Putnam and Garrett are rewriting the political history of the twentieth century here.

At the core of The Upswing is a simple and powerful insight: The heights of solidarity from which America has fallen since the middle of the 20th century were themselves reached by a steady ascent over the prior half-century.

In this good-hearted and sweeping book, the political scientist Robert D. Putnam (with Shaylyn Romney Garrett) offers some hope in bleak times.

... what can Joe Biden do to patch together a frayed nation? The political scientists Robert Putnam...and Shaylyn Romney Garrett provide a wealth of sociologically grounded answers in The Upswing. Although the title is reassuringly buoyant, this is a tale of two long-term trends, one benign, the other a dark descent. An unabashed centrism prevails: political stability, the authors recognise, is a dance that requires a measure of cooperation and disciplined deportment from both parties.

Can a nation created to maximize individual freedom successfully pursue a common good? Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett tackle this question in The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again, a thoughtful and highly readable account of the way that these competing values have played out.

... a broad, meta-historical analysis of what ails American society.

The book’s many graphs, tracking everything from wage rates and inequality indices to intergenerational economic mobility and wealth distribution, are evidence of a civic tragedy.

Most of The Upswing is taken up with how the curve evolved. It is less clear why the curve evolved. The authors take great pains to untangle complex and nuanced explanations, none of which can solely explain the curve's trajectory.

What makes the book so readable is the use of narratives to support the statistical facts detailing the long upswing of American society.

[An] ambitious book.

For readers looking for an impeccably sourced review of the last century’s economic divide, Putnam and Garrett provide a readable if somewhat statistics-heavy dive into how the U.S. came to be a stark society of haves and have-nots.

A top-notch addition to the why-America-is-in-such-a-mess genre.

... sweeping and persuasive.