Robert D. Putnam with Shaylyn Romney Garrett, The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (2020)

The specific impetus for reading this book - beyond my general veneration for Putnam's work - is a project I've just started working on with my good friend Paul Lachelier. We want to place the current youth crisis - the anxious generation, the disengaged teen - in a longer-term context of capitalism and modernity. (Paul and I met more than twenty years ago when we taught the sophomore tutorial in Harvard's Social Studies concentration, a wonderful great books course focused on capitalism and modernity.) Putnam's latest book seemed right up our alley since it, too, examines our current predicament by placing it in a broader context. Roughly 125 years ago, namely, in the first Gilded Age, conditions were quite similar to today: wealth and income were distributed very unequally; politics were polarized and bitter; social ties were frayed; and the culture was narcissistic. Then, things turned around on all four dimensions from roughly 1910 to 1970 - this is the "upswing" of the book's title. In this middle, We-phase, there was much greater concern for the common good, stronger institutions, greater social capital.Since the 1970s we've returned to a second Gilded Age. Putnam and Garrett thus refer to the three phases of the cycle as I-We-I. Putnam's message is optimistic - if America came together 125 years ago, we can do it again today. Putnam provides plenty of evidence that the country indeed followed an I-We-I cycle. He also includes nuanced discussions of the more complicated cases of African-Americans and women. The book doesn't go into great detail about the Progressive Movement which launched the country on its turn from I to We. However, Putnam and Garrett identify several features of that earlier movement that, they believe, a new turn to We will also require: the movement was very broadly based, with innumerable individuals and initially small groups taking action, eventually inspiring policy change (Paul, who runs a non-profit dedicated to civic activism and "family diplomacy," will be happy to hear this); the progressives saw the challenge as starting with moral reform, not only of others, but also of themselves; women played an important role. I think in our essay Paul and I should reflect on whether these features are likely, or even feasible, today.