking no one else into consideration. But America was not always like this. For most of the 20th century, it was all about belonging, joining, and sharing. That way of life peaked in the 1960s, and has been sliding ever since. That is the topline summary of Robert Putnam's extremely important The Upswing.

The opening salvo of Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett's The Upswing is a no-holds-barred description of the ills facing America today. Once you've accepted that they have really hit all the lowlights dead on, they lower the boom. They are not describing 2020, but 1895. Things were at least as bad then, and America shook it off. By 1960, the country hit a peak of solidarity, co-operation, and community.

I really appreciate Putnam's in-your-face intro. It is far better than the standard laying out of the groundwork that often consumes 40 or even 80 pages of this kind of book. This introduction is not merely the best I have read, possibly ever, but it sets the stage for dissecting the factors and how and how they deteriorated so quickly from that point.

For convenience's sake, he labels the eras I, we and I again (I-we-I). Remarkably, it is now even possible to validate that nomenclature, using Google's Ngram service. Looking up the usage of those two words from the 1880s to 2008, I predominates today as well as 125 years ago, while we takes over in the period from the early 1900s to the early 1970s. You are what you write, it seems.

Astoundingly, the I-we-I eras lay themselves out in an inverted U curve. Everything about the eras, from race to sex to economics, politics, culture, sociability and solidarity, show up as almost identical inverted Us. The confirmation of this theory is as strong as the theory of gravity. Even baby names follow the curve, with a majority of nearly unique names today, and a majority of plain names during the we era. Students in the we era almost totally disagreed with the statement: "I am an important person." Today, 80% agree. American students trail in all categories of OECD tests but one: self esteem. The reach of the me generation is bigger than we think.

The we era was a time of sharing, giving and joining. People joined service clubs, common interest clubs, churches, unions and charities, and lived them, connecting with other members continuously - in person. Today, people join nothing but online forums, only pretending they are connected, without any physical involvement or commitment whatsoever. This hollowness shows up in the percentage of people living alone (51%), the lack of church attendance (even if the person claims a faith) and singles-everything services that sustain them. Putnam folds it all into a curve, again and again for every aspect of life in the USA. And incredibly, they match. From low points in the 1890s, they rise until the 1960s, then slide right back where they began.

The I eras are times of rights as opposed to responsibilities. Identity instead of community. And things were actually better in many ways in the we era. In the runup to 1960, income for the top 1% increased 21.5%, but for the bottom 99%, it tripled. Women, blacks, immigrants, consumer safety, the environment - all made their biggest gains in the we era.

The stark contrast can be seen in American presidents. JFK said: "Justice requires us to remember: if a citizen denies his fellow, saying 'His color is not mine,' or 'His beliefs are strange and different,' in that moment he betrays America." Putnam finds it difficult to imagine Trump saying anything like that.

In politics, party affiliation was not a strong indicator of voting results until 1970, when the figures suddenly began firming up. Split ticket-voting instead of straight party line was common. People would actually vote for the candidate who would best represent them, not the party's choice. Today, party is a bigger issue than even race, America's usual biggest issue. It even affects marriage. In 1960, five percent of Republicans said they would object if an offspring married a Democrat. Today that figure is 45%, nine times higher.

It was in the early 1900s we era that high schools came into being. Not because of some government mandate, but because local grassroots progressive movements pushed for them, and local politicians implemented them. The result was more educated and skilled workers, higher pay, and better living standards. Similarly, endless service clubs - Lions, Rotary, Elks, Knights of Columbus and such, gave back to communities through entirely local volunteer efforts. Setting the bar high, almost a third of Americans were unionized in 1960. Belonging was an important part of life in America. And service clubs were totally non-partisan. People joined by the millions, until the 1960s pivot.

Bravely, Putnam tries to nail down when in the 1960s the pivot took place, and of course, why. He is able to dismiss all the usual suspects: Vietnam, the Cold War, too much conformity, solidarity fatigue, television, the decline of religion, and numerous others posed in a library of books on the subject. But the numbers don't support any of them, he says.

One he does not consider is the tipping point of rights for the Other. The rise of civil rights, including the Civil Rights Act, mostly for blacks, Title IX, mostly for women, the rise of feminism, women running for office, and women and blacks managing others at work, were and are a direct threat to those in charge - white men. At that time, they were still the majority, but they could already see that ending for them. The threat to the patriarchy was unacceptable, and a backlash began that continues today and has only intensified.

White men see American society as a zero sum game: your gain is my loss. The libertarian bent of "me first and only" is not benign. It calls for removing what are considered as privileges for others, but as rights for white men. So government programs for the poor are unfair, aid for any segment other than white men are an affront to God's will, and anyone who supports such positions is a socialist or a communist. Though I can't produce the charts, I would guess these two trends would make a large X, crossing in the late 60s or early 70s, marking the elusive pivot point where we flipped to I again.

Putnam is extremely fussy about his charts. He qualifies them, explains potential weaknesses, and directs attention only to the defensible. His methodology is always front and center. Each chart not only prominently shows its sources, but even the smoothing factors employed to make them readable. Clearly, he wants them to stand up in the court of academic inquisition where he will duly be charged with heresy.

Putnam's previous work, Our Kids, shined a shocking light on how American society had evolved - or devolved - just in his lifetime. So did his previous book, Bowling Alone. Now he seems to have made a great discovery, by stepping back a little. Context and perspective suddenly revealed themselves to him by looking at a century. The perspective of a 125 year period, where the same symptoms show up at least as badly, and the same patterns repeat in every aspect of life, make The Upswing a shocker at a new level. In my review of Our Kids, I said if you read it it will change you. The Upswing will do more. It will be the basis of endless papers, dissertations and argument for years to come. It is as important a book as I have read on American society. And I am very glad Putnam took that step back to find it.

David Wineberg

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for one of my courses in Sociology at university. This took a longtime to read and I am honestly not convinced that Putnam and Romney Garret effectively proved their central thesis. Well… I think they did but they did it in an overly convoluted manner. This book is not for people not seasoned in handling political science and social science jargon. I’ve had practice but sometimes I would misinterpret the central theme of a section. Instead of reading this entire book, it might behoove people to opt for reading more research papers. The authors draw from historical data and research but don’t add much new insight. At 464 pages this is not a short book to just be rehashing details

The other areas that deeply aggravated me was that while the historical premise of the Upswing is deeply developed and well argued, the idea of the future isn’t analyzed. The blurb especially seems to draw parallels between the past and the present but nothing truly executed. I think those parallels were included because why else write the book right now? However, the authors clearly were prioritizing historical narrative.

There is wide discussion of bias and harms to groups like women and POC folks but for a book published in 2020 is a startling lack of queer representation. One might argue that there isn’t enough compiled data historically for an entire section but when we are talking about margalizing parts of society it is important to highlight all groups. This is where a refocusing on applying the past to the present would have been beneficial to bring the argumentation out of the 20th century into the 21st.

Positives because I kind of went on a rant that would seem to imply a 1 star or 2 star. The discussion of associational life and the role in the community was super interesting and not something I am familiar with. He did put alot of pressure on the breakdown of community as groups like Kwinanis and Key Club became less involved but that was an area of his thesis that he was trying to prove.

Lastly, I know I kind of put down the writing style but that was from the perspective of if you wanted to pick it up on your own. Compared to many poli sci or soc textbooks this book was fairly readable. The use of charts made it so you could skim, understand and participate in class. Much more accessible than many articles in JSTOR but not so accessible that I would encourage people to read it without needing to.

