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The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

Robert D. Putnam,

Shaylyn Romney Garrett (With)

4.01 · Rating details · 336 ratings · 80 reviews

An eminent political scientist’s brilliant analysis of economic, social, and political trends over the past century demonstrating how we have gone from an individualistic “I” society to a more communitarian “We” society and then back again—and how we can learn from that experience to turn the corner towards a stronger, more unified nation, from the author of Bowling Alone ...more

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Hardcover, 464 pages

Published October 13th 2020 by Simon Schuster (first published April 7th 2020)

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Feb 27, 2020 David Wineberg rated it it was amazing

Millions of Americans have grown up thinking there is no alternative to the cult of the individual, living alone, striving for him or her self alone, and taking no one else into consideration. But America was not always like this. For most of the 20th century, it was all about belonging, joining, and sharing. That way of life peaked in the 1960s, and has been sliding ever since. That is the topline summary of Robert Putnam's extremely important The Upswing.

The opening salvo of Putnam and Shaylyn ...more

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Dec 30, 2020 Clif Hostetler added it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

The central message of “The Upswing” is an insight that becomes apparent when viewing trends over the entirety of the 20th century: The societal sense of togetherness “we” that was true in the 1950s (but no longer true since the subsequent shift toward the individualistic sense of “I”), was itself achieved through steady growth over the first half of the 20th century.

When data from the 20th century is observed as a whole it becomes clear that many of the social and economic disparities that are The central message of “The Upswing” is an insight that becomes apparent when viewing trends over the entirety of the 20th century: The societal sense of togetherness “we” that was true in the 1950s (but no longer true since the subsequent shift toward the individualistic sense of “I”), was itself achieved through steady growth over the first half of the 20th century.

When data from the 20th century is observed as a whole it becomes clear that many of the social and economic disparities that are true now were also true at the beginning of the 20th century. The “rugged individualism” espoused during the Gilded Age gradually changed toward a more unified sense of, “We're all in this together,” by midcentury. But then during the second half of the century trends changed back toward more emphasis on individual freedoms.

This book is chock full of graphs of economic, social, political, and cultural data repeatedly plotting inverted U-shaped curves that demonstrate the premise that 20th century history can be summarized with one big “I-we-I” curve.

The book suggests that lessons can be learned today from the actions taken and changes made over one hundred years ago that brought about the Progressive Era. This book covers a wide variety of components in the study of the tensions between emphases on community versus individualism.

For this review I've decided to highlight one particular accomplishment of the Progressive Era—a decrease in the disparities of economic wealth and income. In the first half of the 20th century this included an inheritance tax and up to 90% marginal income tax. If changes similar to those of the Progressive Era are to be achieved now, similar provisions will need to be enacted.

The changes noted in the previous paragraph and other modifications needed to address additional consequences of excessive individualism will require political action. In a democracy this will require a groundswell of popular opinion and civic engagement to enable the necessary political changes. The book concludes with the following comment.

"... one key to understanding their [Progressive Era] legacy is recognizing that national political leadership came after sustained, widespread citizen engagement, not before."

...more

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Oct 26, 2020 Ryan Boissonneault rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Most accounts of the current crisis in America focus on the last 40–60 years, tracing the conservative revolution that started in the 1960s, intensified in the 80s, and ultimately culminated in the era of Trump. This trend towards hyper-individualism and cultural narcissism has resulted in extreme inequality, political polarization, and social disarray and violence.

The problem with accounts such as these, however, is that they fail to take a wide enough perspective; by covering only the last 60 ...more

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Jan 24, 2021 William Snow rated it it was amazing

Shelves: god-tier

For anyone who wants to be an active and dutiful citizen of the US, I cannot recommend The Upswing enough!

What a brilliant book. Robert Putnam (famous author of Bowling Alone), along with the help of Shaylyn Romney Garrett, ends his career with a bang, exercising a masterful macrohistory of America in the last 125 years. In showing how the US went from The Gilded Age to the Golden Age back to a Gilded Age II, we gain the valuable insight of perspective that might just help us start bending hist For anyone who wants to be an active and dutiful citizen of the US, I cannot recommend The Upswing enough!

What a brilliant book. Robert Putnam (famous author of Bowling Alone), along with the help of Shaylyn Romney Garrett, ends his career with a bang, exercising a masterful macrohistory of America in the last 125 years. In showing how the US went from The Gilded Age to the Golden Age back to a Gilded Age II, we gain the valuable insight of perspective that might just help us start bending history back to a Golden Age II.

The basic premise of the book is that across all sectors of the US — politics, economics, society, and culture — we went from a “low point” at the end of the 19th century to a peak in the 1960s, followed by a downturn that has taken us today to as low a point as we were when the Rockefellers and the Robber Barons ran the country, and Jim Crow was still in its infancy. The amazing part about the graphs that track these four sectors, and many sub-sectors within them, is that they take hard, measurable data to come to the striking conclusion that they overlap eerily much. This finding leads the authors to dub a master-curve, showing all the trends combined, the I-we-I curve — essentially, how tight-knit the fabric of the nation is (or, as today, isn’t).

The writing is often quite wonky and academic, but... frankly, I miss that! I want to go back to school, so making my way through the occasionally dense prose was not a drawback. Having such air-tight figures and logic far outweighed the consequence of it being a bit cumbersome on occasion.

Ultimately, the authors bust many narratives about history as conventional wisdom today sees it. And for me, one of the most striking themes was the subtlety and often counter-intuitive nature of change; typical markers of earth-swelling change as we thought, such as the presidency of Ronald Reagan, for example, are really only lagging indicators of change already made, and Reagan had relatively little impact over long-running trends already in motion (accelerating inequality, distrust of govt, selfishness, etc.). While leaders can certainly make dents in the arc of history, so often, as the authors show, changes trickle up from the grassroots over decades. I cannot think of better inspiration for us all trying to inflect our nation’s trajectory after the past 60 years, culminating in this terrible national nightmare we’ve only barely survived.

