Bowling Alone at Twenty

Two decades ago, Robert Putnam published a book that provoked a small cottage industry’s worth of responses from pundits and scholars alike. Bowling Alone, based on an essay of the same title Putnam had written for the Journal of Democracy five years earlier, made a claim that cut to the quick of American identity: Americans just aren’t doing things together anymore. By choosing to engage in activities individually rather than communally, he asserted, we were putting at risk America’s capacity to build social capital and undermining our national character.

Alexandra Hudson

Alexandra Hudson, an Indianapolis-based writer who has been published in TIME, The Wall Street Journal, Politico Magazine, and others outlets. She is the curator of A New American Renaissance, a monthly newsletter on social, moral and intellectual renewal, a 2019 Novak Fellow, and is currently writing a book on civility and civil society.