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

The central message of “The Upswing” is an insight that becomes apparent when viewing trends over the entirety of the 20th century: The societal sense of togetherness “we” that was true in the 1950s (but no longer true since the subsequent shift toward the individualistic sense of “I”), was itself achieved through steady growth over the first half of the 20th century.

When data from the 20th century is observed as a whole it becomes clear that many of the social and economic disparities that are true now were also true at the beginning of the 20th century. The “rugged individualism” espoused during the Gilded Age gradually changed toward a more unified sense of, “We're all in this together,” by midcentury. But then during the second half of the century trends changed back toward more emphasis on individual freedoms.

This book is chock full of graphs of economic, social, political, and cultural data repeatedly plotting inverted U-shaped curves that demonstrate the premise that 20th century history can be summarized with one big “I-we-I” curve.


The book suggests that lessons can be learned today from the actions taken and changes made over one hundred years ago that brought about the Progressive Era. This book covers a wide variety of components in the study of the tensions between emphases on community versus individualism.

For this review I've decided to highlight one particular accomplishment of the Progressive Era—a decrease in the disparities of economic wealth and income. In the first half of the 20th century this included an inheritance tax and up to 90% marginal income tax. If changes similar to those of the Progressive Era are to be achieved now, similar provisions will need to be enacted.

The changes noted in the previous paragraph and other modifications needed to address additional consequences of excessive individualism will require political action. In a democracy this will require a groundswell of popular opinion and civic engagement to enable the necessary political changes. The book concludes with the following comment.

"... one key to understanding their [Progressive Era] legacy is recognizing that national political leadership came after sustained, widespread citizen engagement, not before."

[Ryan Boissonneault · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most accounts of the current crisis in America focus on the last 40–60 years, tracing the conservative revolution that started in the 1960s, intensified in the 80s, and ultimately culminated in the era of Trump. This trend towards hyper-individualism and cultural narcissism has resulted in extreme inequality, political polarization, and social disarray and violence.

The problem with accounts such as these, however, is that they fail to take a wide enough perspective; by covering only the last 60 years of US history, they miss the fact that, over a century ago, the country faced very similar problems.

The Gilded Age, taking place from about 1870 to 1900, was characterized by extreme levels of inequality; political polarization and the lack of cross-party collaboration; social disarray, isolation, and violence; and cultural narcissism and hyper-individualism with little concern for the common good. In other words, precisely the problems we confront today. We are truly living in a second Gilded Age, where there is no longer any balance between individualism and community.

In The Upswing, Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett show us—by covering the last 125 years of US history—that in almost any statistical measure you can trace, the first and second gilded ages represent the country’s low points economically, politically, socially, and culturally. In between these two eras, beginning in the early twentieth century and up to the 1960s, the country experienced an upswing—through Progressive-era reforms—that resulted in greater equality, political collaboration, and social harmony.

Here are just a couple of examples from the book to illustrate the point:

– In 1913, the richest 1 percent of Americans claimed 19 percent of national income. By 1976 (due to the upswing in equality), that share had been halved to around 10 percent. However, by 2014 (the second Gilded Age), this number doubled all the way back up to 20 percent, exactly where it had been in 1913.

– Partisanship in presidential approval is one measure of political polarization that demonstrates the current president’s approval rating from the opposing party. Between 2013 and 2019, approval from the president’s own party averaged about 88 percent, while approval from the opposing party averaged about 8 percent (similar to the first Gilded Age). Contrast this to 1964 (due to the upswing in political cooperation), where 64 percent of Republicans and 84 percent of Democrats approved of LBJ.

What is extraordinary about the research this book has uncovered is that virtually every economic, political, social, and cultural measure you can imagine follows the same basic pattern: extreme inequality, polarization, social disarray, and cultural narcissism during the two Gilded Ages with an upswing of growing equality, political cooperation, social harmony, and concern for the common good in between.

Obviously, things were not perfect during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century—and the authors are not making that claim—but there was at least a palpable sense that progress was being made and that societal problems could be solved (with the corresponding increases in material well-being for everyone, especially those at the bottom). America’s reaction to the first Gilded Age (through progressive reform), in other words, was largely a success (with some exceptions, such as Prohibition).

The question can then be raised: what caused the downturn and descent back into another Gilded Age? As the authors point out, there is no one single cause; instead, a multitude of factors all converged to create a vicious feedback loop. However, the basic change in attitude can be summarized as follows, as described by the political philosopher Mark Lilla:

“The Roosevelt Dispensation pictured an America where citizens were involved in a collective enterprise to guard one another against risk, hardship, and the denial of fundamental rights. Its watchwords were solidarity, opportunity, and public duty. The Reagan Dispensation pictured a more individualistic America where families and small communities and businesses would flourish once freed from the shackles of the state. Its watchwords were self-reliance and minimal government.”

We’ve been following the Reagan Dispensation for the last four decades, and contemporary America is the result—a reality TV star for president, hyper-individualism, limited government, extreme inequality, limited social mobility, and extreme polarization.

If we want to dig out of this mess, it’s not going to be by doing more of the same. It can happen only through a return to progressive politics where the focus is less on individual freedom at all costs and more on the collective solving of societal problems. There is no reason why, for example, that something like universal healthcare should be a partisan issue; in fact, historically, it wasn’t (Richard Nixon, a Republican president, proposed a version of universal healthcare in 1974).

This shows that the increase in political polarization is not the equal fault of both parties. Universal healthcare is labeled a “radical left” proposal by the right ONLY because the right has drifted so far away from center. This has allowed them to label historically center-left policies as “radical,” but they are “radical” only from the right’s own extreme ideological distance from the center.

Overall, this book is a major contribution to our understanding of our current crisis and a blueprint for the way out of it, through a focus on community and inclusion and a return to progressive politics.

As the authors point out, progressivism, rather than socialism, represents our best chance as progressivism retains the core American values of individual freedom while at the same time pursuing the common good. It is a political orientation that members of both parties can (and historically did) get behind. The alternative is a continuation down the path of limited government and “every man for himself” politics where we will continue to grow more divisive, unequal, and polarized.

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 3 out of 5]

Through a variety of measures, Putnam and Garrett track a 130 year long American cultural arc from individualism to collectivism and back to individualism again. They call this the “I – We – I” curve, which commenced with the Teddy Roosevelt Progressive era displacing the individualistic Gilded Age, then accumulating collectivist cultural norms and government policies until cresting in the 1960’s, with a subsequent long decline back to our contemporary individualism.

To a remarkable degree, domestic, institutional, and social reforms that had their origins in the first decade of the 20th century turn out to explain both the rise and then the fall of economic equality, because those reforms themselves waxed and waned in precisely the same century long rhythm as equality and inequality. The U-curve that describes the ups and downs of economic equality is paralleled by, and very caused at least in part by, the ups and downs of a set of institutional changes that were first sketched and implemented during the progressive era.

The above is an early passage, and as a result I was expecting an economic policy-oriented book. But Putnam and Garrett don’t invest much time into supporting the claim above, perhaps because it seems to be accepted as consensus economic thinking today.

Instead, the authors focus on tying economics and policy together with culture to make broader claims about how our society shifted over time. But Putnam and Garrett quickly admit that they aren’t able to reach any causal conclusions on such squirrely sociological metrics:

These bits of evidence are tantalizing, but this evidence is too weak to support any definitive claim. In short, at this stage, the available evidence offers virtually no indication of an uncaused first cause of the “I – We – I” syndrome. All the birds in this flock wheeled around at almost precisely the same time, seemingly leaderless. That fact seriously complicates any effort at causal analysis.

