This was a very academic work, which some may find dry or unengaging. I appreciated the academic and intellectual standards that Putnam applied, never jumping to conclusions that he could not responsibly make.

Even though the book was written in the 90s, I think it’s pretty easy to see that the trends he described are still relevant.

Flawed and inconsistent. And dated, but not really - rather it is for the dates it covered, still accurate. But all in all a wow book. But then again I'm a sucker for books that remind me that the world is analyzable like say Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.

I tripped over wanting to read this book, when one of my five book groups started talking about reading a book on loneliness. Bowling Alone was one of the books suggested, ultimately we read something more current, more (pretend) focused on loneliness, and a lot less good.

So what was so good about this book?

First of all it had a hypothesis - that the United States had experienced a decline in social capital and that such could be measured and a cause or causes could be sussed out. The book defines what it is talking about and comes up with some possible causes. But it also talks about how do you measure social change from the past - and that idea and how they went about it was almost another separate book.

The book walks through a bunch of possible causes - and for each discusses what they are and how you would measure them and their impact on social capital. And what the flaws are in definition and measurement and differentiating correlation from causation.

Lot's of graphs. Lot's of tables. Pretty good summaries.

Some of the later chapters feel someone out of place - there is a section on why increasing/decreasing social capital matters related to various topics - this felt fluffy. There is a section on the period earlier than most of the book covers which felt unnecessary - but by the end almost justified inclusion.

So what's the cause? Read the book - but the short is generational change (with a dash of depression and ww2 service), longer commutes in cars and television - and really maybe some other stuff.

But I wondered at how you would create a perpetual open source archive of massive repetitive survey data. Then again who knows, perhaps you can get this by reading from the internet archive or twitter or facebook (or further back usenet or letters to the editors).

Hopefully there's an update to this book in some manner. Something that deals with the social capital (or non social capital?) of reviews on social media and posts in message lists and groups and chat groups and patreons and so forth.

Of course the starting thought there is people feel even more disengaged and let's say lonely than they were when this book was published. Except now many of us have just been typing alone for years upon years, even before covid and remote work.

So not a perfect book. But a classic one I'm glad to have read.

Incredibly thorough, and, while the data stops at 2000, still very informative for 2024. The trends Putnam describes and predicts have only accelerated in the 25 years since.

A massive tome that took me just under a month to read, but worthwhile.

This book references Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Lots of thoughts on this one, will be processing for a bit.

Unlike Putnam, I find myself not altogether flustered that society is changing, and hold that a good many things that were required to prop up "those bygone days" can safely be left in the past.

What's more, the absolute naïveté of (not only) the author to assess the dawning (at the time) age of the internet in such simple terms unnerves me. Penned in 2000, this book was written before so many of the defining events of my generation had occurred. Here we sit on the cusp of (yet another) technological revolution, and it leaves me wondering how future scholars will attempt to summarize the woe and whimsy of our time.

An impressive undertaking but I think a lot of positivism regarding vague things like "social capital" in the social sciences is generally a SHAM (sorry Robert). Putnam likes the 1950's a little tooooo much even though he tries to acknowledge how social capital and inclusion/tolerance are not mutually exclusive. The book does make you think about what it means to have social capital and poses a relevant question for today, but I do not know if there will ever be quantifiable metrics to find a definitive solution to his question about why social capital declined in the US. The article version of this book is more than enough to get the idea.

I have known of this book and referred to it for many years but this is the first time I have read it. In this book sociologist Robert Putnam chronicles the decline of social capital in the United States over the last century and offers suggestions on ways we can re-develop that lost social capital. Social capital is social connectedness, and the active involvement in civic affairs, whether it be in leading a Cub Scout Group, joining a service club, participating in a political campaign, or working to improve one's community. Putnam looks at the various dimensions of social capital and how it develops and why it has declined. The book is filled with data, charts and graphs, as well as specific illustrations that illuminate the data. While it is a technical work, it is written in an accessible style for anyone who wants to really delve into the issue. I found it challenging and inspiring, in that much of my work these days is designed to help people find and develop their social capital.

Really fascinating concept, but overly long and super boring and dry given it's covering a concept that could easily be made more engaging. This was published over 20 years ago and there is an epilogue written with an update post-internet in 2020, but I still felt like some of the information here was a little outdated.