Again — cannot recommend this book enough! This is one to remember for anyone trying to get the fullest grasp on America today.
...more

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Oct 25, 2020 Fraser Kinnear rated it liked it

Shelves: history, policy

Through a variety of measures, Putnam and Garrett track a 130 year long American cultural arc from individualism to collectivism and back to individualism again. They call this the “I – We – I” curve, which commenced with the Teddy Roosevelt Progressive era displacing the individualistic Gilded Age, then accumulating collectivist cultural norms and government policies until cresting in the 1960’s, with a subsequent long decline back to our contemporary individualism.

To a remarkable degree, dome

To a remarkable degree, domestic, institutional, and social reforms that had their origins in the first decade of the 20th century turn out to explain both the rise and then the fall of economic equality, because those reforms themselves waxed and waned in precisely the same century long rhythm as equality and inequality. The U-curve that describes the ups and downs of economic equality is paralleled by, and very caused at least in part by, the ups and downs of a set of institutional changes that were first sketched and implemented during the progressive era.

The above is an early passage, and as a result I was expecting an economic policy-oriented book. But Putnam and Garrett don’t invest much time into supporting the claim above, perhaps because it seems to be accepted as consensus economic thinking today.

Instead, the authors focus on tying economics and policy together with culture to make broader claims about how our society shifted over time. But Putnam and Garrett quickly admit that they aren’t able to reach any causal conclusions on such squirrely sociological metrics:

These bits of evidence are tantalizing, but this evidence is too weak to support any definitive claim. In short, at this stage, the available evidence offers virtually no indication of an uncaused first cause of the “I – We – I” syndrome. All the birds in this flock wheeled around at almost precisely the same time, seemingly leaderless. That fact seriously complicates any effort at causal analysis.

This is a kind of academic humility and integrity that I think few pop-policy books hold themselves to. It probably forgives them from investing much into any policy recommendations, because they simply don’t know what needs to change.

Along the way, Putnam and Garrett attack many political holy cows that each political party trot out. For example, the left frequently blame Reaganism for this shift in inequality. But by Putnam and Garrett’s measures, many changes were set in place decades before. Growth in education rates paused around 1965, unions had been in long decline since 1958, the minimum wage peaked in 1968, a regressive turn in tax cuts started in the mid-1960’s, financial institution deregulation started in the 1970’s.

Since one popular interpretation of these shifts in policy, and of the consequent shifts in income and wealth distribution, fingers the Reagan revolution after 1981 as the chief culprit. It is significant in virtually every case the key turning points occurred a decade or more before the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In short, the presidential election of 1980, and the subsequent unfolding of Reaganism was a lagging indicator of this sea-change in the American political economy. The reversal of the social and policy innovations from the first decades of the 20th century was probably the proximate cause of the great divergence in the 21st century.

Elsewhere, they call into question the conservative mantra that divorce and the erosion of the nuclear family is to blame:

[The trajectory of divorce rates] has been so persistent that demographers in the 1890’s accurately predicted the divorce rate nearly 100 years later in the 1980’s... During the 1950’s and 1960’s, the hey-day of the companionate marriage, the divorce rate dipped below the long-term trend, and then rose sharply above the long-term trend in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The Boomers’ parents shunned divorce, but among the Boomers and their children, divorce was unusually common.

Or the libertarian complaint about the size of government:

The fundamental problem of the “Big Government” explanation is that by most measures (all spending, or spending on the welfare state in real or per-capita terms, or spending as a fraction of GDP, number of government employees) the size of government lagged behind the “I – We – I” curve by several decades… In fact, the empirical evidence strongly suggests that government size is a consequence of the “I – We – I” curve, not a cause.

Or more the critique du jour that both sides seem to be flogging:

when pundits ponder nowadays why our politics are so polarized, or our economy so biased, or our families so weakened, or our churches so empty, or our culture so self-centered, two of the most commonly cited cultures are “young people these days” and “the internet”. However, amidst the tangle of possible causes that we review in this chapter, one thing is perfectly clear: neither millennials nor twitter and facebook can possibly be blamed for the “I – We – I” curve. The longer timeframe of our study gives those alleged culprits an ironclad alibi. The declines of the past half-century pre-date the millennial generation and the internet by decades.

Other less visible ideas are called into question, such as how “…philanthropy among most Americans has fallen steadily since the mid-1960’s” (when I assumed this was broadly unchanged).

There are a few important points that I think Putnam and Garrett missed the boat on. For example, here’s what they say about marriage rates:

In contemporary America, cohabitation is not marriage without a license, but typically a short-term relationship. More than half of all cohabitations end within two years. For college graduates, cohabitation nowadays frequently ends in ordinary marriage. But for the bottom 2/3 of the American class hierarchy, where cohabitation is more common, it typically ends with both partners moving on to new partners, often with children in tow, thus producing complex, fragile families.

And while this may be true, they don’t bother to mention some possible causes, such as the perverse tax incentives poor families have to remain unmarried, as discussed by Matt Yglesias in his recent book.

But I think the most important lesson from this book is to have a value-neutral opinion about the apex of this curve. There was, these authors remind us, a dark side to communitarianism:

If the communitarian “we” is defined too narrowly, however, then conformity to social norms punishes dissidents and deviants, whether political or sexual or racial. That was no less true in mid-20th century America than it had been in 17th century Salem, and it was no accident that Arthur Miller underscored that parallel in his 1953 play, The Crucible. During the first half of the 20th century, this potential disadvantage of community had been virtually undiscussed. As the “I – We – I” pendulum swung ever upward in the 1950’s, however, Americans suddenly became more aware of this dark side of community. That awakening to the fact that we might have too much of a good thing was reflected in a sudden increase in the number of books dealing with conformity.