This is a kind of academic humility and integrity that I think few pop-policy books hold themselves to. It probably forgives them from investing much into any policy recommendations, because they simply don’t know what needs to change.

Along the way, Putnam and Garrett attack many political holy cows that each political party trot out. For example, the left frequently blame Reaganism for this shift in inequality. But by Putnam and Garrett’s measures, many changes were set in place decades before. Growth in education rates paused around 1965, unions had been in long decline since 1958, the minimum wage peaked in 1968, a regressive turn in tax cuts started in the mid-1960’s, financial institution deregulation started in the 1970’s.

Since one popular interpretation of these shifts in policy, and of the consequent shifts in income and wealth distribution, fingers the Reagan revolution after 1981 as the chief culprit. It is significant in virtually every case the key turning points occurred a decade or more before the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In short, the presidential election of 1980, and the subsequent unfolding of Reaganism was a lagging indicator of this sea-change in the American political economy. The reversal of the social and policy innovations from the first decades of the 20th century was probably the proximate cause of the great divergence in the 21st century.

Elsewhere, they call into question the conservative mantra that divorce and the erosion of the nuclear family is to blame:

[The trajectory of divorce rates] has been so persistent that demographers in the 1890’s accurately predicted the divorce rate nearly 100 years later in the 1980’s... During the 1950’s and 1960’s, the hey-day of the companionate marriage, the divorce rate dipped below the long-term trend, and then rose sharply above the long-term trend in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The Boomers’ parents shunned divorce, but among the Boomers and their children, divorce was unusually common.

Or the libertarian complaint about the size of government:

The fundamental problem of the “Big Government” explanation is that by most measures (all spending, or spending on the welfare state in real or per-capita terms, or spending as a fraction of GDP, number of government employees) the size of government lagged behind the “I – We – I” curve by several decades… In fact, the empirical evidence strongly suggests that government size is a consequence of the “I – We – I” curve, not a cause.

Or more the critique du jour that both sides seem to be flogging:

when pundits ponder nowadays why our politics are so polarized, or our economy so biased, or our families so weakened, or our churches so empty, or our culture so self-centered, two of the most commonly cited cultures are “young people these days” and “the internet”. However, amidst the tangle of possible causes that we review in this chapter, one thing is perfectly clear: neither millennials nor twitter and facebook can possibly be blamed for the “I – We – I” curve. The longer timeframe of our study gives those alleged culprits an ironclad alibi. The declines of the past half-century pre-date the millennial generation and the internet by decades.

Other less visible ideas are called into question, such as how “…philanthropy among most Americans has fallen steadily since the mid-1960’s” (when I assumed this was broadly unchanged).

There are a few important points that I think Putnam and Garrett missed the boat on. For example, here’s what they say about marriage rates:

In contemporary America, cohabitation is not marriage without a license, but typically a short-term relationship. More than half of all cohabitations end within two years. For college graduates, cohabitation nowadays frequently ends in ordinary marriage. But for the bottom 2/3 of the American class hierarchy, where cohabitation is more common, it typically ends with both partners moving on to new partners, often with children in tow, thus producing complex, fragile families.

And while this may be true, they don’t bother to mention some possible causes, such as the perverse tax incentives poor families have to remain unmarried, as discussed by Matt Yglesias in his recent book.

But I think the most important lesson from this book is to have a value-neutral opinion about the apex of this curve. There was, these authors remind us, a dark side to communitarianism:

If the communitarian “we” is defined too narrowly, however, then conformity to social norms punishes dissidents and deviants, whether political or sexual or racial. That was no less true in mid-20th century America than it had been in 17th century Salem, and it was no accident that Arthur Miller underscored that parallel in his 1953 play, The Crucible. During the first half of the 20th century, this potential disadvantage of community had been virtually undiscussed. As the “I – We – I” pendulum swung ever upward in the 1950’s, however, Americans suddenly became more aware of this dark side of community. That awakening to the fact that we might have too much of a good thing was reflected in a sudden increase in the number of books dealing with conformity.

As the authors would conclude:

What seems normal to any of us depends on when we personally entered the story. To many older Americans today who lived through at least part of America’s upswing, and then witnessed the extraordinary reversals outlined above, the extreme inequality, polarization, social fragmentation, and narcissism of today represented even in the highest offices of the land, are anything but normal. And thus they are understandably eager not to normalize it. Meanwhile, to Gen X’ers, Millenials, and younger Americans, deepening inequality, polarization, isolation, and narcissism may seem normal, because this is the America into which they were born… One contribution of this book, we hope, is to help narrow the “OK, Boomer” generational divide by introducing a new, evidence-based narrative that encompasses the ups and downs of an entire century, thereby setting a clearer agenda for choice going forward.

Perhaps this is not a call for ambivalence, but at least we can walk away with a broader historical appreciation that we are on what is a century-long arc, and the usual boogeymen of both sides may in fact be made of straw.

[William Snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone who wants to be an active and dutiful citizen of the US, I cannot recommend The Upswing enough!

What a brilliant book. Robert Putnam (famous author of Bowling Alone), along with the help of Shaylyn Romney Garrett, ends his career with a bang, exercising a masterful macrohistory of America in the last 125 years. In showing how the US went from The Gilded Age to the Golden Age back to a Gilded Age II, we gain the valuable insight of perspective that might just help us start bending history back to a Golden Age II.

The basic premise of the book is that across all sectors of the US — politics, economics, society, and culture — we went from a “low point” at the end of the 19th century to a peak in the 1960s, followed by a downturn that has taken us today to as low a point as we were when the Rockefellers and the Robber Barons ran the country, and Jim Crow was still in its infancy. The amazing part about the graphs that track these four sectors, and many sub-sectors within them, is that they take hard, measurable data to come to the striking conclusion that they overlap eerily much. This finding leads the authors to dub a master-curve, showing all the trends combined, the I-we-I curve — essentially, how tight-knit the fabric of the nation is (or, as today, isn’t).

The writing is often quite wonky and academic, but... frankly, I miss that! I want to go back to school, so making my way through the occasionally dense prose was not a drawback. Having such air-tight figures and logic far outweighed the consequence of it being a bit cumbersome on occasion.

Ultimately, the authors bust many narratives about history as conventional wisdom today sees it. And for me, one of the most striking themes was the subtlety and often counter-intuitive nature of change; typical markers of earth-swelling change as we thought, such as the presidency of Ronald Reagan, for example, are really only lagging indicators of change already made, and Reagan had relatively little impact over long-running trends already in motion (accelerating inequality, distrust of govt, selfishness, etc.). While leaders can certainly make dents in the arc of history, so often, as the authors show, changes trickle up from the grassroots over decades. I cannot think of better inspiration for us all trying to inflect our nation’s trajectory after the past 60 years, culminating in this terrible national nightmare we’ve only barely survived.

Again — cannot recommend this book enough! This is one to remember for anyone trying to get the fullest grasp on America today.

[Kate Schwarz · Rating 4 out of 5]

First 2/3 of the book: 3 stars. Last 1/3: 5 stars.

From that last chapter:

"The legacy of the Progressives points to the power of moral messaging, but also challenges us to push beyond the idea that silencing or expelling certain elements of our society, punishing offenders or replacing one faction's dominance with another's will restore the moral and cultural health of our nation. We must undertake a reevaluation of our shared values, asking ourselves what personal privileges and rights we might be willing to lay aside in service of the common good and what role we will play in the shared project of shaping our nation's future."