I've seen this very long, dry book quoted in several other books. I found a used copy and gave it a try. The cover fooled me. It's a best-seller and has a cartoon (more like an Ayn Rand hero) man bowling on the cover, which made me think it would be a popular culture type thing, bur it ended up being very, very academic. Putnam wrote this around the year Y2K an used data, data and more data to discuss the decline of civic participation in American society, or as he calls it social capital. 19 years after this was written, many people are talking about this topic and blaming the decline on fake online lives lived on social media and the internet, but this trend had been going on for much longer, as this book which was released even before (now middle aged) young people discovered MySpace let alone long before the Boomers found Facebook. For decades social capital (people hanging out with actual people in formal and informal settings) has been declining. This includes declining rates in participation in voting, organizations like the PTA and Masons, organized religion, labor unions, having friends over for dinner, active philanthropy (volunteering time instead of just sending a check), and even just the abstract idea of just how much people trust each other (we do seem to be super scared of each other lately, don't we?). Putnam uses data, data, and data to analyze the causes of this change and is very careful about things like confirmation bias (things I am ignoring). It is easy to blame social media, but as this prehistoric, pre-facebook book shows this has been going on for some time. He looks at possible causes, like money pressures and people needing more than one income to do what people 50 years ago used to do with one, urban sprawl and people no longer working where the live, mass media which has become more and more a form of partisan hackery, and the Big One - generational change. The (defined by Tom Brokaw) Greatest Generation who were a group of people tested in the fires of adversity (Depression and war) were replaced by the Baby Boomers. The Boomers were the first generation raised on a steady diet of TV with no real societal crises. They had good schools, job prospects, etc, etc and seemed to attribute it all to their own superior morality and hard work and spent the rest of their lives tearing down what they were given. (note: the book says this subtly and academically, but this is my review so I can make it super-extreme if I want). The Boomers raised my so-called X generation which reverentially worshipped at the alter of individuality we were taught and made things worse, of course some of us had kids which made for Millennials, the abhorrent generation who make the Boomer throw up in their mouths (maybe because the selfishness and frivolity they are attributed with is the summation of the Boomer ideology which subconsciously activates the guilt centers in the minds of said Boomers (((Oh, God, what have I done?!!!!))). ) Anyways, I got off on a tangent, but back to the book. Putnam then goes on to describe the societal problems of the social capital degradation and suggests making some changes to reverse the trend, even going so far as to suggest ways to reverse the trend by 2010 (LOL!!! NEWB!!!!), and compares the circa 2000 state of affair to the transition from the Gilded Age of to the Progressive Era, where many social norms we take for granted were agitated for (it seems absurd now that people once had to protest to start Kindergartens and neighborhood playgrounds) . In sum, it was very dry, boring academic book full of stats, but it did make me think, want to talk to people more, and throw out my easy answers of blaming facebook for something that's been going on since the Boomers took over. (apologies to any Boomer who might read this and get their snowflake feelings hurt, I owe you a hug).

Bowling Alone is a deep dive into the decline of social capital in the United States in the last century. You hear so much about how the internet is destroying (or at least changing) social bonds, so I found it fascinating to see how this trend actually began decades before, with baby boomers. While the more individualistic attitude of this generation has had some positive effects too (less conformity, more tolerance), it’s clearly changed the way we engage with community.

This has been going on for far longer than the existence of social media, which seems to me to be preying on this attitude of valuing convenience, entertainment, and spectatorship over the challenge of real engagement. Like most technological change, it is both cause AND effect.

That said, this book was a slog. It could have been far more concise and less academic without sacrificing the message one bit. Still, a very worthy and perspective-altering read.

Despite it's "Best Seller" status - this book left a lot to be desired. Like anyone else who knows a thing or two about political participation and social capital, this book rings hollow and insincere at certain points.

Briefly, Putnam rests far too much of his argument on the decline of traditional, conventional "community organizations" of a previous era (like The Lion's Club, the Elks or the Masons). He pays scant attention to how divisive, racist, sexist, and homophobic many of these organizations were and how they all demanded a degree of conformity. Furthermore, he manages to write off the importance of both social movements and support-based groups in a single, short chapter without acknowledging the way that social movements allow new flexible forms of participation or how support-based groups may allow a greater degree of "bonding" and "bridging" social capital. If you take an AA meeting or a meeting for single parents, of course the people in these groups have a single thing in common but they are just as likely to have many things not in common, such as the neighbourhood they live in, the type of job they have, and racial background.

Further to this, his means of measurement are simply not adequate. Using the GSS to track club involvement is disingenuous, for example, because they ask "Were you a member of this type of club?" The answer is yes or no, and does not allow individuals to count the multiple kinds of clubs they belong to of a single kind (such as belonging to two environmental clubs).

There is certainly something going in American - CONVENTIONAL forms of political participation and civic participation are declining, but there are many emerging forms of participation which Putnam writes off or ignores altogether. He acknowledges that we need to find new ways to participate that that fit our current era as the old kinds of community organization may not work, but at the same time he ignores, writes off, or undervalues the ways in which people are already participating in new and innovative ways - such as support groups, continuing social movements, community festivals, pick-up sports leagues, short-lived issue based groups, more flexible forms of political participation, and the multiple kinds of participation that are made possible by the internet and related forms of technology.

Still, there is a great deal of valuable information in this book and a number of keen insights but Putnam's needs to open his mind up to new, innovative, and unconventional forms of participation and networks in order to make a more convincing argument.

Lots of good info but a bit dense. Some discussion gets a bit repetitive as well.

I would give this 3.5 stars if possible. It’s a landmark book for a reason and incredibly resonant with the advent of social media and extrapolations one can draw from decreased civic activity and social interaction to social media isolation and increasing ostracism and mistrust between people. One key takeaway that it’s much harder to vilify people you interact with regularly, particularly in a non-political environment like a bowling league, PTA, chess club, etc. remains strong. He also makes a crucial distinction between older community based organizations and many modern day associations that are largely online and consist of not much beyond paying dues and reading a newsletter, rarely are in person meetings involved.

The key weakness to the book is its dry, academic presentation and overabundance of examples. He continually makes a point and follows it up with seven almost identical case studies. I admittedly started skimming once I read 1-2 examples and moved to the next chapter. I think this book could easily be a few hundred pages shorter with a long appendix for those interested, but well worth the read (skim?) if only to understand some key trends. It’s a particularly fascinating read during COVID in an era of extreme political polarization.