Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone [Hardcover]

Eric Klinenberg (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 2, 2012

A revelatory examination of the most significant demographic shift since the Baby Boom—the sharp increase in the number of people who live alone—that offers surprising insights on the benefits of this epochal change

In 1950, only 22 percent of American adults were single. Today, more than 50 percent of American adults are single, and 31 million—roughly one out of every seven adults—live alone. People who live alone make up 28 percent of all U.S. households, which makes them more common than any other domestic unit, including the nuclear family. In GOING SOLO, renowned sociologist and author Eric Klinenberg proves that these numbers are more than just a passing trend. They are, in fact, evidence of the biggest demographic shift since the Baby Boom: we are learning to go solo, and crafting new ways of living in the process.

Klinenberg explores the dramatic rise of solo living, and examines the seismic impact it’s having on our culture, business, and politics. Though conventional wisdom tells us that living by oneself leads to loneliness and isolation, Klinenberg shows that most solo dwellers are deeply engaged in social and civic life. In fact, compared with their married counterparts, they are more likely to eat out and exercise, go to art and music classes, attend public events and lectures, and volunteer. There’s even evidence that people who live alone enjoy better mental health than unmarried people who live with others and have more environmentally sustainable lifestyles than families, since they favor urban apartments over large suburban homes. Drawing on over three hundred in-depth interviews with men and women of all ages and every class, Klinenberg reaches a startling conclusion: in a world of ubiquitous media and hyperconnectivity, this way of life can help us discover ourselves and appreciate the pleasure of good company.

With eye-opening statistics, original data, and vivid portraits of people who go solo, Klinenberg upends conventional wisdom to deliver the definitive take on how the rise of living alone is transforming the American experience. GOING SOLO is a powerful and necessary assessment of an unprecedented social change.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Essay by author Eric Klinenberg

As featured on Rollingstone.com

There have been a lot of big cultural changes since the 1960s, and no one has covered them like Rolling Stone. But some changes escape the eyes of even the most perceptive observers. We recognize them only in retrospect, and once we do we suddenly realize that artists--especially musicians--were not merely seeing the revolution, but also expressing them from the very start. Often, we were even singing along!

My new book, Going Solo, tells the story of the biggest modern social change that we’ve yet to identify: the extraordinary rise of living alone.

Until the middle of the 20th century, no society in human history had sustained large numbers of singletons. In 1950, for instance, only 4 million Americans lived alone, and they accounted for less than 10 percent of all households. Today, more than 32 million Americans are going solo. They represent 28 percent of all households at the national level; more than 40 percent in cities including San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Denver, and Minneapolis; and nearly 50 percent in Washington D.C. and Manhattan, the twin capitals of the solo nation.

The numbers are even higher in Europe and Japan. And they’re growing fastest in places with rapidly developing economies, from China and India to Brazil.

I put together a playlist of some of the greatest songs for going solo, and an extended set of many others. Got your own favorites? Share them! After all, no one can get it all right on their own.

Billy Idol, “Dancing with Myself”
Sometimes you really don’t need a partner, and this is among the brightest songs about the pleasure of being alone. Idol’s “Dancing with Myself” is a remix of a single that was originally performed by the group Generation X. What better way to get in the mood for going solo?

Rolling Stones, “Get Off of My Cloud”
”Got Off of My Cloud” was the "follow up" to the Rolling Stones’ mega-hit "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," which attracted more attention than anyone anticipated. The band’s discomfort with their sudden popularity blares out through their admonition: "Don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd/ On my cloud." Nothing like being at the center of everything makes you need some time to yourself.

Beyonce, “All the Single Ladies”
Beyonce can care less what you think, she don’t need no permission, and she’s still a little bitter about the ring thing. But “All The Single Ladies” brilliantly embodies the feminine swagger and bravado made in the 1960s by groups like The Chiffons and The Supremes. Don’t just be content with being single. Celebrate it. Get your hands up, up in the club.

Gloria Gaynor, “I Will Survive”
If you’ve ever been to any party with a dance floor, you know how much this song means to people. Some call it the Gay anthem, but it’s also the theme song for countless women who’ve endured a tough separation, because Gaynor soulfully captures that exact moment after a break up when the attitude shifts from fear and despair to strength and independence.

Rufus Wainwright, “One Man Guy”
Growing up in a family of great musicians, Rufus Wainwright developed a total mastery of his instruments, and the lyrical ability to shed light on topics that are hard to discuss. Rufus’s father, Loudon Wainwright III, wrote “One Man Guy” and performed it for his 1986 album of the same name. Rufus’s adaptation is a visceral account of solitude: "I’m gonna bathe and shave/And dress myself and eat solo every night/Unplug the phone, sleep alone/Stay away and out of sight,” he sings. “These three cubic feet of bone and blood and meat are all I love and know/I'm a one man guy is me."

