APS Discussion Group: The Upswing

Join members of the APS community for the October 2021 Discussion Group. This conversation will center on The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. Co-authors, Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, featured guests at the 2021 APS Evening at the Square event, offer a literary collaboration that delivers a call to action about improving the tone and quality of civil discourse. The group conversation will be engaging, revelatory and directly aligned with the APS mission.

The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

From the author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids, a “sweeping yet remarkably accessible” (The Wall Street Journal) analysis that “offers superb, often counterintuitive insights” (The New York Times) to demonstrate how we have gone from an individualistic “I” society to a more communitarian “We” society and then back again, and how we can learn from that experience to become a stronger, more unified nation.

In a sweeping overview of more than a century of history, drawing on his inimitable combination of statistical analysis and storytelling, Robert Putnam analyzes a remarkable confluence of trends that brought us from an “I” society to a “We” society and then back again. He draws inspiring lessons for our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society once again based on community. Engaging, revelatory, and timely, this is Putnam’s most ambitious work yet, a fitting capstone to a brilliant career.