As the authors would conclude:

What seems normal to any of us depends on when we personally entered the story. To many older Americans today who lived through at least part of America’s upswing, and then witnessed the extraordinary reversals outlined above, the extreme inequality, polarization, social fragmentation, and narcissism of today represented even in the highest offices of the land, are anything but normal. And thus they are understandably eager not to normalize it. Meanwhile, to Gen X’ers, Millenials, and younger Americans, deepening inequality, polarization, isolation, and narcissism may seem normal, because this is the America into which they were born… One contribution of this book, we hope, is to help narrow the “OK, Boomer” generational divide by introducing a new, evidence-based narrative that encompasses the ups and downs of an entire century, thereby setting a clearer agenda for choice going forward.

Perhaps this is not a call for ambivalence, but at least we can walk away with a broader historical appreciation that we are on what is a century-long arc, and the usual boogeymen of both sides may in fact be made of straw.
...more

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Feb 11, 2021 Bruce Katz rated it liked it

Shelves: american-history, non-fiction, current-events, politics

A data-rich (or data-heavy, depending on your outlook) analysis of cultural, economic, and political patterns in America over the past 150 years or so. The authors argue that today is a virtual mirror of what America was in the Gilded Age, before the Progressive movement began making legal and policy changes to reduce the many inequities of life in the US. Using all manner of lenses, they show that by every standard we've gone from an "I" culture in the Gilded Age to a "We" culture in the period A data-rich (or data-heavy, depending on your outlook) analysis of cultural, economic, and political patterns in America over the past 150 years or so. The authors argue that today is a virtual mirror of what America was in the Gilded Age, before the Progressive movement began making legal and policy changes to reduce the many inequities of life in the US. Using all manner of lenses, they show that by every standard we've gone from an "I" culture in the Gilded Age to a "We" culture in the period leading up to the mid- to late 60s, and back to the "I" culture of today -- what they refer to as the Second Gilded Age.

Late in the book is a passage that serves well as a summary of their project: “The empirical evidence we have gathered in this book… makes clear that we have paid a high price for the Sixties’ pivot — the indefensible economic inequality of the second Gilded Age, the political polarization that is enfeebling and endangering our democracy, the social fragmentation and isolation that ignore the basic human need for fellowship, and most fundamentally, the self-centeredness that itself makes it so difficult to achieve the unity of purpose required to change our national course.”

Their premise is compelling and struck me as irrefutable, if somewhat dry in the presentation. I was struck by many of the points they made, like these about how our country has, as they put it, "taken our foot off the gas" in working towards common good and equality and lost sense of a shared purpose or vision:

• “In measure after measure, the rate of positive change [in racial equity] was actually faster in the decades preceding the Civil Rights revolution than in the decades that followed. And in many cases, progress then stopped or reversed.”

• “Tragically, just as the Civil Rights movement began to see major success, and especially as the government undertook affirmative actions to brig about integration, the fragile national consensus that had enabled that change began to erode. While equality and inclusion sounded good in principle, white Americans quickly began to voice concerns about the pace of change.”

The I-We-I pattern they delineate has taken us to a patently self-involved and narcissistic place, where an activity of "sharing a selfie" connotes a very different notion of sharing than does, say, "sharing responsibility."

• In 1950, 12% of students agreed with the statement “I am a very important person.” By 1990, that figure had risen to 80%. They quote a researcher: “No single event initiated the narcissism epidemic; instead, Americans’ core cultural ideas slowly became more focused on self-admiration and self-expression. At the same time, Americans’ faith in the power of collective action or the government was lost.”

The authors present a clear vision of where we are now (as if the past year of pandemic and the horrifying events of January 6 needed clarification), but they are hopeful. They point out that today resembles the first Gilded Age in almost every particular and remind us that there was a concerted and largely (race always being the factor that requites separate analysis) successful effort by Progressives to make the country better, safer, and more equitable. There's no reason to believe the same improvements and return to a "We" culture can't be replicated today. They quote philosopher Richard Rorty in making a sober point about the failure of the Boomers to live up to their (our) words: “It is as if, sometime around 1980, the children of the people who made it through the Great Depression and into the suburbs had decided to pull up the drawbridge behind them.”

The hope lies in the young, the authors say. Using language from a 1914 book by a 25 year old Progressive named Walter Lippmann (who himself sought to, as he put it, "diagnose the current unrest and to arrive at some sense of what democracy implies"), they write, “Today’s young people did not cause today’s problems. But like their predecessors 125 years ago they must forgo the cynicism of drift and embrace the hope of mastery.”

I'd like to believe they're right. I have to say too that I particularly like Lippmann's phrase, "what democracy implies." It captures in three words the ongoing contest in America between "freedom" and "responsibility." ...more

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Nov 24, 2020 Kate Schwarz rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobooks, social-cultural-studies

First 2/3 of the book: 3 stars. Last 1/3: 5 stars.

From that last chapter:

"The legacy of the Progressives points to the power of moral messaging, but also challenges us to push beyond the idea that silencing or expelling certain elements of our society, punishing offenders or replacing one faction's dominance with another's will restore the moral and cultural health of our nation. We must undertake a reevaluation of our shared values, asking ourselves what personal privileges and rights we might First 2/3 of the book: 3 stars. Last 1/3: 5 stars.

