The Upswing

Robert D. Putnam, working with Shaylyn Romney Garrett, traces American life from the Gilded Age to the present across economics, society, culture and politics. Their central argument is that the country has swung between two modes of living: first a self-focused, individual-centred 'I' culture, then a more communal 'We' culture, and then back to the 'I' again. The Gilded Age, they suggest, looks strikingly like the present, with sharp inequality, deep political division and social fragmentation.

The authors show that from the early twentieth century onward, the country grew, gradually and unevenly but steadily, more equal, more cooperative and more generous. People came to care more about their obligations to one another and less about narrow self-interest. That momentum was reversed during the 1960s, and the disorder of today followed from that reversal.

Within this broad sweep of more than a century, the book looks closely at an earlier period when a committed generation of reformers restored a society built on community. Presented as the most ambitious of Putnam's books so far, it is written for readers across the English-speaking world and aims to shape the wider debate about the direction society should take.