Bowling Alone

The Show Up lens, documented. Putnam measured something everyone sensed and no one had counted: the long American decline in joining, meeting, and showing up, the civic association a republic quietly runs on. He gave the country the data behind a feeling, and a phrase for it. The argument is that the loss of those bonds is not merely social but political, that a people who stop gathering lose the muscle self-government depends on. The case for the recurring meeting, in numbers.

The political scientist who measured something everyone sensed and no one had counted: the decline of American civic life. Bowling Alone documents the long fall in the joining, meeting, and showing up that a republic runs on, and argues that the loss is not merely social but political. He gave the country the data behind a feeling, and a phrase for it.