Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

Robert Putnam (b. 1941) is an American political scientist and a professor of public policy at Harvard University. Putnam earned a PhD at Yale in 1970, he joined the political science faculty at the University of Michigan and later, in 1979, accepted a position at Harvard. He served as Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard from 1989-1991. Importantly, he was born in 1941 and therefore is almost a member of the long civic generation that he describes in the book. Like those in that generation, which includes those born in 1940, he is active in community affairs. He co-founded the Saguaro Seminar, which unites leading thinkers and practitioners together to develop ideas for civic renewal. A member of several organizations, such as the American Philosophical Society, he has also served in government on the staff of the National Security Council. Putnam therefore had both the academic skills and commitment to community engagement necessary to undertake this project. In recognition of his contributions to political science and public affairs, Putnam was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, a top honor in the discipline, in 2006, and the National Humanities Medal in 2012.