You’ve probably heard of Bowling Alone, the hugely influential 2000 book diagnosing our country’s malaise by Robert Putnam, the Harvard University political scientist. In it, Putnam showed that Americans’ stock of social capital—the fabric of a community’s trust and cooperation—had been plummeting since the 1950s, and that its decline was harming our well-being, personal relationships, […]
Colin Woodard
Colin Woodard, author of American Nations, is the director of Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy. His new book is Nations Apart: How Clashing Regional Cultures Shattered America.
Posted inSpecial Reports
This July 4, Where is America’s Land of Opportunity?
The geographies of upward mobility show U.S. regions that emphasize investments in the common good over economic libertarianism do better
Posted inPolitics
The 2024 Presidential Election and U.S. Regional Cultures
A quarter century of political, social, and economic upheaval has left little mark on the political behavior of the “American Nations” regions.
Posted inPolitics
Can the Declaration of Independence’s Ideals Hold America Together?
Can the Declaration of Independence’s Ideals Hold America Together? A new national poll suggests it very much can.
Posted inBooks
Disordering Our National Myths
The Founders, the Pioneers, the Movement, the Lost Cause—the more driving myths one identifies, the more our true national character is obscured.
Posted inPolitics
This Thanksgiving, Understand Our Country Through “Hidden Tribes” and “American Nations”
Join a scholar as he goes beyond simple demographics, to examine “values-based” voting blocs and how they are not so evenly distributed across America’s rival regional cultures.
Posted inSeptember/October 2023
The Appalachian Trail
In the first half of the 20th century, 8 million poor rural whites fled the border states for Great Lakes cities. Brash and suspicious of government, they played an underappreciated role in the collapse of the New Deal order.
Posted inJuly/August 2023
Liberty on the Ballot
How Biden’s freedom agenda could win him a second term and save the republic.
Posted inPolitics
The Geography of Gun Violence
New data about Americans’ attitudes about firearms and their use underscore how divided we are by region.
Posted inMagazine
Desperately Seeking Union
A new biography of Daniel Webster argues that the antebellum statesman forged a civic nationalist vision that has held America together. If only it were true.
