“For roughly half a century these separate ‘streams of events’…shaped an America that was more equal, less contentious, more connected, and more conscious of shared values…. Putnam and Garrett call the confluence of these four metrics the “I-we-I” curve. Each reaches its apex at essentially the same moment in the mid-1960s, forming an “inverted U” shape. Surveying a wealth of statistical data, The Upswing presents a “wide-angle history” of the past 125 years, depicting trend lines of economic equality, comity in politics, cohesion in social life, and altruism in cultural values. His co-author is a Harvard grad, award-winning social entrepreneur, and “changemaker.” ![]() This diminishment of “social capital” seriously undermines individual well-being and the overall functioning of society, as the sense of trust and solidarity among citizens evaporates. There, he argued that since the 1970s Americans have become increasingly disconnected from each other and from the thick network of civic associations in which they find shared meaning and community. Despite its impressive data sets and clever graphing, The Upswing proffers progressivism as the solution to our problems without examining progressivism’s role in creating those problems, a prescription not for a cure but for frustration and bewilderment.Ī professor of public policy at Harvard, Putnam is best known for his 2000 study, Bowling Alone. ![]() Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett’s The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. There’s not much wrong with America that more progressivism can’t fix, according to Robert D.
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