"And one key to understanding their legacy is recognizing that national political leadership came after sustained, widespread citizen engagement, not before. Today's reformers should learn from their forebears, focusing their efforts not only in promoting political candidates but also in building a grassroots, issues-based movement upon which they and future leaders will draw in order to make lasting change."

"...the failure to take full inclusion seriously compromised the integrity of America's 'we' decades and ultimately sowed the seeds of our subsequent downturn."

Looking back at the Progressive era, "Americans could have and should have pushed further towards greater equality. Therefore, the lessons of history that we glean from the I-we-I century are two sided: we learn that once before, Americans have gotten out of the mess like the one we're in now, but we also learn that in that Progressive era, and in the decades that followed, we didn't set our sights high enough for what the 'we' could really be, and we didn't take seriously enough the challenge of full inclusion. Therefore, the question we face today is not whether or can or should turn back the tide of history, but whether we can resurrect the early communitarian virtues in a way that does not reverse the progress we've made in terms of individual liberties. Both values are American, and we require a balance and integration of both. This task will not be an easy one, and nothing less than the success of the American experiment is at stake. But as we look to an uncertain future we must keep in mind what is perhaps the greatest lesson of America's I-we-I century. As Theodore Roosevelt said it, 'The fundamental rule of our national life, the rule which underlies all others, is that on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.'"

[Bruce Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A data-rich (or data-heavy, depending on your outlook) analysis of cultural, economic, and political patterns in America over the past 150 years or so. The authors argue that today is a virtual mirror of what America was in the Gilded Age, before the Progressive movement began making legal and policy changes to reduce the many inequities of life in the US. Using all manner of lenses, they show that by every standard we've gone from an "I" culture in the Gilded Age to a "We" culture in the period leading up to the mid- to late 60s, and back to the "I" culture of today -- what they refer to as the Second Gilded Age.

Late in the book is a passage that serves well as a summary of their project: “The empirical evidence we have gathered in this book… makes clear that we have paid a high price for the Sixties’ pivot — the indefensible economic inequality of the second Gilded Age, the political polarization that is enfeebling and endangering our democracy, the social fragmentation and isolation that ignore the basic human need for fellowship, and most fundamentally, the self-centeredness that itself makes it so difficult to achieve the unity of purpose required to change our national course.”

Their premise is compelling and struck me as irrefutable, if somewhat dry in the presentation. I was struck by many of the points they made, like these about how our country has, as they put it, "taken our foot off the gas" in working towards common good and equality and lost sense of a shared purpose or vision:

• “In measure after measure, the rate of positive change [in racial equity] was actually faster in the decades preceding the Civil Rights revolution than in the decades that followed. And in many cases, progress then stopped or reversed.”

• “Tragically, just as the Civil Rights movement began to see major success, and especially as the government undertook affirmative actions to brig about integration, the fragile national consensus that had enabled that change began to erode. While equality and inclusion sounded good in principle, white Americans quickly began to voice concerns about the pace of change.”

The I-We-I pattern they delineate has taken us to a patently self-involved and narcissistic place, where an activity of "sharing a selfie" connotes a very different notion of sharing than does, say, "sharing responsibility."

• In 1950, 12% of students agreed with the statement “I am a very important person.” By 1990, that figure had risen to 80%. They quote a researcher: “No single event initiated the narcissism epidemic; instead, Americans’ core cultural ideas slowly became more focused on self-admiration and self-expression. At the same time, Americans’ faith in the power of collective action or the government was lost.”

The authors present a clear vision of where we are now (as if the past year of pandemic and the horrifying events of January 6 needed clarification), but they are hopeful. They point out that today resembles the first Gilded Age in almost every particular and remind us that there was a concerted and largely (race always being the factor that requites separate analysis) successful effort by Progressives to make the country better, safer, and more equitable. There's no reason to believe the same improvements and return to a "We" culture can't be replicated today. They quote philosopher Richard Rorty in making a sober point about the failure of the Boomers to live up to their (our) words: “It is as if, sometime around 1980, the children of the people who made it through the Great Depression and into the suburbs had decided to pull up the drawbridge behind them.”

The hope lies in the young, the authors say. Using language from a 1914 book by a 25 year old Progressive named Walter Lippmann (who himself sought to, as he put it, "diagnose the current unrest and to arrive at some sense of what democracy implies"), they write, “Today’s young people did not cause today’s problems. But like their predecessors 125 years ago they must forgo the cynicism of drift and embrace the hope of mastery.”

I'd like to believe they're right. I have to say too that I particularly like Lippmann's phrase, "what democracy implies." It captures in three words the ongoing contest in America between "freedom" and "responsibility."

[Dan Connors · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looking back on history, we try to find patterns that can explain both the present and the future. Is history just a random procession of events, or is it a linear progression of progress both materially and socially? Alternatively, could history be a cyclical phenomenon, where trends ebb and flow for no particular reason? Robert Putnam believes that history falls into the cyclical model, and his book, Bowling Alone detailed how things had changed over a century's time. In his new book, Putnam theorizes that we are at a critical inflection point of the cycle, much like during the 1960's, and that important changes could start happening at a dizzying pace for the next decade.

While Bowling Alone was published in 2000, The Upswing came out 20 years later, detailing the same predictable phenomenon that he calls the I-we-I curve. That curve, which you can see on the book cover above, details the transition society made from roughly the years 1890 to 2020. Using relentless data collection, Putnam shows how as a society we have transitioned from an "I" period of the gilded age where individualism reigned supreme and robber barons called all the shots, to a "we" period during the middle of the 20th century when unions, community organizations, and the welfare state reached their peaks, and back to an "I" period in the Libertarian 21st century where individualism reigns again, and government is looked upon with suspicion.

Some may think that we've made some progress as a society since the 21st century began, but watching the promise of the Obama years devolve into stalemate and then retrenchment of the Trump years, I have my doubts. Racism is apparently a thing again, environmental regulations are being relaxed, income inequality is as large as it was 130 years ago, and the social safety net that the Greatest Generation built is falling apart. Is this all because of conscious choices, human failings, or huge trends of human behavior that we are barely aware of? Why is it that whenever we make progress on something there seems to be a reactionary period of retrenchment that swings the pendulum the other way?

Putnam looks at trends in economics, politics, and social cohesion over the period of his curve to paint a convincing period that this cycle drove much of history during that time. The key period seems to be the 1960's, when everything peaked and then started a steady, long-term drop. Tax rates peaked in the 1950's as society looked to big government to win wars, build highways, and establish a safety net- and since then it's been a steady drop in both tax rates and government effectiveness. (Plus a huge rise in deficit spending) Real minimum wages, labor union membership, financial regulations, public colleges, and income equality all peaked around 1960 and started a steady drop all the way to today.

Social capital, which Putnam defines as the aggregate level of social organizations, also peaked in the 60's, leading to a much lonelier and more individualistic society from the "Me" decade of the 70's and beyond. Bowling leagues declined, as did civic organizations like the Rotary, Optimists, Knights of Columbus, and others, and people of all ages dropped out of groups and did more things alone or with their families. Families are smaller and less cohesive, churches have been losing members, and charitable giving has dropped over the past 50 years as a consequence of this trend away from community and towards individuals.

