This was the book that started it all for me, when I first read it way back in 2002. What's going on in America? I thought to myself. I saw problems with people when I worked for the Census Bureau. People are isolated, I saw. They don't join groups like we once did. People are lonely.

This book was one of those books that set me off on a path to find out more, to find ways to help folks become less lonely, more connected, a path I'm still following today, twenty years later.

Turn off your television. Talk to your neighbors. Take a walk. Play a game with your family. Read a book. Plug back in to your community.

Close your social media accounts.

It is that simple.

It is that hard.

Ultimately, Robert Putnam identifies the rise of television as the tipping point that triggered the decline of community.

Cut the cord.

The classic that triggered the movement to study and document the collapse of "social capital" - obligatory and reciprocal social relationships that build through more regular human interaction with neighbors as well as in groups like bowling leagues (hence the metaphor in the title) and civic groups. By the end of the last decade, arguments for strategies and interventions that would augment "social capital" in both individual and communities were vogue in grant applications, showing how quickly Putnam's ideas became institutionalized.

I've used an excerpt of this in my Intro. SOC class for a decade now and it's helpful for students to understand the context for the increasing alienation and dysfunction they feel in their own lives, especially when supplemented with the data that over a quarter of U.S. adults can name not a single friend and social isolation is a huge problem (and increasingly pointed to as a cause, not a consequence, of substance abuse and mental health problems.) There is also data from "gated communities", the phenomena separating the "haves" from the "have nots" around the world, that while residents naturally list security as a top attraction, "knowing your neighbors" was another top-listed reason, then many apparently drew a blank when later in the survey were asked to list neighbors they knew by first name. Only a small number listed even one. (This was a sociology study of gated community residents in Houston, TX, that was one of the original cities that started gated/locked communities. Of course, those Houstonites knew that their neighbors weren't brown or black skin, generally, so we know what is important about our neighbors in gated communities - they are wealthy and white!)

Putnam is a good Liberal and no radical, but I can't help think that he didn't simply document what Marx predicted long ago, that capitalism would lead to alienation of self from others as well as from ourselves.

While the conclusions were very interesting and incredibly important, it’s hard to recommend the book. It’s written to prove a point, and includes an exhaustive amount of detail. This is I’m sure critical for an academic audience, but for a lay person the level of detail is I think excessive.

this is the kind of stuff you start reading when your best friend gets her masters in social studies education and you need to keep up in conversation

(all jokes aside, this is obviously an iconic seminal text and i did love it. highly recommend if you, like me, get excited when a paragraph in a book is back to back statistics)

I had already been researching social networks and social capital for several years when I realized just how foundational this book was to the field. As I read it, I was amazed that many of these concepts emerged for the first time here--the very concepts that bloomed over the next 16 years into the roots of my dissertation. For what it's worth, I felt the same when I read Bourdieux's Le Capital Social--the two vie for the distinction of founding the field.

I am impressed that a scholar like Putnam took his message to the advocacy level. This book is directed at the non-academic public. My mom enjoyed the book as a Christian pastor just as much as I did as a scholar. This is the kind of genre I hope to also produce.

3.5 stars, rounded up.

The connections and correlations were fascinating, but the material was a little dated. He ended book by saying things like “Hopefully, by the year 2010…” but it was still very interesting to see where America had come from and how it has changed.

While the information was interesting, the lecture style in which it was presented made it seem a little dry. I think it would have been more enjoyable in a story format.

Was hoping for more bowling. 1 star. (its a joke folks)

Putnam is on the money about the disappearing community connectedness in our society and this book is truly ahead of its time. This came out in 2000, so he was pointing out isolation on society before the internet truly took hold. Years before the isolation of social media and other cesspools fully took off. I would love to see a further update to this. I had the same thoughts when talking to older folks I worked with who described company baseball teams and fishing tournaments of years past now decades defunct. It’s sad to see how fractured everything has become and this book offers many ideas as to why, but it openly admits that there is no clear answer. And it also makes the important connections to the lack of community and the lack of political engagement. The isolation is driving a sense of apathy and I would say it also drives many folks to seek a semblance of that belonging in online conspiracies and other dead ends. Maybe I will start a bowling team. Putnam wants society to touch grass.

先读过作者写的《Our Kids》，18年作者第一次来中国，到上海交大讲座的时候我特意去追星。
再读这本书，很佩服作者广袤的视野和严谨的逻辑，运用大量数据和已有研究成果，揭示出近几十年社会资本在美国社会下降严重，其衡量指标包括社区组织生活、公共事务参与、社区志愿服务、非正式社交、社会信任等，原因可能包括时间和经济压力、城市化和流动、科技和大众媒体发展、代际家庭和群体变化等。作者认为最重要的破坏因素是全球化和经济结构，而个体是否将电视作为主要娱乐方式是最为显著和一致的公民参与预测因素。
之所以应当重视社会资本，是因为社会资本意味着广泛的社会互惠，是人们乐意帮助他人的根本，短期利他，长期利己，人们幸福感更高，其正面后果包括相互支持，合作，信任，制度效率等。
本书对于致力于建设更和谐社会的政策制定者意义更大，是think tank职责所在。
美国走过的道路在世界许多国家被模仿，不仅中国企业界纷纷强调绩效管理，就连政府也越来越重视绩效管理，并且开设了政府绩效管理专业。或许有朝一日回头看的时候全是讽刺，因为他们所copy的美国模式在美国已经产生了不少负面后果，而我们在一切以效率和市场为导向的过程中抛弃了自己好的方面。

This book chronicles a very real problem, which is the decline of civic participation through services clubs, churches, places where people gather, or even just getting together with friends in person. We've forgotten how to commune.

This book was written more than 20 years ago and it foreshadowed one of the reasons this matters - that of politics without civic engagement being arm's length politics. It forecasted the societal splintering that's happening right now. It didn't end on a super hopeful note even then though, and I feel less hopeful now. Back when this was written, Putnam estimated about 20 per cent of the reason for the decline was technology, which he framed as too much TV watching. He wrote this BEFORE the age of the smartphone. Now, I think our future is the immobile humans from the movie Wall-E who are blobs and only talk through screens. The decline in civic engagement still matters though. It will always matter.

Everything I hate about the shredding of America's social fabric summarized in 400 pages. The fact this was written in the 90s and published in 2000 is remarkable, considering that the decline has only accelerated.
My final thought: Turn off your TV and go outside. It's good for you and your community.

Bowling Alone is a seminal work, fantastic in its intrigue, and eloquently written. Putnam poses his questions, eliminates the straw men, and aptly uses his (somewhat personally contrived) data methodologies to meaningfully back up his takeaways to a crucial problem.

it’s also depressing, dense, and a true bummer to read alone (when one is separating themselves from the limited social capital backbone that there is). It’s not just the fact that we’re heading towards an uninvolved, para-social, virtually dominant future, but part of the depressing nature of this work is the supposedly “optimistic” conclusion. He dissects the issue and the data, isolates the “what’s wrong” and the “why it matters”….but his entire section of “what we can do about it” is uninspired at best and over-ambitious if not impossible at worst. Putnam makes a call to action that has no outline, no tangible blueprint, just a list of ridiculously lofty changes we’d need to see at the societal level to correct the trend. moreover, he specifically dictates that these can’t be championed by pioneering individuals, and, while it is a fair point about contradictions between entrepreneurship and social trust, it seems to stifle motivation for anyone to take him up on his suggestions.

tough read tbh, it paints a melancholic mirror and a bleak outlook on our future