Jay Z, “99 Problems”
After Blue Ivy was born, Jay Z settled down into fatherhood and allegedly swore off ever using the B-word again. But before his Beyonce days, Jigga made one thing absolutely clear: He had a ton of things to deal with—getting pulled over, music critics slamming him, and radio stations not playing his songs. But girlfriends? Not among them.

Tom Waits, “Better Off Without a Wife”
Tom Waits has been married for 32 years now, but in the great 1975 album Nighthawks at the Diner, he toasted “to the bachelors and the Bowery Bums/And those who feel that they’re the only ones/Who are better off without a wife.” It’s a great testament to the urban underworld,and to Tom’s wild years.

Bob Marley, “No Woman, No Cry”
Plenty of musicians have assured us that everything’s gonna be all right. But leave it to the one with the Jamaican attitude to really make us believe it. Marley applies his home country’s “No worries” philosophy to being alone and the result is one of the best feel-good songs ever.

Wilco, “Born Alone”
Jeff Tweedy may be a married father, but he’s one of our the great iconoclasts and individualists of our time, always doing his own thing his own way. In “Born Alone,” Tweedy pulled random words from Emily Dickinson’s poetry and set them next to writing from Whittier and other poets from the 1800s. He’s said that final lyric, “born alone, born to die alone” is dire, defiant, and triumphant, and that the song ends with a series of repeating chords that ascend and descend to give the sound “like it’s endlessly going deeper and deeper into the abyss.” Solo or not, we’ve all been there.

Patty Labelle and Michael McDonald, “On My Own”
The #1 hit from LaBelle’s 1986 platinum album, “Winner in You,” this is a song about being alone, together. In the video, LaBelle and McDonald appear on separate coasts, in a split screen, and testify to the sweet sorrow of being solo after love ends. “I’ve got to find out what was mine again/My heart is saying that it’s my time again/And I have faith that I will shine again/I have faith in me/On my own.”

Morrissey, “I'm OK By Myself”
Where would a list about being alone be without Morrissey? But “I’m OK By Myself” is much less on the sad-sap end of Morrissey’s discography and far more proudly independent. He wants the person who left him to know this: He doesn’t need you. And he hopes that fact makes you throw up in your bed.

Jamie O’Neal, “All by Myself”
Possibly the most famous song to listen to while staring out a rainy window with a single tear drop on your cheek. Many musicians have tried but none of captured the true pain of isolation like O’Neal.

Jimi Hendrix, "Stone Free"
In the tradition of wandering bluesmen and free spirits everywhere, Hendrix celebrates his independence and warns women against even trying to tie him down. “Listen to me baby, you can’t hold me down…Stone free, do what I please/Stone free to ride the breeze/Stone free I can’t stay/Got to got to got to get away.” Has anyone else so perfectly captured the sentiments of men who won’t commit?

Jason DeRulo, “Ridin' Solo”
The companion piece to Beyonce’s All the Single Ladies, DeRulo says he’s sorry things didn’t work out, but he’s ready to move on because the pain is gone. “Better days are gonna get better,” he sings. “I’m feelin’ like a star, you can’t stop my shine/I’m lovin’ cloud nine, my head’s in the sky/I’m solo, I’m ridin’ solo.”

--Eric Klinenberg (With contributions from Jennifer Lena, Dan Ozzi, and Ed Russ (DJ Jah Karma)

Used by permission of Rollingstone.com

From Booklist

Singletons—people who choose to live alone—are getting more numerous. Roughly 31 million Americans live alone. That’s one out of seven adults, and you should keep in mind that Americans are, overall, less likely to live alone than people in many other countries. This rather interesting book addresses several questions, among them why people choose to live alone, why singletons are on the rise, whether living alone is a key part of maturing, whether singletons enjoy better mental health than their cohabiting counterparts, and whether living alone necessarily makes someone an introvert (studies—and Klinenberg cites many—indicate that people who live alone can be enthusiastically social animals). The prose is lively, focusing more on personal stories than dry statistics, and by treating living alone as a social phenomenon, Klinenberg, a sociology professor at New York University, is able to draw some startling conclusions about our behavior. --David Pitt

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; 1st Printing edition (February 2, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594203229
• ISBN-13: 978-1594203220
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #130,546 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Demography

More About the Author

Eric Klinenberg is Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, and Media, Culture, and Communications at New York University, and editor of the journal Public Culture. His latest book, Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, was published in February 2012 by the Penguin Press.