In a simple poll that asked people "Do you agree that people can be trusted?" a depressing trend sees the answer to that question go from 80% yes in 1960 to 32% yes in 2018. We don't trust each other anymore, and that includes the media, government, scientists, and our neighbors- which explains the rise of conspiracy theories today.

Putnam devotes two chapters to the questions of racial relations and sex discrimination during the I-we-I period, and observes that while women have made steady progress even during the downswing period, minorities have plateaued in power and influence after making remarkable progress during the 1960's. The election of Barack Obama may have seen like progress to many, but the protests of 2020 showed that if anything, racial animosities and problems are just as bad if not worse than they were 50 years ago.

We know that the 1960's were a big pivot point for history, but we don't know exactly why. Putnam devoted many pages in his last book trying to pin the blame on something, and the biggest factor that I can recall was television, technology, and the internet. Television especially made it easier to stay home and not reach out to others, as it took the place of public meetings and family dinners. The advent of addictive cell phones, video games, and social media sites makes it even easier to stay in a comfortable, lonely bubble today.

Both of Putnam's books can be a depressing read on what we've lost in the past 50 years, and the few gains we've made as a society, like the Affordable Care Act, have come with great difficulty, resistance, and push-back. I was truly hoping for a hopeful last chapter that shows how great things will be in the 1920's, but instead, Putnam takes us back to the 1920's when progressive reformers like Frances Perkins, Ida Wells, Upton Sinclair, and Teddy Roosevelt started the ball rolling for the last big upswing. What these reformers accomplished during a period that is little discussed today obviously set the stage for much bigger reforms in the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's. There's not a lot of recent history to make me feel too hopeful that things will change anytime soon.

It would be nice to think that there's a big pendulum that's about to swing towards the causes of community and love of one's neighbor, and maybe there is. Facing certain economic problems, pending environmental disasters, and a society addicted to drugs and technology, it feels like now would be a good time for us to come back together like the Greatest Generation managed to do. Selfishness and greed are not what we need right now, and perhaps people will realize that before it gets too late. Today's problems are too hard to face alone, and even the healthiest and wealthiest among us are not safe from the dangers that lie ahead.

As 2021 dawns, it feels like the Trump era was about as low as we could get. (Gosh I sure hope so, but maybe not). Reality itself is up for grabs, and pathological, narcissistic, greedy liars are apparently running things. The changes that need to happen are most likely to occur at the grass roots, as community organizations begin to grow again, and the end of a pandemic might be just the impetus we need to want to help each other again. Hopefully as we discover that our neighbors, no matter their race, religion, or gender, are actually decent human beings who have something to offer, we'll start back on the path to trusting each other again. At least for another 50 years, when the pendulum may begin its swing yet again.

“All of history, a great wheel, turning inexorably. Just as seasons come and go, just as the moon moves endlessly through her cycle, so does time. The same wars are fought, the same plagues descend, the same folk, good or evil, rise to power. Humanity is trapped on that wheel, doomed endlessly to repeat the mistakes we have we have already made. Unless someone comes to change it.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Quest

[Dan Stoyell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't put down this book very convinced that it had done a good job proving it's thesis. I found myself shaking my head at what I viewed as the flimsiness of a lot of the evidence offered (google books word frequency??). While a lot of the individual pieces of data offered are very interesting, I couldn't get over the idea that I was being sold a narrative by being offered only the data that fit the case, and even that evidence I didn't find very persuasive.

I finished the book still open the belief that there was an "upswing" of economic/social/political harmony that culminated in civil rights progress, just not swayed by this particular case for it.

[Wick Welker · Rating 4 out of 5]

We're in an I-We-I groove. Time to get out.

This is not the first book I've read that gives a brief history lesson of the last 100 years about how America has swung the pendulum from collectivism and individualism. Herein from the authors you'll get a nice review of salient events during the first gilded era (when corporate control had vast and unfettered power in the early 20th century). You'll get a good amount of data about cultural shifts that modify the mores which then influence who gets elected and ultimately changes policy. Putnam does a nice job pointing out that the "we" of the New Deal era was exclusively white and male and he presents excellent data about the subjugation of black Americans and women. America has gone back and forth between New Deal regulation politics and the neoliberal libertarian methods of deregulation, social austerity measures and privatization of everything.

Needless to say, the neoliberal politics of the last 40 years have been absolutely disastrous for the average American. Wealth has been stagnated for the bottom half of Americans since Reagonomics to today. Putnam duly places a lot of emphasis on the 1960s as an inflection point from switching back to a self-interested society which set up the politics of the 1970s into the disaster we have today. The theme running throughout the book is an I-We-I trajectory and how we could steer ourselves back to a collective mentality if we are deliberate enough.

The main issue with Upswing is that the authors pigeon-hole themselves into a single theme and argue from that standpoint rather presenting evidence in a broader context. What I mean is, they argue that America is in an I-We-I curve and they are going to prove it. Period. There wasn't much new for me with this book but if it's the first of it's kind that you've read, it would be very good to check out. Similar books that I enjoyed were Evil Geniuses by Kurt Andersen as well as Goliath by Stoller. I highly recommend Goliath in place of Upswing, the history reviewed is excellent. Overall, I recommend Upwing and mostly agree with the theories presented.

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a new book by a well known Harvard public policy scholar (Bowling Alone). It is billed as a macro history of America from the end of the Civil War to the present. It is perhaps better seen as a report on a data base study looking from regularities in American social and political life focusing on the perspectives obtained from public opinion research across a 125 year period. If I had to place it in a genre of sorts it would be the research and policy work on “What the heck happened and why has everything gone wrong with the US lately?” This work took off after the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath and then soared with the 2016 elections. (Hmmm ... any timing issues here?)

So what is the hook here? It appears that Professor Putnam and Ms. Romney Garrett have run across some intriguing data patterns linking the Gilded Age in the late 19th century with our current American malaise. The key pattern is one of an inverted U-shaped curve that is low at the start, rises to a peak, and then declines. It is a complex story that is attempted but it boils down to the following: Good times in the US seem to be positively associated with a strong communitarian feeling or sensibility in the popular culture (we are all in this together) and negatively associated with the prevalence of highly individualistic and non-communitarian sensibilities (me, me, me!; individual achievement and merit; not in my backyard!).

Along with this, Putnam argues that these sensibilities were evident well before they were commonly thought to be. For example, while the Civil Rights movement and its legislative achievement were undoubtedly important, there was measurable progress in the quality of lives of African Americans long before the Civil Right movement, due to other economic and social factors (for example, the Great Migration). So this is not a matter of one or a few key individuals changing history but rather broad and deep trends that affected the country over a long time frame.

The key decade appears to be the 1960s, which actually seem to split in half to form two critical decades. In the first half, communitarian tendencies continue and blossom while in the second half, conflicts arise, individualism takes over, and matters begin to deteriorate. After that, politics turned toxic, the economy went downhill, universities started to deteriorate, and various other plagues seemed to hit the land. The story here is straight out of Tocqueville, and the tensions he say in America of the 1830s. Putnam appropriately leads with Tocqueville.

What to make of this? As popularly oriented policy books go, this is fairly good. The general study approach seems defensible and Putnam makes used of additional tools to bolster his claims (like historical text searching on the web). The results seem reasonable and consistent with other work. The comparison between the present and the Gilded Age is interesting (although others are making use of this comparison as well). The problem with all of this is that with really macro data, especially survey data, how does one come up with actionable suggestions for policy changes? As a result, while I can appreciate the idea of working to become more social and communitarian, I cannot help getting a sense that the problem is being redefined in terms of a solution. (Suffering from poverty? What to do? No problem - go out and get yourself some money!). That cannot be helped, given the scope of the study and the informative value of the book far outweighs such issues.

