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Title: Good portrait of people working together
Review: Robert Putnam dissected what might be the fraying of American community in "Bowling Alone". Here he and co-authors Lewis Feldstein and Don Cohen look at 12 examples of community.It's quite interesting to see how, for example, branch libraries became social hubs in Chicago. The vignette of CraigsList is dated only a few years later and, in any event, it is difficult to accept CraigsList as as true example of community. It may have been in its earliest days, but is certainly not now. The depiction of Portland may be a bit blindsided in that Portland's activists seem to be against anything and everything, more like Babbit's than enablers of any kind.On the whole, though, it's an interesting collection of community endeavors. Not truly a complement to "Bowling Alone", but rather a standalone effort.Jerry
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