Recommended by Tom Julius

This month we are featuring The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We can Do it Again, by Robert Putnam with Shaylyn Romney Garrett (2020, Simon and Schuster).

Americans today seem to agree on only one thing: this is the worst of times. We are experiencing historic levels of political polarization, economic inequality, social fragmentation, and cultural narcissism. And by nearly every measure, each of these conditions has been getting steadily worse for more than half a century.

The Upswing offers a broad statistical and historical analysis of these seemingly disparate phenomena and exposes the deeper cultural tendencies that underlie our current cultural crisis. By presenting a new, evidence-based story spanning the past 125 years of our nation’s history The Upswing bridges many lines of fracture and offers a hopeful vision for a future that “we” can all work toward together.

Co-author Shaylyn Romney Garrett lives in the Monadnock region and is a regular participant in MIP, representing the Keene congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This PBS program with Judy Woodruff features members of our local community responding to the central challenge of this book one person — one human interaction — at a time. It also features commentary by Shaylyn about how grass-roots work in local communities may be the answer to national political divisions.