How to Make Sense of a Divided America The Upswing by Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, Review

This respected social scientist’s analysis is a must-read for those wanting to understand the western condition

As Joe Biden replaces Donald Trump as president, America has never felt more divided. Can this book by Robert Putnam, already much discussed in the US, offer Biden a playbook to heal the nation?

A professor of public policy at Harvard, Putnam is one of the country’s foremost social scientists, a centrist Democrat who is well respected across the political spectrum. Together with Shaylyn Garrett, in Upswing he draws on a vast amount of data to track the rise and fall of what the authors call “American community” over the past century. Their contention is that America has drifted from a concern with “We” towards an obsession with “I”. They call for a new grass-roots social reform movement to rebuild solidarity, similar to the one…

Continue reading the entire piece here at The Times (paywall)

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Eric Kaufmann is professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London and a fellow of the Manhattan Institute. His most recent book is Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities.

This piece originally appeared in The Sunday Times