As a matter of personal taste, I find the scope too broad and with that the analysis had been a bit more focused. For a comparison, readers can compare this with Robert Gordon’s work on the rise and fall of the American standard of living, which covers an overlapping period with somewhat comparable results, although the analysis goes in a different direction. This sort of analysis is hard and the details matter. Discussions of causality are relevant but one gets the sense here that Putnam’s book does not give them sufficient attention noting that causation is complex (and endogenous).

Overall, the book is well worth reading.

[Jennifer Stringer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one required putting on my thinking cap and pondering a bit. The premise: Early in the 20th century, the US was coming out a gilded age that left many out and in living in extreme situations. By embracing a "we're all in this together" approach and progressive policies such as extending schooling, organizing unions, establishing community organizations (rotary, lions, etc.) scouts, public parks & museums, we created community. By adopting this approach, the US experienced an amazing upswing by all classes of people. Working within the established boundaries of democracy to better the lives of the masses, the US largely missed the communist/Marxist ideology that was sweeping the world as those on the bottom rose up. This does not mean everything was hunky-dory. Many of the institutions were exclusionary when came to anyone other than WASPs. (However the races and women also formed their own organizations such as the NAACP and Women's Suffrage Movement which flourished at this time.) Overreach was another problem when it came to the18th amendment prohibiting alcohol. but on a whole, this time period saw rapid improvement in the overall population. Beginning in the mid-sixities and hitting its stride in the 70s & 80s, the age of the individual and ME generation came on the scene. This was not all bad, either, but has left many out and has led to the sizable income and opportunity gap as those who reach the highest rung put up barriers to those coming up (devastating health costs and crippling student loan interest rates for example.)

The author advocates for another upswing by abandoning cynicism and outrage and engaging in a community spirit and citizenship, right where we are, in our own communities. The challenge lies in how to possess the communitarian virtues without losing singular strengths and individuality. He points out that the agents of change from last century, all began with individuals attempting to solve local problems in their own neighborhoods to make their corner of the world a little bit better and from there it grew. In order the avoid the sins of the last Upswing, the new version would need to be all-inclusive and never make compromises when it came to equality. At the same time, less rigidity would allow for individuals to develop and "shine" within the organization.

Born when I was, I've never known anything but the "ME" generation and the aggrandizement of the individual, but I would certainly like to see the US experience another upswing. Given the all the reports of growing sense of loneliness, depression, and estrangement experienced by so many of our citizens, creating a culture of community and citizenship sounds like a good place to start.

[Jillaire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was introduced to this book when I heard co-author Shaylyn Romney Garrett present at a conference in March 2023. Her short presentation hit highlights of the research and the book's thesis, and I knew that I wanted to learn more. It is super interesting, but also super dense. It's full of A LOT of statistics and data on diverse subjects, most of which graphed into an inverse U-curve (as shown on the book's cover).

I found so much of this book fascinating, if difficult to digest (again, so much data and a lot of complex ideas), but wish that it had spent a little bit more time on the "how we can do it again" part of the subtitle. It wasn't until the last two chapters (after 400 pages of build-up) that it started to get there. Still, I think that the authors present a strong case that a society that cares more about taking care of each other and building community is also a society that will yield great equality and prosperity for all. Individualism and the turning away from associations led to poorer outcomes for everyone. I truly hope that we can swing up again.

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

V good. Most struck by the sheer number of indicators that fit Putnam’s 20th century I-we-I bell curve (from wage inequality to baby names, from community involvement to split-ticket voting) and the argument that the 60s turning point was driven by a cultural shift. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s better on the how we ended up here, than how we get out, but v compelling nonetheless.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

He's done it again! Expanding on the socio-economic trend analysis from Bowling Alone, Putnam examines the last 100 years- noting the rise and fall of individualism to collectivism in American society. While he still does not offer causal theories, his ability to provide context and insight in a readable volume is consistently impressive.

[Andy]

DNF. I had high hopes for this book, but my overall impression was the word "academic" when it's used in a bad way. This isn't anti-intellectual or pseudo-intellectual bullshit but it's wandering around losing the forest for the trees.

Overall, it seems to me that the underlying issue is much simpler than all his academic analysis:
The sociopathic malefactors of great wealth never stop trying to get more for themselves, even if this results in general disaster. On the other hand, you can push ordinary people very far before they revolt. As a result, even after institutions are established that help everything work better for everyone, constant vigilance is needed to keep these functioning or else they will fall apart in a culture of corruption and incompetence.

There's a graph to make things scientifical, and the term "evidence-based" is thrown around a lot, but it's not clear what the testable hypothesis is if this is actually supposed to be a scientific model of anything. Moreover, the author lost credibility with me as a serious population scientist when he repeatedly confused lifespan and life expectancy at the beginning of the book. He also revealed a general ignorance of the history of science with statements like how it's impossible to do experiments in astronomy.

The take home point seems to be that change comes from the bottom up. Okay fine. I agree.

Alternatively:
The Rebel
The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present
Detroit: An American Autopsy

[Carissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful follow up to Bowling Alone. Every now and again I wonder about how the trends we saw in 2000’s Bowling Alone have changed. And now here we have it 20+ years later.

This book spends a lot of time describing a societal shift from “we to I” that happened in the 60s. You see on the many curves in this book a heightened sense of community in the 60s when people joined clubs, churches, and unions, and reportedly trusted one another and the government. Then a steady downturn begins in the 60s as evidenced by less reported trust in others and the government, falling marriage, club, church membership, and tax rates, and even a rise in the use of “I” in American books and more unique baby names! If you haven’t read The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, you will wonder what the heck happened in the 60’s to cause this shift. If you have read The Sum of Us, then you know and will spend the whole book begging the authors to please hurry up and opine on why this shift occurred, which they do in the end.

I highly recommend pairing this book with The Sum of Us. Then if you still have time and are feeling downtrodden, read Humankind: A Hopeful History. All are completely fascinating and intertwined in a way that will totally tickle your innards.

[Kay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have lately become obsessed with the concept of public trust. It seems to be a symptom -- or maybe a cause -- of ::gestures around:: all of this. America, it seems, is a less trusting place than its peer countries, and we have also uniquely grappled with working toward common goals. The pandemic and climate change are exposing just how broken our government is, and even though the government has started to do more than usual to prop up the economy and navigate the public health crisis, it's clear that the overall strategy is a very go-it-alone approach. Everyone must now calculate their individual risk tolerances, and hope for the best as the Delta variant flattens large parts of the country.

It is all of these thoughts about public trust that lead me back to Robert Putnam. I remember reading "Bowling Alone" in college and, frankly, hating it. At the time, documenting the decline of volunteer membership organizations and labeling this a crisis seemed retro. Those old institutions are old, I thought at the time, and no wonder they couldn't adapt to a rapidly changing and diversifying world. There were also a lot of critiques of Putnam's research that I found legitimate at the time: pining for the 1950s has plenty of problems. Women, LGBTQ people, and people of color might all resist the idea of returning to such a time, for perfectly legitimate reasons.

