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Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert D. Putnam, Simon & amp; Schuster, 516 pages, $26. In 1954 my aunt and uncle, flush from rising wheat prices and an oil well, purchased a new Buick and joined the only form of entertainment within driving distance of their Kansas farm& amp; amp;mdash;a bowling league. They were part of a national trend. By the early 1960s, more than 8 percent of American men and 5 percent of American women had joined bowling leagues.But the nation's interest in bowling leagues soon passed. Fewer than 3 percent of Americans went bowling in leagues by 1998. My aunt, now a widow who lives alone, is too old to bowl. Her son, who lives 2,000 miles away, bowls alone if he bowls at all.For Robert Putnam, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the lonely bowler is emblematic of the serious collapse of community that has taken place over the past 30 years.Americans no longer spend as many evenings with their neighbors, less often join civic organizations like Kiwanis and the League of Women Voters, less frequently believe that other people are honest and trustworthy, and more and more adopt a private stance toward their religious convictions. Voter turnout, attending political rallies, working for political parties, and serving on local committees have all diminished markedly since the early 1970s. Many observers have commented on the rampant individualism that undermines Americans' community spirit. Indeed, polls show that a majority of Americans perceive the breakdown of community as a serious national problem. Yet most of the discussion about declining community consciousness has been conducted without benefit of solid evidence.Until now. Putnam has amassed more data on social trends than anyone in recent memory. With assistance from several major foundations and a stable of research assistants, he has spent the past six or seven years tracking down and analyzing virtually every conceivable piece of evidence about Americans' participation in their communities. The result is a veritable compendium of facts and figures about civic life.We learn, for instance, that voter turnout in national elections has actually decreased more than most observers have imagined& amp; amp;mdash;the reason being that the precipitous decline in northern states has been somewhat offset by rising voter turnout among black voters in the South since the cessation of Jim Crow laws. We learn that Americans spent about 80 minutes a day schmoozing with their friends in 1965 but only 57 minutes a day doing this in 1995. And we learn that Americans spent about twice as much time playing cards in the 1970s as they do now. Putnam "guesstimates" that no more than 10 percent of Americans' declining involvement in their communities is attributable to increasing workplace pressures, that 25 percent of the problem stems from watching too much television, and that at least half the trouble reflects baby boomers and Generation Xers simply not being as civic-minded as the generation that fought in World War II. These guesses are backed up by some evidence, although Putnam's arguments about cause and effect are often more speculative than one would wish.He also documents some of the benefits of high community participation: better schools, less violent crime, fewer fistfights, lower rates of tax evasion, and citizens who report leading happier lives. Unfortunately, Putnam's analysis of these data does not take into account other factors that might explain these differences among states (such as the proportion of residents who live in cities, racial differences, or differences in age distributions and income levels). His argument that social connectedness is associated with being healthier is, however, consistent with other studies showing that active church members tend to live somewhat longer and report fewer serious health problems than people who do not go to church.

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June 12 2000, Vol. 44, No. 7