'The most important book in social science for many years' Paul Collier, TLS Books of the Year The Upswing is Robert D. Putnam's brilliant analysis of economic, social, cultural and political trends from the Gilded Age to the present, showing how America went from an individualistic 'I' society to a more communitarian 'We' society and then back again, and how we can all learn from that experience. In the late nineteenth century, America was highly individualistic, starkly unequal, fiercely pola ...