The press reports that Going Solo "is causing a sensation." Time Magazine featured it as the #1 Idea That is Changing Your Life in the March 12, 2012 cover story. Vanity Fair called it "trailblazing." Psychology Today called it "so important that it is likely to become both a popular read and a social science classic." The New Yorker argued that the book "suggests that our usual perceptions about life alone get things backward." And the Washington Post explained that "Going Solo is really about living better together--for all of us, single or not."

Klinenberg's first book, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, won six scholarly and literary prizes (and was a Favorite Book selection by the Chicago Tribune), and was praised as "a dense and subtle portrait" (Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker); "a remarkable, riveting account" (American Prospect); "intellectually exciting" (Amartya Sen); and a "trenchant, persuasive tale of slow murder by public policy" (Salon). A theatrical adaptation of Heat Wave premiered in Chicago in 2008, and Judith Helfand is directing a feature documentary based on the book.

Professor Klinenberg's second book, Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media, was called "politically passionate and intellectually serious," (Columbia Journalism Review), "a must-read for those who wonder what happened to good radio, accurate reporting and autonomous public interest" (Time Out New York), and "eye-opening ...required reading for conscientious citizens" (Kirkus). Since its publication, he has testified before the Federal Communications Commission and briefed the U.S. Congress on his findings.

In addition to his books and scholarly articles, Klinenberg has contributed to popular publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, Fortune, The London Review of Books, The Nation, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, Slate, and the radio program This American Life.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

126 of 137 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Going Solo Rocks! February 4, 2012

By Elena Portacolone

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I loved reading this heartfelt and thorough investigation of a rather unexplored phenomenon as living alone. I enjoyed very much the way the plot unfolds. I could not put the book down until the end, something that never occurs.

As in Heat Wave, the account unfolds through the eloquent use of academic literature, the compelling stories of informants, and the author's candid observations. Without revealing too much, I enjoyed how Klinenberg convinced me of the appeal of living alone. I often found myself wondering how the author, a married man with two kids, could explain with crystal clarity the thrill of making it alone of many women like me - buying a home on your own, finding your path, falling in love with your higher self. What I loved the most was how the author employed the "appeal" of the "social experiment" of living alone as the foundation for the discussion of the other side of the coin - the hardships and hazards of living alone in societies not yet equipped to serve legions of one-head householders.

As social scientist who studied for the last four years the condition of living alone in older age in America, I was pleased to finally, for the first time, read such an articulate and entertaining discussion of the many facets of living solo. I appreciated how Klinenberg draws the line between loneliness and living alone, how he highlights the issues of studying social isolation and the importance of proper housing policies. I was taken by the author's account of his grandmother's experience in a high-end assistive living facility (we know so little about life in these spaces!), his reflection on horrific nursing homes and unaffordable services for older adults, as well as his discussion of best practices in New York and in Sweden.

Finally, whereas Heat Wave was a serious book as "social autopsies" should be, Going Solo surprised me with some very funny paragraphs where I found myself laughing hard. It was a joy to finally immerse myself into a sophisticated analysis founded on unforgettable ethnographies, clear arguments, and even humor. What an inspiration!

83 of 89 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Important work, but very unbalanced April 5, 2012

By Maysi Sem

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Eric Klinenberg has written an important work that has many useful facts about those of us who choose to live alone, but he has missed at least half of the picture by ignoring two very important things: those of us who identify as introverts (those who prefer their own company and derive a sense of reality from within rather than without), and the majority of elderly people who are not down and out, living in NYC, and who are having a great time living in retirement communities and on their own.
With regard to introverts, it is striking that Klinenberg does not even refer to Anneli Rufus and her book 'Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto'. This is a must-read for anyone writing about living alone. Klinenberg's bias towards extroverts and those who need interaction with others in order to maintain their mental health shows over and over again, especially in his writing about elderly people. For many people, reaching middle age and beyond is a wonderful time when at long last we no longer have to be around other people all the time and can enjoy that solitude we have been craving for decades. Those of us who are true introverts never need to worry about "filling empty hours" - it's unthinkable. We've spent our lives waiting for a time when we actually have more time to devote to the hundreds of things we've never had a chance to do because we had to spend so much of our time working. Klinenberg's cautionary tales about becoming ill are worth reading, especially in a country with such a horrific health care system, but he focuses solely on the really sad, horrible tales, mostly limiting his discussion to NYC.
Meanwhile, out in what Stephen Colbert would call "the heartland," there are millions of elderly people who are not wasting away alone in some SRO or nursing home, but who are instead enjoying an excellent quality of life, living independently in apartments and cottages that are part of retirement communities that provide round-the-clock health care when needed. My mother has lived in such a community very independently for the past 20 years and she loves it (she will be 90 this year). She and my father were not wealthy (they were educators), but they saved up their money, made some sensible investment decisions, sold their house and moved to a retirement community in their 70s when they were both still healthy. Today my mother is very active, goes out, attends cultural events, volunteers, has dozens of friends, gets excellent medical care, usually eats one meal a day with friends in the central dining room, and can still cook for herself. Having gotten to know her friends and a host of other elderly people living in nearby retirement communities, this is a common tale, not an exception. There are many such places dotted across the US, and although some of them are prohibitively expensive - and not worth the cost - most are just as affordable as living in an apartment complex.
So don't let Klinenberg's book scare you. It's a very incomplete work written by a clearly biased individual. Yes, it's important to get the word out that living alone is becoming increasingly popular, so he deserves praise for doing that. However, this change in living styles is a cause for great celebration, in my opinion. At last we can live the way we want to rather than putting up with the old models of marriage, family, kids, ad nauseum! Notice how difficult it is, even for an 'objective sociologist' to put a positive spin on this revolutionary change? For those of us who have lived alone for years and love it, the appeal is not 'surprising' at all.