From that last chapter:

"The legacy of the Progressives points to the power of moral messaging, but also challenges us to push beyond the idea that silencing or expelling certain elements of our society, punishing offenders or replacing one faction's dominance with another's will restore the moral and cultural health of our nation. We must undertake a reevaluation of our shared values, asking ourselves what personal privileges and rights we might be willing to lay aside in service of the common good and what role we will play in the shared project of shaping our nation's future."

"And one key to understanding their legacy is recognizing that national political leadership came after sustained, widespread citizen engagement, not before. Today's reformers should learn from their forebears, focusing their efforts not only in promoting political candidates but also in building a grassroots, issues-based movement upon which they and future leaders will draw in order to make lasting change."

"...the failure to take full inclusion seriously compromised the integrity of America's 'we' decades and ultimately sowed the seeds of our subsequent downturn."

Looking back at the Progressive era, "Americans could have and should have pushed further towards greater equality. Therefore, the lessons of history that we glean from the I-we-I century are two sided: we learn that once before, Americans have gotten out of the mess like the one we're in now, but we also learn that in that Progressive era, and in the decades that followed, we didn't set our sights high enough for what the 'we' could really be, and we didn't take seriously enough the challenge of full inclusion. Therefore, the question we face today is not whether or can or should turn back the tide of history, but whether we can resurrect the early communitarian virtues in a way that does not reverse the progress we've made in terms of individual liberties. Both values are American, and we require a balance and integration of both. This task will not be an easy one, and nothing less than the success of the American experiment is at stake. But as we look to an uncertain future we must keep in mind what is perhaps the greatest lesson of America's I-we-I century. As Theodore Roosevelt said it, 'The fundamental rule of our national life, the rule which underlies all others, is that on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.'" ...more

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Feb 20, 2021 Dan Connors rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020-books

Looking back on history, we try to find patterns that can explain both the present and the future. Is history just a random procession of events, or is it a linear progression of progress both materially and socially? Alternatively, could history be a cyclical phenomenon, where trends ebb and flow for no particular reason? Robert Putnam believes that history falls into the cyclical model, and his book, Bowling Alone detailed how things had changed over a century's time. In his new book, Putnam Looking back on history, we try to find patterns that can explain both the present and the future. Is history just a random procession of events, or is it a linear progression of progress both materially and socially? Alternatively, could history be a cyclical phenomenon, where trends ebb and flow for no particular reason? Robert Putnam believes that history falls into the cyclical model, and his book, Bowling Alone detailed how things had changed over a century's time. In his new book, Putnam theorizes that we are at a critical inflection point of the cycle, much like during the 1960's, and that important changes could start happening at a dizzying pace for the next decade.

While Bowling Alone was published in 2000, The Upswing came out 20 years later, detailing the same predictable phenomenon that he calls the I-we-I curve. That curve, which you can see on the book cover above, details the transition society made from roughly the years 1890 to 2020. Using relentless data collection, Putnam shows how as a society we have transitioned from an "I" period of the gilded age where individualism reigned supreme and robber barons called all the shots, to a "we" period during the middle of the 20th century when unions, community organizations, and the welfare state reached their peaks, and back to an "I" period in the Libertarian 21st century where individualism reigns again, and government is looked upon with suspicion.

Some may think that we've made some progress as a society since the 21st century began, but watching the promise of the Obama years devolve into stalemate and then retrenchment of the Trump years, I have my doubts. Racism is apparently a thing again, environmental regulations are being relaxed, income inequality is as large as it was 130 years ago, and the social safety net that the Greatest Generation built is falling apart. Is this all because of conscious choices, human failings, or huge trends of human behavior that we are barely aware of? Why is it that whenever we make progress on something there seems to be a reactionary period of retrenchment that swings the pendulum the other way?

Putnam looks at trends in economics, politics, and social cohesion over the period of his curve to paint a convincing period that this cycle drove much of history during that time. The key period seems to be the 1960's, when everything peaked and then started a steady, long-term drop. Tax rates peaked in the 1950's as society looked to big government to win wars, build highways, and establish a safety net- and since then it's been a steady drop in both tax rates and government effectiveness. (Plus a huge rise in deficit spending) Real minimum wages, labor union membership, financial regulations, public colleges, and income equality all peaked around 1960 and started a steady drop all the way to today.

Social capital, which Putnam defines as the aggregate level of social organizations, also peaked in the 60's, leading to a much lonelier and more individualistic society from the "Me" decade of the 70's and beyond. Bowling leagues declined, as did civic organizations like the Rotary, Optimists, Knights of Columbus, and others, and people of all ages dropped out of groups and did more things alone or with their families. Families are smaller and less cohesive, churches have been losing members, and charitable giving has dropped over the past 50 years as a consequence of this trend away from community and towards individuals.

In a simple poll that asked people "Do you agree that people can be trusted?" a depressing trend sees the answer to that question go from 80% yes in 1960 to 32% yes in 2018. We don't trust each other anymore, and that includes the media, government, scientists, and our neighbors- which explains the rise of conspiracy theories today.

Putnam devotes two chapters to the questions of racial relations and sex discrimination during the I-we-I period, and observes that while women have made steady progress even during the downswing period, minorities have plateaued in power and influence after making remarkable progress during the 1960's. The election of Barack Obama may have seen like progress to many, but the protests of 2020 showed that if anything, racial animosities and problems are just as bad if not worse than they were 50 years ago.

We know that the 1960's were a big pivot point for history, but we don't know exactly why. Putnam devoted many pages in his last book trying to pin the blame on something, and the biggest factor that I can recall was television, technology, and the internet. Television especially made it easier to stay home and not reach out to others, as it took the place of public meetings and family dinners. The advent of addictive cell phones, video games, and social media sites makes it even easier to stay in a comfortable, lonely bubble today.

