Better Together: Restoring the American Community
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"The Hartford Courant" If "Bowling Alone" made readers think, perhaps "Better Together" will make them act.
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For his new book Robert Putnam visited a number of places across America where individuals and groups are engaged in unusual forms of social activism and civic renewal. These are people who are renewing their communities and investing in new forms of 'social capital.' Approximately a dozen such stories of civic innovation are told in this book. They range from a mentoring and reading programme in Philadelphia that brings together retirees and primary school children to a revitalised neighbourhood association and revitalised neighbourhoods in Boston to a successful community organising effort in the impoverished Rio Grande Valley. All across America and the UK such organizations are starting up and thriving, giving hope that the message of BOWLING ALONE has reached people and that civic institutions are taking new forms to adapt to new times and new needs.
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8 reviews
65 of 72 people found the following review helpful
Let's get "Better Together"
23 April 2004
Format:Hardcover
No matter your interest, religious, political, environment, academic, left, right, or center, if you have interest in seeing things change (or stay the same), Better Together: Restoring the American Community by Robert Putnam and Lewis M. Feldstein, with Don Cohen (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003) is a must read.
Better Together tells the stories of twelve different groups: from a community organization to a church, as well as a dance group and a web site, from a union to a branch library, a Fortune 500 corporation and a neighborhood group, to name a few. The stories hold in common the building up of community, of social capital. It is the best book of general interest that I have read in more than a year.
Putnam addresses a critical aspect of how we are brought together as citizens and neighbors. I cannot stress enough how highly I recommend this book.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Good portrait of people working together
25 Jun 2007
Format:Paperback
Robert Putnam dissected what might be the fraying of American community in "Bowling Alone". Here he and co-authors Lewis Feldstein and Don Cohen look at 12 examples of community.
It's quite interesting to see how, for example, branch libraries became social hubs in Chicago. The vignette of CraigsList is dated only a few years later and, in any event, it is difficult to accept CraigsList as as true example of community. It may have been in its earliest days, but is certainly not now. The depiction of Portland may be a bit blindsided in that Portland's activists seem to be against anything and everything, more like Babbit's than enablers of any kind.
On the whole, though, it's an interesting collection of community endeavors. Not truly a complement to "Bowling Alone", but rather a standalone effort.
Jerry
It's quite interesting to see how, for example, branch libraries became social hubs in Chicago. The vignette of CraigsList is dated only a few years later and, in any event, it is difficult to accept CraigsList as as true example of community. It may have been in its earliest days, but is certainly not now. The depiction of Portland may be a bit blindsided in that Portland's activists seem to be against anything and everything, more like Babbit's than enablers of any kind.
On the whole, though, it's an interesting collection of community endeavors. Not truly a complement to "Bowling Alone", but rather a standalone effort.
Jerry
not sure
27 Jan 2012
Format:Paperback
I saw this book at Barnes and Noble. I only skimmed it but it does not seem as good- or as depressing- as Bowling Alone. I agree that it is a very relevant theme but I think the authors need to gather more real-world input and not just paint a rosy picture from just a couple of examples. I think that as a writer, you need to take on the hardest and most entrenched issues and then try to dig through them. When you've reached the bottom, then you start to come back up, gathering solutions to the issue and examples of what did and did not work. This book does not go deep enough and it just skips around among various topics and issues. One of the problems with sociological writing today is that it tends to really focus on the problems but not the solutions. So in that way, I feel that this book succeeds. But I guess it just seems hastily put together and in need of more research.
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