Deep and accelerating inequality; unprecedented political polarisation, vitriolic public discourse; a fraying social fabric’ public and private narcissism - today we seem to agree on only one thing: this is the worst of times.

But we’ve been here before - a century ago.

In a sweeping overview of more than a century of history, drawing on his inimitable combination of statistical analysis and storytelling, Robert Putnam analyses a remarkable confluence of trends that bought us from an ‘I’ society to a ‘We’ society and then back again. He draws inspiring lessons from our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society one again based on community. Engaging, revelatory, and timely, this is Putnam’s most ambitious work yet, and an unmissable contribution to the debate over where we want our society to go.