What's past is prologue -- Economics : the rise and fall of equality -- Politics : from tribalism to comity and back again -- Society : between isolation and solidarity -- Culture : individualism vs. community -- Race and the American "we" -- Gender and the American "we" -- The arc of the twentieth century -- Drift and mastery

"An eminent political scientist's brilliant synthesis of social and political trends over the past century that shows how we have gone from an individualistic society to a more communitarian society and then back again -- and how we can use that experience to overcome once again the individualism that currently weakens our country"--