The Upswing seeks to make amends on this front, and respond to several of these identity-based critiques. The thesis behind this book seems roughly to be that -- quite literally -- Putnam noticed some charts measuring major indicators for various aspects of life looked similar. I will pause here to say that I'm a touch skeptical here. There seems to be some data cherry picking going on. A chart that follows a U shape seems like it was more likely to be chosen for this book than one that did not follow such a clean curve. Several of the charts are missing Y axis labeling, which makes me wonder if the shape is being either exaggerated or compacted to fit the thesis. However, I don't want to accuse Putnam of malpractice here -- he's a widely respected political scientist, and probably isn't pulling deep shenanigans on a book like this.

The underpinning of his thesis, that economic inequality is inversely correlated with public trust, seems like a reasonable thing to think. It's hard to think we're all in this together when the rich are barricading themselves in the Hamptons. It's a thought-provoking idea and one that may be completely correct. But if the solution to public trust is to raise the taxes on the rich, the solution may well have some trust problems of its own. I doubt Republicans long for an era of togetherness so much that they're willing to back off their position on tax cuts. And though public trust and eras of low partisanship certainly have some benefits, parties themselves also benefit a lot from conflict and clear contrast between parties.

It's admirable that Putnam and his colleague Shaymyn Romney Garrett tried to tackle the problem holistically. And who knows? Maybe they're ultimately right. Perhaps we are on the "upswing" from an era of deep inequality, polarization, and low public trust. But then, the pandemic also taught me that things can always get worse.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve been feeling pessimistic about the future of the country lately, and I was hoping this book would help turn me around. But I didn’t end up feeling like it delivered on its subtitle, “How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again.” The vast majority of the book is dedicated to showing *that* America came together, not *how* it came together, tracing what the authors call an “I-we-I curve” over a wide variety of economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions. The basic argument is that from a place of individualism, the Progressive Era started a movement towards greater communitarianism, but from the mid-1960s we began declining towards individualism again. It’s exhaustive, but also exhausting, to see basically the same curve dozens of times, from income tax rates to participation in fraternal organizations to the use of various communal-sounding words in the Ngram corpus. Some of these arguments seem more solid than others, but in general it was a bit of overkill, and I had to push through the tedium to get to the part where they would explain why these curves were happening.

After discussing the ways in which this I-we-I curve was/wasn’t present in terms of racial and gender equality (which are important and telling exceptions to the I-we-I trend), they finally get to the explanatory bit in the last two chapters. But for the downswing in the ‘60s, rather than trying to explain the trend, they just shrug and say that it was a bunch of crises all at once that shook the American communal ideal. Their dismissal of causal explanations wasn’t totally persuasive. For instance, my pet theory is that maybe the communal spirit of the first half of the century came from the country facing broad-based existential threats (the world wars and the Great Depression), but they dismiss the war theory of change by saying that because the upswing began before WWII, it must not have caused the upswing. Sure, these things are always a complicated mix of factors, but I think attempting to sort out which ones were most salient would have been helpful.

They leave the Progressive Era and its lessons for today (again, the subtitle of the book) until the very end, and even then I didn’t feel satisfied with their explanation of how it happened or how it could happen again. Basically, there was a groundswell of grassroots activism on a lot of issues at once that pushed the country towards an all-in-this-together mentality. But I’m not convinced that that’s replicable today; they encourage collective action on social issues, but I’m not convinced that any such movement can gain significant power without partisanship intervening and cleaving off half the country. It’s replete with the fantasy that if the argument for progressive social change is made compellingly enough, everyone is going to get on board, which I’d love to believe but I don’t think has been borne out. I don’t think there’s a recipe in here for fixing the 60-year decline the authors identify without some kind of significant external catalyst (war, palpably catastrophic climate change, that kind of thing), and my pessimism is officially not cured. Oh well.

[Lloyd Fassett · Rating 4 out of 5]

9/29/20 Why it's on my list: GoodReads pushed it to me as the highlighted suggestion in a regular email, so I found it that way. It's there because I really liked 'Our Kids' A LOT, which Goodreads' algorithm knows. I'm highly likely to read it. I also don't mind personalized, algorithm-driven suggestions, which is another issue altogether.

10/9/20 The Wall St. Journal has an odd review in trying to be conservative and argues a point but without direct references to the book or enough space to make the author's point well. The review says this book is a sequel to Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, which I wasn't aware of. The review is here: ‘The Upswing’ Review: Bowling Alone No More? Two decades after he diagnosed America’s crisis of civic life, Robert Putnam offers a remedy.

2/9/21 Very worthwhile reading to understand the emotional pendulum in the U.S. between feelings of community that we contribute to an individual rights and expectations. It is about an important curve called the I - We - I curve that shows we are in another Gilded Age pretty clearly, with our peak of caring about each other at 1967.

Here's a couple of representative quotes:

Progressive Era social innovations and institutional reforms put the US on a new path toward greater economic equality, laying the foundations for the Great Convergence that lasted until the 1970s. Progressive Era reformers, both dreamers and doers, created innovations such as the public high school, labor unions, the federal tax structure, antitrust legislation, financial regulation, and more.66 Those creations did not immediately close the income gap, given the turbulence of the Twenties, but they were the necessary foundations for further developments (especially during the New Deal, but not only then) that underpinned the Great Convergence.

In sum, during the Great Convergence, both taxation and spending moved in a progressive direction, so government redistribution was a major contributor to growing equality. With the advent of the Great Divergence, by contrast, taxes became more regressive, though spending continued to be more progressive, softening the post-1980 trend toward inequality, at least for the aging middle class.

[Edward Reilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Putnam gathered and analyzes a very compelling set of data to make his point that the United States moved from the "I" period of the Gilded Age to the "We" period of mid-century to another "I" period that we are living in today. Unfortunately the execution is not an easy read, with many facts, figures, and charts. I found it to be a difficult read, despite the interesting information.

[Neo Kuraishi · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I remember from this is that political polarization, economic inequality, social isolation can all be fixed by bringing back Rotary clubs and making them not racist. Seems legit

I thought the longitudinal comparisons off all of these phenomena were very well done though and I thought it was super thorough

[Roy · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The fierce and growing hostility to “plutocracy” at the opening of the twentieth century reflected moral outrage about inequality that had been absent during the Gilded Age with its emphasis on social Darwinism and the rights of ownership. This normative change was temporarily disrupted by the Red Scare of the 1920s, but the utter devastation of the Great Depression gave renewed force to the ideals of social solidarity instead of naked individualism, even among Republicans like Herbert Hoover. The widely shared sacrifices of World War II strongly reinforced egalitarian norms among the Greatest Generation, who would then dominate American society and politics for a quarter century after the war.”

This is an important book. I find it not totally convincing, but there are clearly some valuable ideas about what really happened over the last 125 years, and how that doesn't match the mythology of either liberal and conservative narratives about America. I particularly find exciting the emphasis on how America was better off -- economically, individually, and more socially cohesive -- when we focused on the concept that "we're all in this together" than when we focused on rugged individualism. I find it encouraging that this is one book where both conservative and liberal commentators see a lot to agree on, one of the few books I can discuss with friends on both sides of the political divide.

Fundamentally, the book argues that when we were in a similar time in the 1890s -- a time of political polarization, of economic inequality, of a sense that the country was potentially falling apart -- that we had social norms that emphasized the rights and power of the individual to do whatever they wanted; that our society got better, stronger, more capable and less polarized as the Progressive movement transformed society into one focused on our common good; and that this focus changed back to individualism in the 'long 1960s' leading inevitably back to a new period of crisis and decline. They make a case that all other explanations for the problems in 2020 America fail to explain the change, since they are usually trends (like social media) that came after the problems we decry in our society began in the 1960s. They call their story of the 125 years the "I-WE-I" curve, and argue that the only way out of this is a recommitment, at the level of individual citizens, to returning to the good of the "We" as a driving force animating our political and social lives.

