If only folks would turn off the TV and start attending PTA meetings, America’s future could be as bright as its civically engaged past. This diagnosis is taking shape in foundation-sponsored gatherings and among highbrow columnists. Privileged men and women–who spend most of their waking hours in their offices, on jet airplanes, and in front […]
Books, Culture & the Arts
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The Aging Opportunity: America’s Elderly as a Civic Resource
The aging of American society is almost always seen as a problem, but the elderly may be our only growing natural resource — provided we create new ways to mobilize their civic energies.
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Unsolved Mysteries: The Tocqueville Files
UNSOLVED MYSTERIESThe Tocqueville Files “What If Civic Life Didn’t Die?” by Michael Schudson“Unravelling From Above,” by Theda Skocpol“Couch-Potato Democracy?” by Richard M. Valelly Robert Putnam Responds
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Unsolved Mysteries: The Tocqueville Files II
UNSOLVED MYSTERIESThe Tocqueville Files II “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” by William A. Galston“The Downside of Social Capital,” by Alejandro Portes and Patricia Landolt
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Unsolved Mysteries: The Tocqueville Files
Robert Putnam’s important and disturbing work on civic participation (“The Strange Disappearance of Civic America,” TAP, Winter 1996) has led him to conclude that television is the culprit behind civic decline. But lest we be too disturbed, we ought to consider carefully whether the data adequately measure participation and justify his conclusions and whether his […]
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How We Lost the Peace Dividend
After every previous war, we sent troops home and cut defense spending. The Col War is over, but real spending still runs 85 percent of the Cold War average.
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State of the Debate: Indelible Colors
A book by two political theorists argues that new, cultural definitions of race can be as insidious as the old, biological ones.
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State of the Debate: The Rise and Fall of Racialized Liberalism
Liberalism took a fateful turn in the 1960s by redefining reform in racial terms. Two new books on urban politics sometimes overstate their case against recent liberal policies, but they help clarify what went wrong.
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What’s Wrong with This Picture?
A dissenting opinion on American Beauty.
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Consuming Passions
How the successors to Love Connection and The Dating Game reduce love to a consumer choice.