Both of Putnam's books can be a depressing read on what we've lost in the past 50 years, and the few gains we've made as a society, like the Affordable Care Act, have come with great difficulty, resistance, and push-back. I was truly hoping for a hopeful last chapter that shows how great things will be in the 1920's, but instead, Putnam takes us back to the 1920's when progressive reformers like Frances Perkins, Ida Wells, Upton Sinclair, and Teddy Roosevelt started the ball rolling for the last big upswing. What these reformers accomplished during a period that is little discussed today obviously set the stage for much bigger reforms in the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's. There's not a lot of recent history to make me feel too hopeful that things will change anytime soon.

It would be nice to think that there's a big pendulum that's about to swing towards the causes of community and love of one's neighbor, and maybe there is. Facing certain economic problems, pending environmental disasters, and a society addicted to drugs and technology, it feels like now would be a good time for us to come back together like the Greatest Generation managed to do. Selfishness and greed are not what we need right now, and perhaps people will realize that before it gets too late. Today's problems are too hard to face alone, and even the healthiest and wealthiest among us are not safe from the dangers that lie ahead.

As 2021 dawns, it feels like the Trump era was about as low as we could get. (Gosh I sure hope so, but maybe not). Reality itself is up for grabs, and pathological, narcissistic, greedy liars are apparently running things. The changes that need to happen are most likely to occur at the grass roots, as community organizations begin to grow again, and the end of a pandemic might be just the impetus we need to want to help each other again. Hopefully as we discover that our neighbors, no matter their race, religion, or gender, are actually decent human beings who have something to offer, we'll start back on the path to trusting each other again. At least for another 50 years, when the pendulum may begin its swing yet again.

“All of history, a great wheel, turning inexorably. Just as seasons come and go, just as the moon moves endlessly through her cycle, so does time. The same wars are fought, the same plagues descend, the same folk, good or evil, rise to power. Humanity is trapped on that wheel, doomed endlessly to repeat the mistakes we have we have already made. Unless someone comes to change it.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Quest
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Dec 13, 2020 Marks54 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is a new book by a well known Harvard public policy scholar (Bowling Alone). It is billed as a macro history of America from the end of the Civil War to the present. It is perhaps better seen as a report on a data base study looking from regularities in American social and political life focusing on the perspectives obtained from public opinion research across a 125 year period. If I had to place it in a genre of sorts it would be the research and policy work on “What the heck happened and This is a new book by a well known Harvard public policy scholar (Bowling Alone). It is billed as a macro history of America from the end of the Civil War to the present. It is perhaps better seen as a report on a data base study looking from regularities in American social and political life focusing on the perspectives obtained from public opinion research across a 125 year period. If I had to place it in a genre of sorts it would be the research and policy work on “What the heck happened and why has everything gone wrong with the US lately?” This work took off after the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath and then soared with the 2016 elections. (Hmmm ... any timing issues here?)

So what is the hook here? It appears that Professor Putnam and Ms. Romney Garrett have run across some intriguing data patterns linking the Gilded Age in the late 19th century with our current American malaise. The key pattern is one of an inverted U-shaped curve that is low at the start, rises to a peak, and then declines. It is a complex story that is attempted but it boils down to the following: Good times in the US seem to be positively associated with a strong communitarian feeling or sensibility in the popular culture (we are all in this together) and negatively associated with the prevalence of highly individualistic and non-communitarian sensibilities (me, me, me!; individual achievement and merit; not in my backyard!).

Along with this, Putnam argues that these sensibilities were evident well before they were commonly thought to be. For example, while the Civil Rights movement and its legislative achievement were undoubtedly important, there was measurable progress in the quality of lives of African Americans long before the Civil Right movement, due to other economic and social factors (for example, the Great Migration). So this is not a matter of one or a few key individuals changing history but rather broad and deep trends that affected the country over a long time frame.

The key decade appears to be the 1960s, which actually seem to split in half to form two critical decades. In the first half, communitarian tendencies continue and blossom while in the second half, conflicts arise, individualism takes over, and matters begin to deteriorate. After that, politics turned toxic, the economy went downhill, universities started to deteriorate, and various other plagues seemed to hit the land. The story here is straight out of Tocqueville, and the tensions he say in America of the 1830s. Putnam appropriately leads with Tocqueville.

What to make of this? As popularly oriented policy books go, this is fairly good. The general study approach seems defensible and Putnam makes used of additional tools to bolster his claims (like historical text searching on the web). The results seem reasonable and consistent with other work. The comparison between the present and the Gilded Age is interesting (although others are making use of this comparison as well). The problem with all of this is that with really macro data, especially survey data, how does one come up with actionable suggestions for policy changes? As a result, while I can appreciate the idea of working to become more social and communitarian, I cannot help getting a sense that the problem is being redefined in terms of a solution. (Suffering from poverty? What to do? No problem - go out and get yourself some money!). That cannot be helped, given the scope of the study and the informative value of the book far outweighs such issues.

As a matter of personal taste, I find the scope too broad and with that the analysis had been a bit more focused. For a comparison, readers can compare this with Robert Gordon’s work on the rise and fall of the American standard of living, which covers an overlapping period with somewhat comparable results, although the analysis goes in a different direction. This sort of analysis is hard and the details matter. Discussions of causality are relevant but one gets the sense here that Putnam’s book does not give them sufficient attention noting that causation is complex (and endogenous).

Overall, the book is well worth reading.

