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

by Robert D. Putnam

As represented in the subtitle of this book, our thesis is not that we should return nostalgically to some peak of American greatness, but that we should take inspiration and perhaps instruction from a period of despair much like our own, on the heels of which Americans successfully—and measurably—bent history in a more promising direction.