I find some of this very persuasive, although I wonder if rather than a driver of politics perhaps the "I-WE-I" distinction is what we are fighting about.

It is worth noting that the book devotes a lot of attention to the lives of women and blacks in the 125 years, out of concern that the "WE" might have been only for white straight men in the period they see as the best of American history. And they acknowledge that the 1960s made some critical strides in inclusion for those groups that were absolutely necessary and tipping points. But they argue those strides were only possible because we were at a peak of an inclusive and strong "WE" society, and that by some measures (economic and life opportunities) that the story of blacks and women in the 20th century was one of continuing improvement leading to the milestones of the 1960s rather than occurring after the political breakthroughs of that time.

This book is preying on my mind. I'm going to need to think about cause-and-effect, and about what, if anything, this book says about how I should approach my personal and political involvement in society. And I need to resolve some of the places where I think it minimizes important exceptions to a continuous up and down narrative, of which i think there are a couple. I may need to come back and write more when I've figured out what I think. But in a world of books that just complain about how far we've fallen since the 1960s (or 50s, or 80s, depending on the book), this one does provide a better, broader perspective, and a little bit of hope.

[Alex Gruenenfelder · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book about "the upswing," the period in the twentieth century in which our solidarity with each other as a nation peaked. Buying into the idea that the United States is simply getting worse, with gender and race relations following this trend, this book believes that we are in a second Gilded Age and need to break out of it. A fairly socially conservative yet fiscally liberal document, the authors want to return to an age where bipartisanship was high and polarization was low. Sometimes the evidence feels selectively cherry-picked, but overall it makes interesting claims about the changes America has witnessed over the past century and a half.

What this book is really about is decline. The declines in religious and community organization affiliation, like the decline in stable marriages, are a significant highlight of the author's concern. Party affiliation has similarly become polarized and our desire to work together declined, leading to ideology being created by it, rather than the inverse. In this way, it is a highly academic work, filled with loads of statistics and polling numbers going back to census data of the 1800s. And yet, it is accessible, to those who would wish to read about the changing nature of our country and how we may build a better future, based on the lessons of our not too far off past.

[Hannah]

1. I would have never checked out this book if certain other things hadn’t gone down.
2. I mean I’m not alone, right? "How America can come together?" Doesn’t that just get stuck in your throat like a filling that came loose after you already used up your dental insurance for the year?

Because who wants to come together, anyway. Oh I appreciate that the anarco-left Substack posts I’m offered are always talking about mutual aid, community, and so on, but how many of the people busy posting such things still have enough free time to get together, one wonders, and even if they do, they must have pleasant-er neighbors than I’ve got. Right?

3. In a moment of nostalgia I watched a few sorta recent Daily Show interviews. One was with Eric Idle (do watch that if you can!) and another was with Robert Putnam. Joyful elders of the rear guard. The Putnam interview was a plug for the documentary “Join or Die,” a perfectly reasonable argument that social life through organized clubs is actually the substance of democracy, so join some clubs or democracy dies. Makes sense to me.

4. That doc is relatively frothy and easy to connect to, as it should be. This book is the assembly of data and how they understood it, from the first Gilded Age to our own. It’ll be a pretty hard sell to get many people to slog through the data and methodology - unless you’re a grad student. In which case more power to ya! - beginning in chapter 2. However! should you come across this book, I hope you get yourself to read the first chapter, “What’s Past is Prologue.” I really do hope you give yourself the opportunity. Because in seeing the types of seemingly intractable problems of the last Gilded Age - isolation, disconnection, immigration, technology, wealth inequality, wars with no connection to improving daily life for Americans - it might occur to you that these problems may not be so intractable after all. And if they turn out to be, that may be more of a consequence of how we encounter or think about them vis a vis news cycles and the internet, rather than what they are unto themselves. It definitely shed some bright light on the manner in which news and communication make me feel like today is totally singular and disconnected from the past, the future is terrible, and our only choices are to be overwhelmed by it or to retreat into entertainment and ignore it.

[Isha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for a class I'm taking on Nonprofits and Society. I don't think I would've picked this book up otherwise, but that being said, I think it was interesting and a unique perspective.

Where this book really lacked for me was the "How". The subtitle suggests that Putnam is going to give the reader a guide on how to shift the country back into a "we" mentality, but does more to educate the reader on the "why" and the data surrounding that. There are 4 pages or so in the last chapter that really are the crux of this book. I wish we got more of that and a lot sooner. I found the amount of data and examples given to be slightly overwhelming. I got lost in it all. And on the topic of data, I really wish Putnam had not deliberately excluded many minorities (Native Americans, Asians, the Latinx community, etc.) from his analysis. He says it is due to a lack of data. If he had to not include them, I would've liked to hear more about his perspective on how the i-we-i curve would work in the America we live in today.

Overall, this was an interesting book that brought some up some good lessons and thoughts to consider as we move forward as a nation.

[Larkin Tackett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harvard Political Scientist Robert Putnam and his former student, Shaylyn Romney Garrett, write about a number of data that — when tracked over the 20th century — show an inverse U. Also called an “I-We-I curve” by the authors, the trend line begins during the Gilded Age of the late 19th Century (characterized by robber barons, widespread corruption, mutual mistrust, political scandal, exploitation of wageworkers and pillaging of the natural environment.) From the Progressive Era to the 60s, called the Great Convergence, the curve bends upwards toward a “more egalitarian, cooperative, cohesive and altruistic nation,” only to decline again to the current point, which Putnam calls the Second Gilded Age. Like Putnam’s other books, recommendations for swinging up again represent a too small portion of the book. Nevertheless, he offers insights and lessons from his analysis of the Progressive era. First is to compromise, but not on issues of equality and inclusion. As President Teddy Roosevelt said, “the fundamental rule of our national life — the rule which underlies all others — is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”

[John Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

4-plus stars. This is an important book with a big idea -- one of my definitions for being a 5-star book.. The only thing that keeps it from being 5 stars was its readability -- it was a little on the tedious/academic side.

The main idea is that since the Gilded Age, American culture gradually swung from individualistic to more communitarian, peaking in the 1960s, and has gradually become more individualistic again since then. The authors detected this I-we-I pattern repeatedly over a number of political, economic, and social indicators. Further, what we commonly see as an era of progressive legislation (the 1960s/70s) lagged these trends by a few years, suggesting that culture rather than legislation was the driver, not vice versa. The swing back toward a more individualistic culture over the past 50 years also helps explain the todays' polarized politics as well as the neoliberal economics (and politics) that have followed in its wake, with its associated problems.

Highly recommended for anyone trying to understand how we got to where we are today.

[Mark Valentine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wholeheartedly recommend the reading of Putnam's book not because of stellar prose or beautiful construction but rather because it is the book for our age, the book that anyone who cares about issues and society--anyone who votes--needs to be reading. The final chapters are the best and the final pages are the best of the final chapters.

The ultimate problem that We need to be drawing together on in this age involves our Climate. It should not be a political issue for one party or another. I know some will say it is partisan and they are usually funded by the oil industry--Exxon's profits T3 of 2o22 was almost $20 billion. The arcane individualism has gripped our current days largely because of the prominence of the former President, a certifiable Narcissist.

I borrowed this book from the library to read but I want a copy for myself so that I can reference the final pages anytime I want.