Nathan Nobles’s Reviews > Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community > Status Update

"...this disjunctive pattern of decline--cooperation falling more rapidly than self-expression--may well have encouraged the single-issue blare and declining civility of contemporary political discourse."

"Today's cynical views may or may not be more accurate than the Pollyannish views of the early sixties, but they undermine the political confidence necessary to motivate and sustain political involvement."

"For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago—silently, without warning—that tide reversed, and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current. Without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the last third of the century."