Customer Reviews

Better Together: Restoring the American Community

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

No matter your interest, religious, political, environment, academic, left, right, or center, if you have interest in seeing things change (or stay the same), Better Together: Restoring the American Community by Robert Putnam and Lewis M. Feldstein, with Don Cohen (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003) is a must read.

Better Together tells the stories of twelve different groups: from a community organization to a church, as well as a dance group and a web site, from a union to a branch library, a Fortune 500 corporation and a neighborhood group, to name a few. The stories hold in common the building up of community, of social capital. It is the best book of general interest that I have read in more than a year.

Putnam addresses a critical aspect of how we are brought together as citizens and neighbors. I cannot stress enough how highly I recommend this book.

Robert Putnam dissected what might be the fraying of American community in "Bowling Alone". Here he and co-authors Lewis Feldstein and Don Cohen look at 12 examples of community.

It's quite interesting to see how, for example, branch libraries became social hubs in Chicago. The vignette of CraigsList is dated only a few years later and, in any event, it is difficult to accept CraigsList as as true example of community. It may have been in its earliest days, but is certainly not now. The depiction of Portland may be a bit blindsided in that Portland's activists seem to be against anything and everything, more like Babbit's than enablers of any kind.

On the whole, though, it's an interesting collection of community endeavors. Not truly a complement to "Bowling Alone", but rather a standalone effort.

Jerry

I had hoped to really like this book, because the theme seemed so pertinent and promising. Instead, I was sadly disappointed. It was very much like watching Oprah. Lots of sunny stories about community turnaround, neatly packaged for consumption, with no individual relevance or useful guidelines for reproducing the effect elsewhere. This is not a book about getting to know your neighbors, or building bridges in your community. Whether this is a failing of the book, or just misleading marketing you can decide.

I saw this book at Barnes and Noble. I only skimmed it but it does not seem as good- or as depressing- as Bowling Alone. I agree that it is a very relevant theme but I think the authors need to gather more real-world input and not just paint a rosy picture from just a couple of examples. I think that as a writer, you need to take on the hardest and most entrenched issues and then try to dig through them. When you've reached the bottom, then you start to come back up, gathering solutions to the issue and examples of what did and did not work. This book does not go deep enough and it just skips around among various topics and issues. One of the problems with sociological writing today is that it tends to really focus on the problems but not the solutions. So in that way, I feel that this book succeeds. But I guess it just seems hastily put together and in need of more research.

Wonderful survey of various US groups that have fostered community over time, by the author of Bowling Alone. Groups range from a community dance project in New Hampshire, to student groups making changes in their Wisconsin town, to the city of Portland, a hotbed of community involvement. Some of the examples of community work better than others, with the New Hampshire dance project and the story of a Chicago branch library both being very moving on a human level. Other selections, such as an inter-faith group in Texas and the history of a union at Harvard are more academic and harder to get invested in. The ultimate message is that community can be built, but communication and some strong leaders need to be in place. One conclusion I would question is that civic community needs government involvement to work. The argument behind this conclusion is not spelled out and the book is full of examples where government was not involved, from Saddleback Church to Craigslist, both in California. We do see examples of government being part of the problem, not being response to student's desires in Wisconsin and limiting growth in Portland through green zone initiatives. Still, an interesting cross-section of community around us.

Absolutely inspiring. Breaks away from theory and focuses on real life examples of how people are saving and strengthening their communities all over the US.

This book has been invaluable to me in my research into the growing phenomenon of social isolation many Americans are experiencing. I've noticed this for years and am glad to read that some experts agree. The book was delivered very quickly and in excellent shape. I'm refering to it in my college studies.

( women have left the home and family and gone to work!)

((( Insert this every other sentence! )))

figuring out the problem is not hard, its admitting it.

( hint, dont kneejerk and yell hate and sexist, this is a woman writing, who stays home with the kids and whose own mom stayed home with the kids, rem those days? the 60's? oh gee why has everything changed?! you know the answer, just admit it.

A sense of community

We know all about the women who live along Wisteria Lane, but not what's going on with the people who live on our own street. We instant message with strangers around the world while hardly talking to the neighbor next door. We know the middle names of celebrity children, though we have no idea who the kid across the street is.

It's the American way, or perhaps the demise of the American way.

Fewer people know their neighbors, a decline that's been occurring since the late 1960s, according to the book "Better Together: Restoring the American Community," (Simon & Schuster, $15, 336 pages) by Robert Putnam and Lewis Feldstein.

( women have left the home and family and gone to work!)

Since that time, social clubs, civic associations, participation in public affairs and time spent with family, friends and neighbors have all dropped by 25 percent to 50 percent, according to the book.

( women have left the home and family and gone to work!)

And the average American has friends over to dinner about 45 percent less than in the 1970s, according to another of Putnam's books, "Bowling Alone" (Simon & Schuster, $16 paperback, 554 pages).

( women have left the home and family and gone to work!)

"It does seem to be the kind of thing we have lodged in the collective imagination where the Cleaver family has barbecues with the neighbors," says Kevin Wehr, an assistant professor of sociology at California State University, Sacramento. "That just seems to be not really the case anymore."

( women have left the home and family and gone to work!)

Busy schedules, a more transient society all contribute to declining neighborliness, experts have found.

( women have left the home and family and gone to work!)