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Dec 15, 2020 Jennifer Stringer rated it really liked it

This one required putting on my thinking cap and pondering a bit. The premise: Early in the 20th century, the US was coming out a gilded age that left many out and in living in extreme situations. By embracing a "we're all in this together" approach and progressive policies such as extending schooling, organizing unions, establishing community organizations (rotary, lions, etc.) scouts, public parks & museums, we created community. By adopting this approach, the US experienced an amazing upswing This one required putting on my thinking cap and pondering a bit. The premise: Early in the 20th century, the US was coming out a gilded age that left many out and in living in extreme situations. By embracing a "we're all in this together" approach and progressive policies such as extending schooling, organizing unions, establishing community organizations (rotary, lions, etc.) scouts, public parks & museums, we created community. By adopting this approach, the US experienced an amazing upswing by all classes of people. Working within the established boundaries of democracy to better the lives of the masses, the US largely missed the communist/Marxist ideology that was sweeping the world as those on the bottom rose up. This does not mean everything was hunky-dory. Many of the institutions were exclusionary when came to anyone other than WASPs. (However the races and women also formed their own organizations such as the NAACP and Women's Suffrage Movement which flourished at this time.) Overreach was another problem when it came to the18th amendment prohibiting alcohol. but on a whole, this time period saw rapid improvement in the overall population. Beginning in the mid-sixities and hitting its stride in the 70s & 80s, the age of the individual and ME generation came on the scene. This was not all bad, either, but has left many out and has led to the sizable income and opportunity gap as those who reach the highest rung put up barriers to those coming up (devastating health costs and crippling student loan interest rates for example.)

The author advocates for another upswing by abandoning cynicism and outrage and engaging in a community spirit and citizenship, right where we are, in our own communities. The challenge lies in how to possess the communitarian virtues without losing singular strengths and individuality. He points out that the agents of change from last century, all began with individuals attempting to solve local problems in their own neighborhoods to make their corner of the world a little bit better and from there it grew. In order the avoid the sins of the last Upswing, the new version would need to be all-inclusive and never make compromises when it came to equality. At the same time, less rigidity would allow for individuals to develop and "shine" within the organization.

Born when I was, I've never known anything but the "ME" generation and the aggrandizement of the individual, but I would certainly like to see the US experience another upswing. Given the all the reports of growing sense of loneliness, depression, and estrangement experienced by so many of our citizens, creating a culture of community and citizenship sounds like a good place to start. ...more

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Dec 31, 2020 Heather rated it it was amazing

He's done it again! Expanding on the socio-economic trend analysis from Bowling Alone, Putnam examines the last 100 years- noting the rise and fall of individualism to collectivism in American society. While he still does not offer causal theories, his ability to provide context and insight in a readable volume is consistently impressive. ...more

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Sep 29, 2020 Lloyd Fassett rated it really liked it

Shelves: social-science

9/29/20 Why it's on my list: GoodReads pushed it to me as the highlighted suggestion in a regular email, so I found it that way. It's there because I really liked 'Our Kids' A LOT, which Goodreads' algorithm knows. I'm highly likely to read it. I also don't mind personalized, algorithm-driven suggestions, which is another issue altogether.

10/9/20 The Wall St. Journal has an odd review in trying to be conservative and argues a point but without direct references to the book or enough space to mak 9/29/20 Why it's on my list: GoodReads pushed it to me as the highlighted suggestion in a regular email, so I found it that way. It's there because I really liked 'Our Kids' A LOT, which Goodreads' algorithm knows. I'm highly likely to read it. I also don't mind personalized, algorithm-driven suggestions, which is another issue altogether.

10/9/20 The Wall St. Journal has an odd review in trying to be conservative and argues a point but without direct references to the book or enough space to make the author's point well. The review says this book is a sequel to Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, which I wasn't aware of. The review is here: ‘The Upswing’ Review: Bowling Alone No More? Two decades after he diagnosed America’s crisis of civic life, Robert Putnam offers a remedy.

2/9/21 Very worthwhile reading to understand the emotional pendulum in the U.S. between feelings of community that we contribute to an individual rights and expectations. It is about an important curve called the I - We - I curve that shows we are in another Gilded Age pretty clearly, with our peak of caring about each other at 1967.

Here's a couple of representative quotes:

Progressive Era social innovations and institutional reforms put the US on a new path toward greater economic equality, laying the foundations for the Great Convergence that lasted until the 1970s. Progressive Era reformers, both dreamers and doers, created innovations such as the public high school, labor unions, the federal tax structure, antitrust legislation, financial regulation, and more.66 Those creations did not immediately close the income gap, given the turbulence of the Twenties, but they were the necessary foundations for further developments (especially during the New Deal, but not only then) that underpinned the Great Convergence.

In sum, during the Great Convergence, both taxation and spending moved in a progressive direction, so government redistribution was a major contributor to growing equality. With the advent of the Great Divergence, by contrast, taxes became more regressive, though spending continued to be more progressive, softening the post-1980 trend toward inequality, at least for the aging middle class.

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Feb 26, 2021 Isha rated it liked it

I read this book for a class I'm taking on Nonprofits and Society. I don't think I would've picked this book up otherwise, but that being said, I think it was interesting and a unique perspective.

Where this book really lacked for me was the "How". The subtitle suggests that Putnam is going to give the reader a guide on how to shift the country back into a "we" mentality, but does more to educate the reader on the "why" and the data surrounding that. There are 4 pages or so in the last chapter th ...more

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Feb 24, 2021 John Kaufmann rated it really liked it

Shelves: sociology-socscience, history, politics-economics

4-plus stars. This is an important book with a big idea -- one of my definitions for being a 5-star book.. The only thing that keeps it from being 5 stars was its readability -- it was a little on the tedious/academic side.

The main idea is that since the Gilded Age, American culture gradually swung from individualistic to more communitarian, peaking in the 1960s, and has gradually become more individualistic again since then. The authors detected this I-we-I pattern repeatedly over a number of ...more

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Dec 12, 2020 Heath Salzman rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, culture, 2020

This book was less ground-breaking than others Putnam has authored. This may be due to my own fatigue of reading literature trying to make sense of our chaotic age.

