- Store Locations
- Kid Stuff
- About Us
- Bestsellers
- Award Winners
- Agatha Award
- Anthony Awards
- Caldecott Medal
- Edgar Allen Poe Award
- Hugo Award
- Indies Choice Award
- Lambda Literary Award
- Man Booker Prize
- National Book Awards
- National Book Critics Circle
- Nebula Award
- Newberry Award
- Nobel Prize for Literature
- PEN/Faulkner Award
- PEN/Hemingway Foundation
- Pulitzer Prizes
- James Beard Foundation
- Triangle Awards
- NCBA
- Books Inc. Bestsellers
- Indie Bestsellers
- Signed Books
- Top 10 of 2011 - NY Times
- Top10 2011 SF Chronicle
- Book Trailer
- Recently Reviewed
- Award Winners
- Book Clubs
- Classics I Forgot To Read
- Foreign Intrigue Book Club
- Healthy Lives: The Book Club
- Thinking Parents' Book Group
- First Fiction
- World Affairs Council
- SF LGBT/Books Inc.
- Desert Island Book Club
- Politically Inspired Book Club
- SF Travel Book Club
- The Modern Lit Book Club
- Big Yes Society
- 4th Tuesday Book Club
- Broken Compass Adventure
- Central SF Classic Lit
- Second Saturday
- Hands On Bay Area
- LitVoyeur (Online)
- Book Fairs
- Calendar of Events
- Newsletter
- Indie Next List
- Signed Books
- Browse & Search
Click on title to see which Books Inc. stores have stock. We do not carry every book in every store. We recommend calling stores that show low stock numbers before you go to pick up!
Description
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.
About the Author
Robert D. Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and founder of the Saguaro Seminar, a program dedicated to fostering civic engagement in America. He is the author or coauthor of ten previous books and is former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Praise for Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community…
Alan Ryan The New York Review of Books Rich, dense, thoughtful, fascinating...packed with provocative information about the social and political habits of twentieth-century Americans.
Richard Flacks Los Angeles Times Putnam styles himself as a kind of sociological detective....The reader experiences the suspense that can happen in both detective fiction and science.
Wendy Rahn The Washington Post This is a very important book; it's the de Tocqueville of our generation. And you don't often hear an academic like me say those sorts of things.
Alan Ehrenhalt The Wall Street Journal A powerful argument...presented in a lucid and readable way.
Julia Keller Chicago Tribune A learned and clearly focused snapshot of a crucial moment in American history.