76 of 83 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Will Change Our Lives February 2, 2012

By Bella DePaulo

Format:Hardcover

This Book Will Change Our Lives -- For the Better

There are three interrelated trends that are reshaping our personal lives and our society, and all three have been developing for decades:
* The rise in the number and proportion of people who are single (always-single, divorced, or widowed);
* The increasing number of years that adults spend unmarried rather than married, with the unmarried years now outnumbering the married ones; and
* The increase in the number of people living solo.

The last of those three is the topic of a book so important that it is likely to become both a popular read and a social science classic. It is Eric Klinenberg's just-published Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone.

Does the title of this review sound like hype? I meant it seriously. This book really will change the lives of people who live solo, and everyone else. At least it should. The main thing standing in the way of an explosion of attention and impact is that the claims are not sensationalized. More people are living solo than ever before in human history. That's just a fact. If Klinenberg had tried to persuade us that, as a consequence of this rise in living alone, America was becoming a nation of isolated, lonely people, and that our civic and community life was in a long period of decline - well, then he would have an instant best-seller, hands-down! In fact, as he notes, the best-selling sociology books in the history of the United States have peddled just such dire messages.

If you wanted to see the rise of solo living as a bad, bad thing, you could comb through Going Solo, pluck a few choice excerpts, and make your case. Similarly, if you wanted to declare that living solo is an unmitigated personal and interpersonal good, you could find some quotes that would seem supportive. What you cannot do, if you really do read the entire book, is come away with anything but a deep and complex understanding of what it means to live alone. It can be exhilarating or depressing or both. It can be awesome for some and awful for others.

I don't know the author (though I did talk to him on the phone when he was researching the book), but I did know his previous work. I have to admit that I was a bit wary when I first learned that he was writing a book on solo living. That's because one of his previous books, Heat Wave, was about the hundreds of Chicagoans who died alone, at home, during the 1995 heat wave. Would Going Solo be the sociological version of Bridget Jones's fear about ultimate fate of people who live single - that they would all "end up dying alone and found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian"? Not hardly.

Eric Klinenberg does tell us about the worst cases - people who really do die alone, and whose bodies remain unclaimed by any other humans. Yet even then, he does not presume to judge: "...when truly isolated people die alone...we can't actually know whether their solitude was a source of sadness, or satisfaction" (p. 128).

I have so much more to say about this book. I'll save those discussions for blog posts. (Already available is my list of the top 12 things you probably did not know about living solo: [...] For now, I'll end by returning to the title of this review.

So why will Going Solo change our lives? Here are a few of the reasons:

* The book puts solo living on the map, as a pervasive and consequential feature of contemporary life, not just in the United States, but far beyond. It establishes going solo as a way of living not likely to recede anytime soon.

* The research and the arguments are thorough, balanced, and persuasive. The work is based on more than 300 interviews, collected nationally and internationally, over a 7-year period. The author is an esteemed sociologist, who positions his findings in historical and cross-cultural context.

* Eric Klinenberg explains, for many big important domains of life, why the increase in solo living matters: "The rise of living alone has been a transformative social experience. It changes the way we understand ourselves and our most intimate relationships. It shapes the way we build our cities and develop our economies. It alters the way we become adults, as well as how we age and the way we die. It touches every social group and nearly every family, no matter who we are or whether we live with others today" (p. 6).

* Perhaps most significant, in terms of actually making change happen, is that Going Solo builds up to a final chapter, "Redesigning solo life." There, Klinenberg shares his insights about what societies can do to support and enrich the lives not only of those people who are living alone, but also those who care about the singletons, or who may find themselves living solo in the future.

--Bella DePaulo, author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After