At any rate, it is well researched, well written, and the authors make insightful points.

The question the book leaves us with is: how do we return to a more communal society without sacrificing the gains made in individual freedoms?

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Mar 01, 2021 Steve rated it liked it

Looking at American life over the last 120 years ago and finding similar patterns of individualism vs mutualism in many different areas of life. I’m not fully convinced by all the graphs and data but it is certainly interesting to think about. Book was sometimes a bit tedious but it was intriguing to see US history through this lens.

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Nov 17, 2020 Pat Ingellis rated it liked it

excellent book, full of very well thought out ideas, can be a bit dry and difficult to get through

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Jan 02, 2021 Jukka Aakula rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Review in Finnish language by me: https://kansankokonaisuus.blogspot.co... ...more

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Jan 07, 2021 Dana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: priority, culture-psych-tech, ed-pa-growth, urban-planning-poverty, better-person

Brilliant analysis

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Oct 30, 2020 Chris Bogg rated it really liked it

As a fan of Bowling Alone and the books in the same genre written since that foretold the divisions in America in 2016, I like the more optimistic take of this book. Short version:

1. America today is strikingly similar to America of the Guilded Age on economic, political, cultural and social dimensions

2. Starting around ~1900 society began a shift away from atomization/individual/“I” to communitarian/“we” that accelerated through the 1960s. The trend then reversed and we’re at where we’re at tod ...more

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Dec 20, 2020 Justin Fanelli added it

Need to reflect more before reviewing

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Nov 02, 2020 Martha Anne Toll added it

My review of this book on NPR Books. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/02/930271... ...more

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Nov 05, 2020 James rated it really liked it

Brilliant concept and ideas but authors admit there’s overlap in chapters. Would benefit from chronological not topical framing.

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Jan 03, 2021 Dan Stoyell rated it it was ok

I didn't put down this book very convinced that it had done a good job proving it's thesis. I found myself shaking my head at what I viewed as the flimsiness of a lot of the evidence offered (google books word frequency??). While a lot of the individual pieces of data offered are very interesting, I couldn't get over the idea that I was being sold a narrative by being offered only the data that fit the case, and even that evidence I didn't find very persuasive.

I finished the book still open the ...more

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Jan 03, 2021 Bill Morgan rated it liked it

Too much statistics and insufficient attention to counter arguments. The authors’ suggestions are unrealistic and naive

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Jan 28, 2021 Chrisanne rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

I'm not convinced.

1. The stats don't lie, and there are plenty of them, BUT how do we know that the upswing matches the mid-1900s and not the mid-1800s? Or a different era? The repetition of history can happen(hello pandemic), but other issues are harder to trace due to lack of records. Thus, it's not an airtight thesis.

2. It ignored wads of other evidence that is present in lots of other books(Jonathan Sacks, Timothy Carney, etc.) I guess it wasn't usable because the studies aren't finished? ...more

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Feb 18, 2021 Carolyn Kost rated it it was ok

I don’t feel more informed after reading this book. Upswing reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, and that is not a compliment. Gladwell is a journalist popularizer who draws scant connections and attempts to simplify the complex losing all nuance along the way, while Putnam is a distinguished political scientist. As one example, Putnam and co-author Garrett repeat the flawed and incomplete narrative about sexual wage disparities without any of the qualifiers. Could this book be unfulfilling p ...more

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Nov 05, 2020 Greg rated it it was amazing

This refreshing book is a welcome combination of good historical research AND political science!

Just like the book "Four Threats" which I finished the day before, Putnam's "The Upswing" looks at present-day America in the larger context of our history.

The authors of "Four Threats," Suzanne Mettler and Robert Lieberman, identify four "threats" that, left untreated, can destroy democracy. [Those threats are: political polarization, conflict over who belongs in the political community, high and gr ...more

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Feb 16, 2021 Muriel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: political

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The book successfully told its story “it has been this bad before”: People around 1920s probably experienced something similar to what we are experiencing around 2020. The book went through various historic trends from the beginning of 20th century to the 2010s: income inequality, political polarization, breaking down of social trust, lack of civil society, even down to timid levels of household formation…. and pointed out various measurements of society share the same ‘Upswing’ curve, which it The book successfully told its story “it has been this bad before”: People around 1920s probably experienced something similar to what we are experiencing around 2020. The book went through various historic trends from the beginning of 20th century to the 2010s: income inequality, political polarization, breaking down of social trust, lack of civil society, even down to timid levels of household formation…. and pointed out various measurements of society share the same ‘Upswing’ curve, which it also called the I-we-I curve.

1920s and 2010s are the ‘I’ part: people emphasized their individual wants with many trying to get rich in a society of increasing income inequality; few contribute to civil societies – if they belonged to any membership organizations in 2010s, people often are just paying membership dues, not doing things together or forming bonds (called mail-order membership); for both ‘I’ parts, many people don’t get married or delayed marriage, form a family, nor have children. In political life, people do not see ‘the other party’ as human, nor compromises – important legislation in 2010s and did not get bipartisan support; there was threat of political violence – 1920s examples of violent strikes & suppression (Jan 6 2021 violence happened after the book’s publication).

Then the curve has the ‘we’ part between the two ‘I’ parts: social collaboration increased from 1920s up to the 1960s. Income inequality reduced, education increased – public high schools and mandatory 12 years schooling, people participate in rotary clubs, get to know each other through union hall activities, allowing women to vote, improving blacks’ voting rights, work across parties to support important legislations: the New Deal, the Food and Drug Act, the Environmental Protection Act, etc.

