The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

Excellent book, I highly recommend.Putnam's argument is that expanding our cultural analysis back 120 years (beyond the popular 60) provides a remarkable perspective of the causes behind our current political & cultural crises. Rather than dismissing the polarization we have today as being a predictable decline from a 1950's ideal, he sees how our crisis resembles the political & cultural conditions at the end of the 19th century, and how we as a country overcame those conditions through the early 20th century, which effect creates a noticeable curve from polarization to cooperation and back to polarization again, and which effect he optimistically notes, we can accomplish again. His methodology tries to utilize as often as possible statistical data, from voting records to census records to organization membership records, so as to avoid the common criticism that his arguments might be too anecdotal or subject to researcher bias. It succeeds as far as it can: trying to view income disparity from survey and tax records might be easy to do from the 1960s, but those same data don't exist for the late 19th century, and there are points where he needs to fill in data using weaker sources, but these are shortfalls not of his book so much as they are of any study going back that far in history. (Though, as I am a medievalist, I will say working in late 19th century history is for me nary so hard as working in statistics of the 14th century...) Excellent book, excellent conclusions, and timely (I read this in November 2020, but write this two days after the attack on the Capitol).

Two insightful authors and the work of a team of researchers bring us a hopeful book about our American future. In essence, the message is that we can reset our focus from a current divisive and polarizing Individualism to an “individualism and community as twin ideals.” That is, as de Tocqueville saw Americans 200 years ago, to a practical “self-interest properly considered.”The hard part, say the authors, is that the initiative will have to come from the bottom up, starting with small groups enacting a reawakening of deep American values, just as our forebears did in the Progressive Era. And as then it is expected that policy will follow and enable once again decades of unparalleled growth economically, politically, culturally and in societal institutions. But it is we the people who will need to lead the way to “a community that values the contributions of all, limits the opportunities of none, and offers prosperity without prejudice.“The Upswing is rich in data and offers surprising looks at our history, seen over the long view. It is well worth digesting for those who have the interest and energy to help reboot the USA.

There is much literature on the why's of the increased tribalism we are witnessing to such a large extent. The social unrest that is manifesting itself in so many capacities is scary and there is an abundance of literature on the causes and potential solutions to these emerging and self-sustaining conflicts. Putnam and Garrett give an account of how the feeling common mission of the population has been cyclical and the properties of tribalism today mirror those of 100 years ago. The authors take a unique approach to considering the dynamics of the last century in that they have tried to make an analytical and statistical survey of sentiment indicators on a variety of variables that measure sympathy for ones fellow citizen and show that the shape of these sympathies and their changes overlap.The polarization of populations today are concerning to a degree not witnessed in decades if not more. When trying to reflect on the causes and the potential trajectories one is faces with so much complexity that true explanation is most likely impossible. Nonetheless Putnam and Garrett are able to distill the trends that took us here and show that it has had a historical cycle, though that should not lead to complacency that the cycle will on its own properties revert. The authors discuss racial equality, perspectives on immigration and women's rights through the 20th century and then show how the indicator and sentiment variables for all of these inclusiveness concepts have a coincident history of broad sympathy that peaked in the mid 60s and have since gone into decline. The period in time most similar to today coincides with the last guilded age. None of this is particularly surprising but it is a somewhat illuminating result that the coincidence of sympathy for racial and gender equality peaked at the same time and have not been more monotonically increasing as many would assume in the 70s-90s. In terms of the rigor of the methods, there are some statistical methods used to confirm a theory but the data set are sentiment variables often rather than things which would be considered universally objective. Certainly generational mobility, income distributions and relative wages are objective data sets so the authors claims are certainly credible in identifying civic attitudes and the measurable changes that were witnessed in the 20th century.In terms of the lesson, it seems like the message is similar to Bowling Alone where we need more civic participation and the interest of populations to engage with one another to drive a shared sense of mutual vision. This shared vision of the future is at a low point as the opportunity set of various parts of the population have bifurcated most notably with the coasts vs some of the industrial heartland. The authors don't really have great policy solutions, to which there are no easy ones, but the fact that many issues for overall progress seem to be driven by an underlying more significant causal variable is important to recognize. Overall the book was interesting to read but the message could be cleaned pretty quickly and the data substantiation is quite weak, but nonetheless plausible.

Dozens of charts show the I, We, I arc of American history . As in Bowling Alone and Our Kids, the quantitative evidence is abundant, clearly presented, and persuasively interpreted. We are spared the technical details of regressions and other advanced statistics.We historians could assign this book as a case study of how a political scientist writes history. What is gained and lost? For instance, the I/We/I view of the past 125 years underplays the combinations of I and We. At all times most Americans sought both community ties and individual autonomy. How we went about honoring both Self and Other deserved more attention in this book.Even so, The Upswing is a gem. Race, politics, economics, gender, families: it's all here. And after reading it you will understand and appreciate Ngram analysis...

I love it when retired professors step back and write something that really takes in a whole field or a wide scope of vision. While they’re still teaching or subject to colleagues’ reviews, I notice that very few academics feel brace enough to paint in broad brushstrokes — they tend to focus on filling in details, or using a microcosm to describe themes that may or may not extend. But when they’re retired, the best academics often have something much bigger and deeper to say, and it’s always a pleasure when it’s also well-supported by research.This is one of those books. There has been plenty of criticism of course, notably for the over-reliance on Google Books statistics as an indicator of ideas’ rise and fall in social consciousness. But the broad brushstrokes paint a compelling picture.Putnam makes a strong case that our times today mirror not only the 1930s’ Petri dish of fascism, but even more the 1890s’ gilded age of deep inequality. He also points to the example of late-19th century and early-20th century social progressives as community builders, creating the YMCA / YWCA system, Boy Scouts, NAACP, and many other organizations that explicitly aimed to foster social cohesion at a time when life could easily feel like, “everyone for themselves”. (Forgive me if I got the specific examples wrong; the right examples are in the book.)I personally found this book engaging and inspiring, a call to action to help build progressive social capital. As Putnam points out, the fact that the 20th century saw a rise and then fall in social conformity — with a peak in the 1950s, when wearing a blue dress shirt, instead of white, was an unheard-of deviation — does not mean that social tolerance and inclusion follows a natural sine wave. It is up to us to build back the society we want to live in. This book offers excellent perspective, motivation and examples for how to do that, together.