Measured social trends apart, it was still head-scratching why was there a fortunate upswing that peaked in the 1960s of increased social cooperation. The book thought progressives of the early 20th century, such as Theodore Roosevelt (TR) Progressive “bull moose” party had a hand in spurring changes that make the society more collaborative. But I felt part of the reason is as the book alluded to, the ‘We’ before 1960s actually is a limited set of ‘We’ (same race gender etc.), which made it easier to broke compromises between different fractions of the ruling class together.

The book also attempted to ask and answer – why did it go downhill after the 1960s? As the book views, JFK’s famous line “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country” (and subsequently LBJ’s Great Society policies trying to expand the ‘We’), captures the peak of the ‘We’ curve, the decades of coming together, but also served as a conclusion for that trend, not spurring a new beginning. I thought the book was honest in describing this possibility: the previous focus of ‘We’ lead to conformity which people rebelled against starting 1960s, the new emphasis of ‘individual rights’ (an important argument in recognizing previously overlooked and suppressed groups, be it racial gender or sexual minorities) – could have started the change in value orienting towards ‘I’ and less about ‘We’.

The book’s purpose is more than documenting the social trends and providing backward-looking explanations – it argues ‘we’ can do it (‘coming together’) again. This forward-looking argument, more a call-to-action than a prediction, is the least certain part that I felt about the book. What are the action items? Ditch the mail-order membership and join the rotary club? Of course, we should not look to the academics for self-improvement books in the first place. These limits notwithstanding, highly recommend reading this book as an alternative to the narrower focus of single-issue research (union, polarization), and certainly better way to invest your time than the modern-day news industry: the book does ‘macro history’ and thinks beyond the day-to-day sensational profits.
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Jan 30, 2021 Rick Harrington rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: america

. . . wherein I learn that I came of age at the exact pivot point for American transformation from the "I" period of the first gilded age, through the "We" period in the middle - boosted by progressivism, bumped low by the 20's and excluding blacks with irony for women - and then back again to "I" in the new (now!) gilded age.

This is a book of hope, that might very well have never been written but for lots of happenstance. It turns out that it was necessary as emendation to Putnam's earlier Bow . . . wherein I learn that I came of age at the exact pivot point for American transformation from the "I" period of the first gilded age, through the "We" period in the middle - boosted by progressivism, bumped low by the 20's and excluding blacks with irony for women - and then back again to "I" in the new (now!) gilded age.

This is a book of hope, that might very well have never been written but for lots of happenstance. It turns out that it was necessary as emendation to Putnam's earlier Bowling Alone which didn't leave the reader with quite as much hope.

Clearly we all need to get off our asses and reconvene face-to-face for actual discussion and actual action. And as clearly, that needs to be apolitical. We can't afford to focus our attention on our differences and what makes us angry. This book provides great comfort, I have to say.

When I think back across all my various periods of ignorance I can certainly claim nothing different for my own now. We are all always preoccupied with the work in front of us, and have scant time to understand everything that's going on around us. But it is our very distance from those that we allow to act in our places which has created so much of the craziness in belief in whose thrall we all feel trapped.

This is not a political book. It calls for sanity, plain and simple, and it documents in stunning detail and with stunning erudition how it was and perhaps always has been that change as often starts from the grass roots as from the top. And the coalitions are not bound by pre-existing conviction of what is the right thing to do. They are brought together, rather, by the obviousness that something needs to be done, and aren't asking each other for alignments beyond the task at hand.

Those tasks have included nearly everything that we take for granted, and can't quite imagine being without. From the Rotary, the Boy Scouts, the 4H, Girl Scouts and on upwards to some thousands of clubs, fraternal organizations, but also trade unions and trade groups and professional associations, including, say, the Bar Association, standards associations, and then up to Social Security, Building Codes, and more and more and more. All those things that we reacted against after the communitarianism of the early sixties turned to do-your-own-thing-ism of individual freedom and expression. Drugs and sex and rock and roll went commercial.

Interestingly, the Internet may not have changed the overall trajectory all that much, beyond creating the basis for the new gilded age, built on the craven overreach of terribly young male libertarians. Who must be at least as ignorant as I was at their same age.

Anyhow, the new progressive age won't have its start unless and until we figure out how to get off our asses and take to community, masked as necessary, including our political alignments left under cover. There's work to be done, and we certainly can't leave it to those in charge. ...more

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About Robert D. Putnam

Robert D. Putnam

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Robert David Putnam is a political scientist and professor of public policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is also visiting professor and director of the Manchester Graduate Summer Programme in Social Change, University of Manchester (UK). Putnam developed the influential two-level game theory that assumes international agreements will only be successfully broke ...more

Books by Robert D. Putnam

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us

Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy

Better Together: Restoring the American Community

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Shankar Vedantam, of 'Hidden Brain,' on Using Your Delusions

If you listen to NPR regularly, you’ve likely heard the voice of Shankar Vedantam, the longtime science correspondent and host of the radio...

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“Big, centralized government, with the proliferation of federal bureaucracies and the expansion of public welfare programs, is sometimes said to have undercut the mediating institutions of civil society, “crowded out” private generosity, and sapped individual initiative. This is a common explanation among conservative commentators, who attribute the reversal from we to I in the 1960s to the welfare state.16 Empirical evidence for “crowding out” is modest, for across states in the US and across countries in the world, the correlation between big government and social solidarity appears to be, if anything, faintly positive, not negative.” — 0 likes

“the more fundamental problem with the big government explanation is that by most measures (all spending, or spending on the welfare state in real per capita terms, or spending as a fraction of GDP; number of government employees) the size of government lagged behind the I-we-I curve by several decades. Federal government spending and the number of employees rose steadily in tandem with the I-we-I curve from 1900 to 1970 and kept rising until they leveled off after the 1980s.” — 0 likes

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